The Work of Art Revisited: Gadamer’s Hermeneutic Concept of Gebilde

Daniel L. Tate

St. Bonaventure University
DTATE@sbu.edu

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-9596-8892

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21423/9p05yv59

Abstract

Following Heidegger, Gadamer elaborates the “work-being” of the work of art. At the core of his hermeneutic understanding of the work is a distinctive concept of Gebilde. Gadamer conceives this as a sensuous configuration embedded in the individual work as an organic whole that displays a dynamic unity while possessing the stability of an identifiable pattern of internal relations that confounds conventional distinctions between matter and form, ideality and reality, sensibility and intelligibility, identity and difference, created work and living being. As a pure appearance that transcends its material support, Gebilde exhibits the hermeneutic identity of a work that is recognized through those interpretations by which it comes to presence while surpassing them all. Therein lies the truth-claim of art that is one while being many. Because of its centrality to Gadamer’s philosophy of art, Gebilde deserves the more concentrated attention that this essay seeks to provide.   

Keywords: Gadamer, Gebilde, hermeneutic identity, sensuous configuration, work of art, ideality

Introduction

Following Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer seeks to elaborate the “work-being” of the artwork. Like his mentor, he is interested in how the work of art presents itself in its own being. Yet, at the core of Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy of art lies a concept that bears his understanding of the ontological constitution of the work: Gebilde as “configuration.” Although frequently rendered into English as “structure,” this translation can be problematic when it leads one to regard the Gebilde as a formal structure that can be abstracted from the artwork. Instead, Gadamer conceives it as a sensuous configuration embedded in the individual work as a living form. Moreover, while it exhibits the stability of an identifiable pattern of internal relations, the Gebilde is not a static organization, but displays a dynamic unity. Indeed, it is by virtue of its dynamic unity that the Gebilde confounds conventional distinctions between matter and form, ideality and reality, sensibility and intelligibility, identity and difference, created work and living being.

My primary aim here is to elucidate this elusive concept. For while Gebilde is recognized as an important term in Gadamer’s discussions, it seldom receives the sustained attention it deserves. I therefore attend to the contours of Gebilde as they emerge from Gadamer’s discussions of art and poetry in order to better grasp his distinctively hermeneutic understanding of the being of the artwork.[1]

I begin where Gadamer introduces this concept – namely, with the advent of the work of art through its “transformation into structure (Gebilde).”[2] I hold that this transformation marks the coming into being of the work as a pure appearance that transcends its material support (II). Following this, I consider Gadamer’s attribution of autonomy and ideality to the artwork as correlative concepts. In the event wherein the work of art comes to stand, a Gebilde attains autonomy by detaching itself both from the reality of the surrounding world and from the intentions of the artist and audience. In this same event, a Gebilde acquires the ideality of an intelligible form, albeit one that resists separation from the sensuous elements that compose it (III). I continue to examine this concept by elaborating the organic analogy that Gadamer observes between artworks and living beings. Following important clues in his writing, I develop his understanding of this analogy, guided by the common features of dynamic formation, part-whole integration, and rhythmic patterns, drawn from Suzanne Langer (IV). I then consider the role of Gebilde in Gadamer’s discussion of the “hermeneutic identity” of the work of art as a dynamic unity that includes difference (V). And I conclude by arguing not only for the centrality of Gebilde for art’s claim to truth but that this must be supported by the further claim that the being of the work is a one that is many (VI).

Transformation into Structure and the Advent of the Artwork

In Truth and Method, Gadamer introduces the work of art as a modification of the movement of play at that juncture where it becomes a play intended for an audience for whom it is performed and in whom it finds fulfillment. He calls this modification “the transformation into structure [configuration]” (die Verwandlung ins Gebilde) wherein play acquires the character of a work.[3] This is crucial for Gadamer: just as play requires players for it to take place, the artwork requires an audience whose participation enables the work to come forth. For the work of art only fulfills its being as a work where it is performed by the viewer, reader, or listener who attends to it.[4] The Gebilde is what comes to stand in that event by which the work of art comes forth. Where this happens, Gadamer speaks of a transformation which he conceives as an ontological event. Taken as a whole, this phrase, die Verwandlung ins Gebilde, designates the advent of the artwork. Still, it is worth considering the event of transformation itself before examining the work that comes to be through it. It is significant that Gadamer emphatically contrasts “transformation” (Verwandlung) with “alteration” (Veränderung). With alteration something remains the same in what is altered. “But transformation means that something is suddenly and as a whole something else.”[5] Indeed, the transformation that takes place is so sudden that there is no gradual transition from one mode of being to another, since what previously existed is no longer. Moreover, the transformation is so complete that “this other transformed thing that it becomes is its true being, in comparison to which its prior being is nil.”[6] What comes to be through the transformation effaces what existed before. What is transformed thereby acquires its “new being” as a Gebilde; that is, it enters its “true being” as a work of art.[7]

This transformation is thus the very coming into being of the work of art. But what is it that exists prior to this transformation? Gadamer offers no explicit response. I submit that what previously exists is just the material status of the work, that is, those properties that comprise the physical support for the transformation into Gebilde that marks its being as a work of art. Suzanne Langer is helpful here. Speaking of painting, she observes that the pictorial image “emerges suddenly from the disposition of the pigments, and with its advent the very existence of the canvas and of the paint ‘arranged’ on it seems to be abrogated.”[8] Gadamer intends something similar when he remarks that, as a Gebilde, the work “comes to stand” such that it is “there.”[9] Only those qualities of pigment and their arrangement on the canvas that enter into the configuration of lines, shapes, and colors that comprise it as a picture are relevant to the work’s appearance to the viewer.[10] Langer stresses this point, noting that “its proper material status is cancelled [and] its phenomenal character becomes paramount.”[11] Where this transformation occurs, all of a sudden and all at once, the material support disappears in favor of the appearance of the artwork. What comes forth in that transformation is the Gebilde. In the case of a painting, what now appears is the pictorial image it presents.

