  This general “negative” dimension of the artwork (the fact that as an ideal object it is not reducible to the materiality that carries it) applies also to each of the artwork’s elements and their relations (the colours and shapes in a painting, the words and sentences in a novel, and so on). Existentialist aesthetics generally insists on the unity that artistic expression brings to the world. As a consequence of this emphasis on organic unity, it seems to propound a rather conventional image of the aesthetic qualities of the artwork (see, for example, from a theologically informed perspective, Marcel’s discussion of the symphony and the fugue as examples of self-enclosed “perfection” [1960b, 53–54]).