 An important consequence arises from this, namely, Gadamer conceives art as presentational (darstellen) rather than representational (vorstellen). In the essay “Word and Picture” (1992), he claims that he tries “to undermine the idea that the picture is a mere copy” (GW 8, 374). As a work does not represent anything other than itself, the meanings it carries can only come to the fore in its self-presentation. Yet the emergent meaning is never given in its entirety nor obviated by any realisation. This is consistent with the eventual nature of art. “When a work of art truly takes hold of us, it is not an object that stands opposite us which we look at in hope of seeing through it to an intended conceptual meaning … The work is an Ereigniss—an event that ”appropriates us“ to itself. It jolts us, it knocks us over and sets up a world of its own, into which we are drawn” (Palmer 2001, 71). What is revealed, however, remains but an aspect of the work which when it appears drives others into the background. Disclosure and hiddenness are not contraries in Gadamer’s aesthetics, but mutually dependent: the disclosed reveals the presence of the undisclosed in the disclosed. “It is in the sheer being there (Da-sein) of the work of art that our understanding experiences the depths and the unfathomability of its meaning” (Palmer 2001, 72). The claim that a work’s meaning can never be completely fulfilled is supported by a linguistic analogy concerning the speculative. Art has a language in that its signs and symbols function like semantic units. Gadamer comments on the living virtuality of meaning contained in each word, an inner dimension of multiplication. Accordingly, language is not the representation (mimesis) of a set of pre-given meanings but a “coming to language” of a constant reserve of meanings (Palmer 2001, 67). The finitude of linguistic expression is such that no utterance can be complete. Nothing comes forth in one meaning that is simply offered us (PH 103). “The only thing that constitutes language … is that one word leads to another, each word is, so to speak, summoned, and on its side holds open the further progress of speaking” (Palmer 2001, 67). No meaning can be completely revealed. Because we can re-visit artworks repeatedly, the meaning disclosed initially can be expanded or changed. The partial nature of any given meaning disclosure enhances rather than diminishes the possibility of meaning within a work. “The work of art consists in its being open in a limitless way to ever new integrations of meaning” (PH 98) and furthermore, “the inexhaustibility that distinguishes the language of art from all translation into concepts rests on an excess of meaning” (PH 102).