At stake here is the “phenomenal character” of the artwork in contrast to its “material status.”[12] With the advent of the work, what no longer exists for the viewer is its physicality; it now exists solely as a singular configuration, that is, as a uniquely formed appearance. This accords with Gadamer’s claim that the being of the artwork consists in the pure appearing of what appears there. Although he usually describes the ontological distinction of the artwork as presentation (Darstellung), he often characterizes it as appearance (Schein, Erscheinung). While Gadamer writes, the work of art “does not create anything ‘real’ but simply brings something to presentation [etwas zur Darstellung bringt] ,”[13] he elsewhere asserts that the artwork “finds its characteristic fulfillment when our gaze dwells upon the appearance [Schein] itself.”[14] His use of “Schein” or “Erscheinung” takes “appearance” to mean that something appears before us in its being. But this is no “mere” appearance bearing the sense of an illusion; the artwork does not intend to deceive. Instead, in our experience of art, something appears which “is perceived just as it is intended, as appearance [als Schein].”[15] Thus “the work [Gebilde] demands to be perceived in itself as a pure manifestation [reine Erscheinung]”[16] What appears is the work as a singular configuration that presents itself as a pure appearance.

Though its appearance is only brought forth through the participation of an audience, the work exhibits a configuration drawn from the organization of its sensuous elements. It is also, just as essentially, an intentional structure that exhibits meaning by pointing in a certain direction.[17] In the work of art, Gadamer asserts, “[t]he unity of form [, , , .] is sensuously present and to that extent cannot be reduced to the mere intention of meaning.” Yet he immediately follows with the further remark: “But even this presence still contains an intentional element that points to an indeterminate dimension of possible fulfillments.”[18] Taken together, these statements underscore the anomaly of artistic form contained in the concept of Gebilde. Let’s take the unity of form first. As a sensuous configuration, the work presents a unified whole that is internally organized. Gadamer explicitly describes the Gebilde as “something that has developed into its own pattern from within.”[19] The configuration is not a construction, at least not where that implies an external principle of organizational unity; the organization rather indwells the work.[20] Indeed, the configuration is specific to each work and cannot be abstracted from its sensuous appearance. Speaking of abstract art, Gadamer observes that the unity of the pictorial image derives entirely from the sensuous elements of the painting itself. In such works “the form and color fused into a unity in tension that appear to be organized from within.”[21] He finds this characteristic of all pictorial art.

Nor can the unity of form be separated from the unity of meaning expressed in the work. Due to the sensuous configuration that provides its form, the artwork cannot be reduced to the mere intention of meaning. This is not to say that the work lacks meaning but rather that the meaning-intention is conveyed by its unity of form. The work’s significance is thus bound to the sensuous presence of its unique configuration. Neither the work’s unity of form nor its intention of meaning can be separated from each other or from the Gebilde in which they inhere. Rather, the artwork consists in their belonging-together. In poetic configurations, Gadamer points out, “the dimensions of sound and sense are inextricably woven together.”[22] The more tightly they are interwoven, the denser the poem’s form and the richer its meaning. So, the unity of the work’s meaning-intention cannot be abstracted from the unity of its sensuous presence; the work cannot be reduced to being the mere bearer of a message that can be otherwise conveyed. As Mikel Dufrenne writes, “the form is not only the unity of the sensuous, but also a unity of meaning.”[23]

Standing-in-Itself and the Ideality of the Artwork

Although, in Truth and Method, Gadamer treats the work’s coming-into-being as a transformation into configuration, elsewhere he approaches this same ontological event as the work’s coming-to-stand (zum-stehen-kommen). This is particularly prominent in his treatment of poetry. In the poem, Gadamer claims, language comes to stand in its own right.[24] This is what distinguishes the language of the poem from ordinary usage. “The structuring of sound, rhyme, intonation, assonance, and so on, furnishes us with the stabilizing factors that haul back and bring to a standstill the fleeting word that points beyond itself.”[25] By stabilizing the flow of discourse, language no longer stands for something (else) to which it refers; instead, in the poem, language stands in itself. Indeed, the ontological distinction of the poem consists in its “forming a self-standing linguistic configuration [sprachliche Gebilde].”[26] It is, then, through language itself that the poem comes to stand as a Gebilde. For this reason, language does not disappear into the meaning of what is said in the poem as it does with ordinary discourse. Instead, the meaning of the poem is embedded in the sensuous presence of its linguistic configuration. Where language stands on its own, he variously speaks of “autonomous,” “genuine,” or “eminent” texts. But this is the case for all art. By virtue of its configuration, the artwork “transforms our fleeting experience into the stable and lasting form of an independent and internally coherent creation [Gebilde].”[27] Where this occurs, the artwork coheres as a unified, structured, and meaningful whole, thereby acquiring the distinctive ontological status of a Gebilde.

