ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how and why art is a challenge to its own material. By using terms “horizontal” (surface/form) and “vertical” (depth/meaning), it argues that the only way to assess the artistic value of an object lies in the potential distance between its horizontal and vertical axis. It is also emphasized that the vertical movement art object propagates doesn’t take us away from its horizontal substance, but by pushing forward its vertical essence and meaning to the surface, it revives the horizontal aspect, and it indeed is the revival of a horizontal object; image, word or whatever the horizontal object of the work of art is. Then the chapter continues to argue art as the Sublime horizontalized. The Sublime is within the horizontal/image/letter; it is a worldly sublime. Like the Sublime, what a true work of art conveys is incommunicable, and art is a way to express the inexpressible.