Due to its status as a self-standing configuration, the work of art is “autonomous” and “ideal.” As we will see, Gadamer doubts the appropriateness of “ideality” when describing the work. One might also register a reservation about “autonomy,” given its implication of separateness. Here it might be better to speak of “independence” to underscore its “free-standing” character. Nonetheless, both features accrue to the being of the artwork as a singular configuration. Gadamer does not seem to privilege one over the other; in fact, the terms he uses to describe them overlap. But, as inseparable features of the Gebilde, they are nonetheless distinguishable. For while the work’s autonomy pertains to its independence or detachment, its ideality bears on the work’s idealization and elevation of what it presents. Insofar as a work “absolutely rests within itself,” it exhibits the independence of a “free-standing” configuration.[28] The independence of the artwork consists in becoming detached from its surrounding world as well as the circumstances of its production and reception. Perhaps Gadamer’s most telling statement on this matter asserts: “Inasmuch as it is a structure [Gebilde] it is, so to speak, its own measure and measures itself by nothing outside of it.”[29] At the same time, the artwork manifests the permanence and identity of an ideal being. For what appears there “is elicited from the flux of manifold reality.”[30] Shorn of its accidental or contingent aspects, the Gebilde elevates what it presents beyond the given world, thus exhibiting the ideality of something indefinitely repeatable. Let’s look at each trait.

Standing-in-itself, the work stands as its own measure, refusing any comparison with “reality” conceived as an external measure. The work of art neither requires nor accepts any authentication from the world that lies “outside” it. By creating its own closed world, the work steps back from the surrounding world, neutralizing the latter as if it no longer exists.[31] Of the poetic word, Gadamer says, “[it] suspends the positive and posited as that which might serve to verify whether our statement corresponds with what lies outside.”[32] Due to its status as a Gebilde, the work of art effectively suspends any ostensive reference.[33] Gadamer even appeals to Husserl’s eidetic reduction. “Wherever art is experienced, this bracketing, the so-called epochē, has always already occurred.”[34] This helps clarify how the poem, as a linguistic configuration, “is capable of cancelling or forgetting any reference that discourse normally has.”[35] By bracketing the positing of reality, the poetic Gebilde spontaneously accomplishes a phenomenological epochē, thereby standing in itself as an autonomous work.

But the transformation into Gebilde also suspends any determining relation to the artist or the audience. On the one hand, it is now independent of the artist’s creative activity. According to Gadamer, “the manifestation in a strange way has transcended the process in which it originated [. . . ]. It is rather set forth in its own appearance as a self-sufficient creation [Gebilde].”[36] Once created it is not just released from the artist’s hands but from their intention as well which no longer exercises decisive authority over how the work is received. On the other hand, the artwork is also independent from its audience. Although the work is intended for them, no given audience has any privilege in determining its meaning. So, while the work of art only comes forth when it is performed or interpreted, its fulfillment does not depend on any specific performance; the work remains open to future interpretations. As an autonomous Gebilde, the free-standing work is independent of the world surrounding it as well as the intention of the artist who creates it and the audience who experiences it.

Through the transformation into configuration, the artwork also attains ideality, thereby becoming “in principle repeatable and hence permanent.”[37] In fact, the ideality of the work consists in its repeatability. The ideality Gadamer ascribes to the artwork is to be understood phenomenologically, as a process of idealization.[38] The Gebilde elevates what it presents into an ideal configuration such that what is particular is transformed into what is universal and essential. However, this idealization does not abstract from the sensuous appearance of the work; rather the presentation is a distillation of what is presented there. Having elicited its essential features, the work “has liberated itself from the uniqueness and contingency of the circumstances in which it was encountered” so that it “begins to rise to a permanent essence and is detached from anything like a chance encounter.”[39]

Yet this is a peculiar sort of ideality. For unlike the ideal being of mathematical propositions, the idealization accomplished by the artwork does not achieve the exactness of identity without variation. As configured in the work, what is presented becomes elevated beyond the contingencies of its production or reception. It is now repeatable and, for this reason, acquires the permanence of something that can be taken up again and again. But it is the sensuous configuration as a whole that, possessing a unity of form and meaning, bears the status of an ideal being. This idealization is the basis for the fact that the work exceeds its realizations. Here, the linguistic work “has acquired an ideality that cannot be obviated by any possible realization.”[40] As a coherent, structured, and meaningful whole, the work of art does not dissolve into its interpretive manifestations, but transcends them, remaining ever open to future realizations. As inherently repeatable, the configuration of the work endures, thereby exhibiting a kind of permanence.

At one point, though, Gadamer notably balks at the ascription of ideality to artworks. In “On the Truth of the Word,” he worries about construing a poem as the idealization of what it presents. For the “the riddle is precisely why the idealized thing emerges in the poetic word as concretely real, indeed as more real than that which is real.” Again, “how does everything that shines forth in the poetic word share in the transfiguration into the essential (which one can only hesitantly call ‘idealized’)?”[41] Gadamer’s hesitance concerns the contrast of ideal and real. How can a transformation that yields the work as an ideal being enable it to present itself as concretely real?[42] This “riddle” bears directly on the Gebilde, especially where ideality is conventionally considered an intelligible structure distinct from the sensible. If the attribution of ideality seems paradoxical, this is due to the continued grip of a conceptual framework that insists on separating the ideal from the real and the intelligible from sensible. Instead, just as the intelligibility of the work cannot be abstracted from its sensuous presence, it is only through its idealization that what is presented there can be experienced as concretely real. As if to acknowledge this seeming paradox, Gadamer even speaks of the work’s “sensuous ideality” (sinnliche Idealität).[43] This is apt. For while the artwork is an intelligible configuration, the organization which bears its intelligibility only emerges through the internal relation of the sensuous elements from which it arises. As an intelligible, yet sensuous form, the Gebilde stands as a free-standing or autonomous work that bears a peculiar ideality in which the two are intimately bound to one another. As both autonomous and repeatable, the Gebilde exhibits a complex and dynamic, yet integrated and patterned configuration. In these respects, the artwork resembles a living form.

Organic Analogy and the Artwork as Living Form

Gadamer’s analysis of the artwork appeals to the “superabundant life and movement” that he finds in the phenomenon of play.[44] The import of play for his ontology of art lies in the model it provides for his appropriation of energeia as the dynamic quality of living being. “The being of all play is always self-realization, sheer fulfillment, energeia which has its telos within itself.”[45] In the case of art, play acquires the character of a Gebilde, of an ergon and not just of energeia.[46] As it appears to the viewer, reader, or listener, the work of art consists of sensuous elements drawn together in tensive relationships that form a unified configuration that is at once mobile yet stable, fluid yet patterned, sensible yet intelligible. These aspects underscore the peculiar ideality of the autonomous artwork. They also indicate qualities of the work conceived as living form. It is this dynamic, organized, and self-organizing quality of artistic form that suggests the analogy of the artwork to living being.

Gadamer underscores the organic analogy in “The Relevance of the Beautiful:” “In philosophical thought art has always appeared in close proximity to life in the fundamental sense of an organic structure.”[47] Although infrequent, such references should not be ignored or dismissed. To the contrary, the analogy has a significant role in his understanding of the work of art as a Gebilde. This is confirmed where he finds that the work exhibits an “organic unity” and, again, where he says the artwork resembles a living organism inasmuch as both possess an “internally structured unity.”[48] Of course, to observe this resemblance is not to assert that the work of art is an organism but rather that it shares prominent characteristics with living beings. Where these characteristics are sufficiently commensurate with essential features of organic life, it is justifiable to construe the work of art as a living form. While he does not pursue the organic analogy in detail, Gadamer’s relevant remarks bear further consideration, especially given the centrality of play to his ontology of art. We need only recall that the self-movement and self-presentation proper to play are essential to living being as such. Moreover, where such self-movement has no other purpose than its own self-presentation Gadamer cites Kant’s formula, “purposiveness without purpose,” as characteristic of both organisms and artworks.[49] As I intend to show, the artwork possesses a sensuous form that exhibits a dynamic movement held in tensive balance wherein its parts are fully interrelated as a unified and meaningful whole and that these features are best brought out by conceiving the artwork as a living form. To this end, I appeal to the several aspects underscored in Langer’s article on “Living Form.”[50]

According to Langer, first, living being possesses “dynamic form, that is, a form whose permanence is really a pattern of changes.”[51] In the work of art the sensuous configuration manifests a dynamic organization that consists in a mobile pattern of relations that are differently manifest depending on the art form. In painting such movement is brought out through the relations of line, shape, and color that animate the visual image. Where a line depicted displays an energy and continuity that bears a directional orientation, we may say it “runs.” Where a sizable shape dominates the picture, towering over others, we say it “rises.” Where a bold color (and what it may represent) emerges into the foreground of the pictorial space, we say it “approaches.” In the case of poetry, Gadamer notes, language comes to stand in a poetic configuration that weaves together its elements into a dynamic structure. Here the meaning of the words deployed bear an intimate relation to their sensuous aspects, thereby issuing in the virtual movement of the poem as an intricate interplay of sound and sense. But this holds of all artworks. For Langer, “[a] work of art is a composition of tensions and resolutions, balance and unbalance, rhythmic coherence, a precarious yet continuous unity.”[52] In this fundamental respect, the artwork, like living being, is not a static formation; its Gebilde exhibits a pattern of movement that is both unique and essential. This dynamic structure gives to it the quality of a living form.[53]

“Secondly,” Langer writes, “[living form] is organically constructed; its elements are not independent parts, but interrelated [. . .].”[54] It is especially with respect to its internal order that one may (analogously) speak of the artwork as bearing the unity of an “organic structure.” Although it does not possess organs, the work exemplifies the principle of organization common to living beings. As a self-organizing entity, its parts are interrelated to each other and to the whole of the work they comprise. Here I adopt a phenomenological stricture by reserving the term “part” just for those elements that cannot be abstracted from their “whole.”[55] Such parts are non-independent “moments” of the whole to which they belong. Here, following Henri Bortoft, it is appropriate to describe the artwork as a whole which depends on its parts in order to come forth and yet where the parts, in turn, depend on the coming-forth of the whole to be significant.[56] Speaking specifically of such an “organic structure” in the artwork, Gadamer observes that “every detail or aspect of the picture, text, [etc.] is so united with the whole that it does not strike us as something external that has been merely added on.”[57] He even asserts that the work possesses a “central structure which must be left intact if we are not to destroy the living unity of the work.”[58] So, while changes are possible that alter, replace, or add to it, there is a limit beyond which the internal coherence of the work suffers.[59] “In this respect,” Gadamer writes, “the work of art does resemble a living organism with its internally structured unity.”[60] It is precisely the many-sided involvement of every part of the whole work that conveys its organic structure. Langer concurs that “like a living substance, a work of art is inviolable; break its elements apart, they no longer are what they were––the whole image is gone.”[61]

“Thirdly,” Langer writes, “the whole system is held together by rhythmic processes; that is the characteristic unity of life.”[62] Again, “[t]he most characteristic principle of vital activity is rhythm.”[63] Just as the pulsation in living organisms is a natural process of tensions, balances, and rhythms, so too the dynamic movement of the artwork is similarly manifest in the virtual processes of its rhythmic patterns. Dufrenne likewise accords a fundamental role to “organic rhythm” as the means by which the artwork accomplishes its internal articulation.[64] He notes that “rhythm is characteristic of the total work” and that “it denotes the very movement which animates the work. As such,” he continues, “rhythm is undefinable and cannot be apprehended apart from the work.”[65] Although most evident in music, Dufrenne holds that rhythm is essential to every artwork. Gadamer too finds rhythmic movement in all forms of art but highlights its role in poetry. “With a poem,” he says, “it is above all through the rhythms of its configurations of sound and sense that the poetic text forms a whole, a unity that stands out from the world by standing in itself.” Further, in poetry, “it is precisely the force of the semantic field, the tension between the tonal and the significative forces of language as they encounter and change place with one another that constitutes the whole.”[66] Even where this organization is complex, the rhythmic movement of its language is what gives form to the poem, intertwining the layered dimensions of sound and sense. Yet for this movement to become manifest, a reader is required who apprehends the work’s rhythm. Indeed, to “hear the rhythm that is immanent within a given form [. . . ] we must really be actively involved ourselves in order to elicit the rhythm at all.”[67] Only by attuning oneself to its rhythm does one enter the movement by which the linguistic Gebilde gathers itself into a unified poetic image.

Hermeneutic Identity and the Repeatability of the Artwork

As a dynamic, unified, and meaningful whole, Gadamer maintains that the work of art exhibits an identity that is given in and through its appearances. This phenomenological insight into identity is one to which he adds a hermeneutical twist. According to this insight, the same work appears in its interpretative realizations such that it is truly there in each of them. Gadamer expresses this view in a late essay, “The Artwork in Word and Image,” where he asserts: “The work of art comes to fulfillment in its Vollzug––that is, the vital, living event of its appearing or its performance.”[68] As previously noted, the event in which the work of art appears requires the involvement of the audience who genuinely takes part. Where this happens, where the audience participates in bringing the artwork to its proper completion, “it comes forth” (Es kommt heraus).[69] This implies that its performance is not simply ancillary to the being of the work. For only in the performance do we encounter the work; only there does it present itself. In this sense, the work of art truly exists in its Vollzug; it has its being in its fulfillment. Gadamer does not fail to draw the ontological consequence: “Play is structure” (Spiel ist Gebilde) such that despite its dependence on being played or performed, the work of art is a meaningful whole that can be performed anew; yet, it is also the case that “structure is play” (Gebilde ist Spiel) such that the work fulfills its true being each time it is played or performed.[70]

At this juncture two crucial aspects of Gadamer’s account of the identity of the work as a Gebilde emerge: recognition and repeatability. If the artwork is only truly there in the Vollzug where it comes to presence, this entails the “non-distinction” of the work and its performance, that is, of what is presented and its presentation. With respect to art, then, “it is not the ontological distinction between presented and presentation, but the total identification with what is presented that constitutes the nature of presentation.”[71] However, phenomenologically construed, presentation requires a “dative of manifestation.”[72] Their identification does not occur apart from the viewer, reader, or listener, who participates in the work and identifies it in an act of recognition. For Gadamer, cognition (Erkenntnis) is recognition (Wiedererkenntnis).[73] Such recognition, however, is not simply encountering again something with which we were previously familiar. Instead, “[i]n recognition what we know emerges, as if illuminated, from all the contingent and variable circumstances that condition it; it is grasped in its essence. It is known as something.”[74] Shorn of its accidental and contingent circumstances, the ideality of the Gebilde presents something so that it can be known in an essential aspect of its being. To recognize what appears there is thus to identify what is presented in and through its idealizing presentation. Such recognition is decisive to the experience of art where, according to Gadamer, there is a no distinction between the realization of the work and its identity. The identity of the work is recognized through its interpretive presentation as the same.

In Gadamer’s view, the identity––and identification––of the work of art is thus bound to its ideality as a Gebilde. As previously discussed, the ideality of the work renders it repeatable. As an identifiable configuration, the work of art can be realized in multiple interpretations. So, because the work is present in its diverse presentations, it presents itself differently in each of them while nonetheless retaining its identity as this work. Moreover, it is the identity of the singular Gebilde that is intended whenever the work is performed or understood. But because it remains open to those whose participation realize or fulfill it, the identity of the work cannot be secured by any formal criteria. Gadamer rather locates the identity of the work where its configuration and interpretation intersect. For, first, the ideality of the Gebilde requires that the work be performed or interpreted to come forth, to present itself. Second, its ideality ensures that the work itself transcends any performance in which it becomes present so that no one interpretation exhausts its meaning. Third, due to its ideality, the work remains essentially repeatable such that it is inherently open to future interpretations that would also fulfill it.

For Gadamer, then, the artwork has an identity that comes forth through the different manifestations in which it is realized. Insofar as it presents itself through these various interpretations the work is identified as the same. This identity, in turn, refers us to the singular configuration exhibited by the work as a dynamic unity that must be recognized and respected by any interpretation that purports to present the work itself. Gadamer calls this the “hermeneutic identity” of the work of art. According to this hermeneutic conception, our experience of the work “is constituted precisely by the fact that we do not distinguish between the particular way in which the work is realized and the identity of the work itself.”[75] Again, it is the work itself that comes forth anew through the realizations in which it appears. As he explains, “the work as such still speaks to us as the same work, even in repeated and different encounters with it.”[76] Although the identity of the work is given through the manifold of its appearances, it is limited neither to any single appearance nor to the sum of its previous appearances. And yet “[i]t does not disintegrate into the changing aspects of itself so that it would lose all identity.”[77] The identity of the artwork thus transcends its appearances, whether considered individually or as a series, even though it is manifest in them.[78]

Dynamic Unity and the Truth of the Artwork

Gadamer’s concept of the work’s hermeneutic identity is especially important for understanding the manifestation of truth in art. First, the truth of art returns us to the work’s advent as a transformation into configuration. We have seen that it is by virtue of its configuration that the work comes to stand and does so for an audience who, properly attending to the work, enables it to come to presence. Coming to stand and coming to presence happen together; that is, configuration and presentation, Gebilde and Darstellung, are two sides of the same ontological event. Hence Gadamer holds that transformation into configuration (Verwandlung ins Gebilde) is, at once, transformation into the true (Verwandlung ins das Wahre).[79] Second, the event of truth that takes place in the work of art as a coming to presence is not simply a matter of disclosure. For what comes forth in the work also withdraws into it. In other words, a Gebilde also hides what it shows. This is because the meaningful presence of what presents itself in the work is embedded in its sensuous configuration and cannot be abstracted from it without loss. This interplay of revealing and concealing lies at the heart of the event of truth that takes place in the work of art.[80] Precisely because it embodies what it presents, the truth that occurs in the artwork withholds as much as it manifests. And yet due to the singular configuration, the truth that comes to presence there cannot become available in any other way.[81]

Gadamer’s understanding of art’s claim to truth engages with the hermeneutic identity of the work in another way as well. The identity of the Gebilde is given through its interpretive realizations where it is identified by those who experience it in an act of recognition. However, while it is possible to distinguish between the work and its interpretations, Gadamer regards such reflection as a secondary phenomenon that abstracts from the genuine experience of art. In that experience, where the work comes to presence, distinction gives way to identification, and the interpretation is recognized as a presentation of the work. In fact, Gadamer is quite emphatic about this, asserting not just that “what is presented is there [das Dargestellte da is],” but also that “it has come into the There more authentically” [eigentlicher ins Da gekommen ist].”[82] When it comes to presence, the work of art is more truly there and more fully what it is. Therein lies the claim to truth that Gadamer seeks to recover for the experience of art. Quoting Goethe, he says, “‘So wahr, so seiend,’ ‘So true, so full of being.’”[83]

Where an interpretation is responsive to the demands of the work, it is neither arbitrary nor free.[84] To the contrary, an interpretation through which “it” comes forth belongs to the being of the work. Consequently, the existence of different interpretations “is not at all a matter of a mere subjective variety of conceptions, but of the work’s own possibilities of being as the work explicates itself in the variety of its aspects.”[85] To regard an interpretation as free or arbitrary is a failure to appreciate the binding nature of its Gebilde. For all interpretations are obligated by “the supreme criterion of the right representation.”[86] And while he admits that this criterion may be “highly flexible and relative,” Gadamer insists that all interpretations are bound by the truth-claim of the work.[87] For each true interpretation brings out an essential aspect of the work of art through which the work as a whole presents itself. An interpretation is true where, being true to the work of art, it revitalizes the work’s claim to truth by showing how it illuminates both the work and our situation anew. This is what Gadamer means when he says that each interpretation seeks to be “right.” In his view, this confirms the “non-differentiation” of the work and its interpretive realization. Where it is “right,” the interpretation disappears in favor of the work that comes to presence through it.[88] The multiplicity of interpretations therefore neither disperses the unity of the work, which remains the same, nor diminishes the being of the work, which is rather augmented by it. Instead, according to its hermeneutic identity, these multiple interpretations belong to the work, enriching its meaning and enhancing its being. Indeed, through them the work undergoes an “increase of being.” [89] By enlarging the possibilities of its self-presentation, the work becomes more fully what it is. The being of the artwork thereby holds in reserve, so to speak, other ways of appearing. So conceived, the work offers an inexhaustible source of truth for each new situation.[90]

However, the sameness of the work, its hermeneutic identity, does not mean that it remains utterly invariant. Because it displays a dynamic unity, the Gebilde does not remain strictly self-same through its various interpretations. For this reason, it may be less misleading to say that the work remains one rather than the same. For the identity of the work consists in a unity that includes multiplicity within it and does so without being internally divided from itself. It therefore belongs to the essence of the artwork to exist only by being something different.[91] Bortoft calls this an “intensive unity” wherein the one is many. “So, the unity of coming-into-being, which is the dynamical unity of self-differencing, produces ‘multiplicity in unity.’”[92] Difference therefore belongs to the identity of the work which remains one by virtue of its manifold appearances.

In a summary response to the question “What is a Gebilde?” I offer the following: Given its transformation into Gebilde, the work of art is such that it comes to stand as a sensuous configuration distinct from its physical support, one that comprises a coherent, meaningful whole bearing the ideality of a free-standing, autonomous being that displays the dynamic, patterned, and rhythmic qualities of living form, while maintaining the identity of a self-differentiating unity, the truth of which is realized in each of its manifold presentations while being exhausted by none.

Bibliography

Arthos, John. Gadamer’s Poetics: A Critique of Modern Aesthetics. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013.

Bortoft, Henri. Taking Appearances Seriously: The Dynamic Way of Seeing in Goethe and European Thought. Floris Books, 2012.

Danto, Arthur C. The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art. Harvard University Press, 1981.

Davey, Nicholas. Unfinished Worlds: Hermeneutics, Aesthetics and Gadamer. Edinburgh University Press, 2013.

Dewey, John. Art as Experience. Penguin, 1980.

Dufrenne, Mikel. The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience. Translated by Edward S. Casey, et al. Northwestern University Press, 1973.

GR Gadamer, Hans-Georg. The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later Writings. Translated and edited by Richard E. Palmer. Northwestern University Press, 2007.

GW1 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Gesammelte Werke Band 1: Hermeneutik I. Mohr Siebeck, 1990.

GW2 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Gesammelte Werke Band 2: Hermemeutik II. Mohr Siebeck, 1990.

GW8 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Gesammelte Werke Band 8: Ästhetik und Poetik I. Mohr Siebeck, 1993.

GW9 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Gesammelte Werke Band 9: Ästehtik und Poetik II. Mohr Siebeck, 1993.

RB Gadamer, Hans-Georg. The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, edited by Robert Bernasconi. Cambridge University Press, 1986.

TM Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Translated and revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. Bloomsbury Academic 2013.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Gadmer on Celan: “Who Am I and Who Are You?” and Other Essays. Translated and edited by Richard Heinemann and Bruce Krajewski. State University of New York Press, 1997.

Ingarden, Roman. The Literary Work of Art. Translated George C. Grabowicz. Northwestern University Press, 1973.

Langer, Suzanne K. Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953.

Langer, Suzanne K. Problems of Art: Ten Philosophical Lectures. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957.

Margolis, Joseph. What, After All, is the Work of Art? The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.

Nielsen, Cynthia, Gadamer’s Hermeneutical Aesthetics: Art as Performative, Dynamic, Communal Event. Routledge, 2023.

Ricouer, Paul. Time and Narrative: Volume I. Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Sokolowski, Robert. Introduction to Phenomenology. Cambridge University Press, 2000.

  1. A significant exception is found in John Arthos who considers this concept and even adopts the English translation of Gebilde as “configuration” which I too prefer. (Arthos, Gadamer’s Poetics, 28–29) In fact, the addendum to his book explicitly asks: “What is a Gebilde?” (167–169) My essay proposes to pursue that question further. Cynthia Nielsen’s discussion of this matter is also useful. (Nielsen, Gadamer’s Hermeneutical Aesthetics, 138–141) ↑

  2. Gadamer, TM 115 / WM 116. ↑

  3. Gadamer, TM 115–117 / GW1 116–118. Aside from quoting extant translations, I typically use “configuration” rather than “structure” to translate “Gebilde.” ↑

  4. Nicholas Davey offers an in-depth account of aesthetic attentiveness in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. (Davey, Unfinished Worlds, 65–102) ↑

  5. Gadamer, TM 115 / GW1 116. ↑

  6. Gadamer, TM 115 / GW1 116. ↑

  7. Gadamer’s “transformation” bears comparison to Arthur Danto’s “transfiguration” by which the latter distinguishes artworks from real things. Akin to baptism, this transfiguration occurs through an interpretation that identifies something as an artwork. The baptismal analogy could apply to Gadamer’s “transformation” as well. (See Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace, 115–135.) ↑

  8. Langer, Feeling and Form, 47. ↑

  9. Gadamer, RB 33, 34 / GW8 124. ↑

  10. So, strictly speaking, a painting does not consist of its physical properties. As a Gebilde, it is a configuration of lines, shapes, and colors in dynamic relations presented as a unified image to the viewer. John Dewey’s contrast between the “art product” and the “artwork,” draws a similar distinction (Dewey, Art as Experience, 222). Mikel Dufrenne similarly characterizes “the work of art” as a purely intentional object which requires the attention of consciousness to concretize it as an “aesthetic object” (Dufrenne, Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, 3–19). ↑

  11. Langer, Problems of Art, 179. ↑

  12. This contrast elides the conundrums prompted by Gadamer’s occasional comments on the “fixity” of the text. If anything, what is fixed about the work is its physicality, not the Gebilde. (See Arthos, Gadamer’s Poetics, 38–41.) ↑

  13. Gadamer, RB 127 / GW8 90. ↑

  14. Gadamer, RB 13 / GW8 104. ↑

  15. Gadamer, RB 128 / GW8 90. (Translation altered, emphasis original.) ↑

  16. Gadamer, RB 126 / GW8 89. ↑

  17. Gadamer, RB 72 / GW8 23. ↑

  18. Gadamer, RB 70 / GW8 21. ↑

  19. Gadamer, GR 189 / GW2 358. ↑

  20. This applies to the creative work of the artist as well whose “original creative act” is one in which the immanent unity of the work comes forth. My thanks to Cynthia Nielsen for bringing this point to my attention. ↑

  21. Gadamer, RB 90 / GW8 341. ↑

  22. Gadamer, RB 111 / GW8 76. ↑

  23. Dufrenne, Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, 139. ↑

  24. Gadamer, RB 67 / GW8 19. ↑

  25. Gadamer, RB 134 / GW8 235. ↑

  26. Gadamer, Gadmer on Celan, 129 / GW9 429. ↑

  27. Gadamer, RB 53 / GW8 142. ↑

  28. This discussion of autonomy is distinct from Gadamer’s criticism of the “aesthetic dimension” which questions “aesthetic consciousness” as a cultural-historical formation where “[a]rt becomes a standpoint of its own and establishes its own autonomous claim to supremacy.” (Gadamer, TM 75 / GW1 87–88.) ↑

  29. Gadamer, TM 116 / GW1 117. ↑

  30. Gadamer, RB 129 / GW8 91. ↑

  31. Gadamer, TM 116 / GW1 117. However, it is by virtue of its closed world that the work is open to other cultural-historical worlds. (Arthos, Gadamer’s Poetics, 53–69.) ↑

  32. Gadamer, RB 112 / GW8 76. As Langer notes, the work “detaches itself from the rest of the world” such that it tends “to appear thus dissociated from its mundane environment.” (Langer, Feeling and Form, 45) ↑

  33. On this point Gadamer’s view converges with Paul Ricouer’s conception of the configurational moment of mimesis wherein the work is freed from the limits of ostensive reference. (Ricouer, Time and Narrative, 77–82.) ↑

  34. Gadamer, RB 134 / GW8 235. ↑

  35. Gadamer, RB 163 / GW8 194. ↑

  36. Gadamer, RB 126 / GW8 89. ↑

  37. Gadamer, TM 115 / GW1 116. ↑

  38. In Husserl’s phenomenology, meaning enjoys the permanence and repeatability of an ideal entity that stands beyond the acts of meaning that realize it. Roman Ingarden’s phenomenological investigation of the literary artwork likewise treats verbal meanings as ideal entities. (Ingarden, Literary Work of Art, § 66.) ↑

  39. Gadamer, RB 120 / GW8 84. ↑

  40. Gadamer, RB 146. / GW8 148. This sets up a productive tension between the identity of the artwork and its realizations. (See Section V below) ↑

  41. Gadamer, GR 148 / GW8 150–151. ↑

  42. The artwork thus exhibits a “concrete universality.” ↑

  43. Gadamer, RB 147 / GW8 149. ↑

  44. Gadamer, RB 124 / GW8 87. ↑

  45. Gadamer, TM 117 / GW1 118. ↑

  46. Gadamer, TM 115 / GW1 116. ↑

  47. Gadamer, RB 42 / GW8 133. ↑

  48. Gadamer, RB 42,43 / GW8 133, 134. ↑

  49. Gadamer, RB 43 / GW8 134. ↑

  50. Langer, Problems of Art, 44–58. ↑

  51. Langer Problems of Art, 52. ↑

  52. Langer, Problems of Art, 8. ↑

  53. In fact, Gadamer explicitly draws attention to the Ge- prefix of Gebilde as conveying a gathering movement. (RB 174, note 45) / GW8 124. ↑

  54. Langer, Problems of Art, 52. ↑

  55. Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 22–27. ↑

  56. Bortoft, Taking Appearances Seriously, 11. ↑

  57. Gadamer, RB 42-43 / GW8 133. ↑

  58. Gadamer, RB 43 / GW8 133. ↑

  59. Langer concurs: “Every element in a work of art is so involved with other elements […] that when it is altered [. . .] one always has to follow up the alteration in several directions, or simply sacrifice some desired effects.” (Langer, Problems of Art, 55–56) ↑

  60. Gadamer, RB 43 / GW8 133. ↑

  61. Langer, Problems of Art, 57. ↑

  62. Langer, Problems of Art, 52. ↑

  63. Langer, Problems of Art, 126. Langer further argues that the rhythmic patterns of organisms and artworks alike provide the organic unity that grants to them a permanence. She refers to this as “the principle of rhythmic continuity.” (Langer, Problems of Art, 127) ↑

  64. Dufrenne, Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, 256. ↑

  65. Dufrenne, Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience, 256. ↑

  66. Gadamer, RB 136 / GW8 236. ↑

  67. Gadamer, RB 45 / GW8 135. Moreover, the work’s temporality consists in its rhythm. For every artwork, he holds, has a unique tempo that marks its “autonomous temporality.” ↑

  68. Gadamer, GR 215 / GW8 390. Gadamer’s German is more succinct: “Die Kunst ist im Vollzug.” The English rendition includes the translator’s adumbration of this lapidary passage. ↑

  69. Gadamer, GR 216 / GW8 390. ↑

  70. Gadamer, TM 121 / GW1 122. Nielsen offers a fuller account of Gadamer’s understanding of art as play. (See Nielsen, Gadamer’s Hermeneutical Aesthetics, 125–155. ↑

  71. Gadamer, RB 121 / GW8 122. ↑

  72. Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 32. Sokolowski further observes that there is “an act of recognition, an act of identification that is correlated with the identity of the object itself.” (38, italics original) ↑

  73. Gadamer, TM 118 / GW1 119. ↑

  74. Gadamer, TM 118 / GW1 119. This identification is the recognition that supports the cognitive claim of art. ↑

  75. Gadamer, RB 29 / GW8 120. ↑

  76. Gadamer, RB 29 / GW8 120. This would provide the hermeneutic basis for what Joseph Margolis describes as the “unicity” of the artwork’s historical career. (Margolis, What, After All, is the Work of Art?, 91) ↑

  77. Gadamer, TM 124 / GW1 126. ↑

  78. “The identity that is given through its manifold of appearances belongs to a dimension different from that of the manifold.“ (Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 30) ↑

  79. Gadamer, TM 116 / GW1 118. ↑

  80. Gadamer, RB 34 / GW8 125. ↑

  81. “In its irreplaceability, the work of art is no mere bearer of meaning [. . . ] that could be transferred to another bearer. Rather the meaning of the work of art lies in the fact that it is there.” (Gadamer, RB 33 / GW8 124) ↑

  82. Gadamer, TM 119 / GW1 120. ↑

  83. Gadamer, GR 213–214 / GW8 389–390. ↑

  84. For example, in TM Gadamer writes: “But one fails to appreciate the obligatoriness the work of art if one regards the variations possible as free and arbitrary” (TM 122 / GW1 123). ↑

  85. Gadamer, TM 122 / GW1 123. ↑

  86. Gadamer, TM 122 / GW1 124. ↑

  87. Gadamer, TM 123 / GW1 124. ↑

  88. This is what Gadamer means by his claim that the mediation of the work is total. (TM 123–124 / GW1 125) ↑

  89. Gadamer, TM 141 / GW1 145. ↑

  90. At this point, Gadamer’s hermeneutic ontology of art opens onto the historical dimension of truth where the Gebilde mediates between past and present. (See Arthos, Gadamer’s Poetics, 138–141) ↑

  91. See Gadamer’s discussion of the temporality of festive celebration. (TM 125–127 / GW1 126–128) ↑

  92. Bortoft, Taking Appearances Seriously, 73. For a different approach to understanding the artwork as a one amidst difference see Margolis, What is the Work of Art?, 39. ↑