This World and This You - 9,5 Theses on Modal Realism in Art
The necessity of beauty and the mystery of truth are two sources that make art possible.
If it is possible, it exists, even if it has not yet been revealed in this specific world.
Modal Realism in Art is a way of thinking about art through ideas of possibility, actuality, reality, identity, and the existence of counterparts in other worlds. But also through the objections and paradoxes that make these ideas feel human.
Whatever art does to make This World and This You feel special, they feel special because you exist.
Thesis 1 — The Principle of Actuality
Actual means present here, in this world.
Any artwork in this world, regardless of the time and place of its creation, its author, status, medium, genre, or any other circumstances, presents something of reality and says something about what is.
Works differ in their manifestations and effects, but their actuality does not depend on either of them.
Thesis 2 — The Principle of Necessity
A world without art is possible. Worlds without memory, anticipation, or concepts of beauty and truth are possible. Worlds without people are possible.
But in worlds with beings who experience beauty as a necessity aruth as a mystery, who remember what is and imagine what is not yet, art is a consequence of its possibility, and it is also a necessity for such a world to exist.
Thesis 3 — The Principle of Identity
The identity of an artist in this world belongs to this world.
When we say that an artist could have lived differently, done something differently, or worked differently, modal realism tells us that a counterpart artist lives, acts, or works differently in another possible world. But that counterpart has a different identity.
And although all possibilities are realized by counterparts in other worlds, it is the manifestation and affirmation of a particular identity in a particular world that we, in this world, call art.
Thesis 4 — The Clay Principle
A statue and the mass of clay from which it is made are one physical object, but have different identities.
The statue is destroyed when it loses its form. The clay continues to exist after being flattened, reshaped, or returned to its original state.
We decide whether we look at the object as a statue or as clay, but we are not obliged to choose one single, absolute identity in anything we encounter.
A painting can be many things: an image, a commodity, a decoration, an idea, a testimony, a confession, a masterpiece, junk, a memory, an anticipation… These and other identities overlap, but none completely exhausts the others.
Making an object of art means releasing it into a space of multiple identities and manifestations of perception.
Thesis 5 — The Portrait Principle
A portrait is not the person it shows. A biography is not the life it describes. A memory is not the event remembered. But every manifestation reveals something true about what its object or subject is or could have been.
That is why so-called “abstraction” and so-called “representation” are equally significant ways of presenting elements of reality. A figurative portrait and a nonfigurative composition are equally real and actual portraits of reality.
No work is more or less real because of its relation to recognizable things.
Thesis 6 — The Principle of Revelation
If an artwork is possible, it exists and its counterparts in other worlds exist too. But the work enters the history of this world when someone reveals it here.
The artist does not create possibility itself. The artist reveals possibilities by giving them shape, colour, scale, motion, rhythm, position, and duration.
The possible work that exists elsewhere, if revealed here, becomes a different work.
Thesis 7 — The Principle of Reality
The artwork is what it is. And also what it was. And what it might have been. And what it will become.
Every possible imagined “what if” in relation to the actual artwork points to a counterpart of it in another possible world.
There is a world in which it is very popular and costs millions. There is another where no one knows it or wants it even for free.
But in this world, this artwork is what it is. Its super-famous counterpart cannot make it better. Its unwanted counterpart cannot make it worse.
Thesis 8 — The Tree Principle
A tree takes shape by growing in different directions — possibilities for interacting with the world around it.
In choosing a creative direction or a way of developing a particular work, the artist reveals some possibilities, leaving others unrealized. But what remains unrealized here has its realizations in other worlds and does not have to be fitted into this particular work in this particular world.
New branches, new leaves, and new roots simultaneously preserve and change the tree.
Every work created changes the tree of creativity and opens up new possibilities for the artist and for art.
Thesis 9 — The Counterpart Principle
There is a world where Vincent van Gogh received a formal art education, was a professional artist, but remained unknown. There is another world where he lived to old age, continued to paint, gained recognition during his lifetime, had children and students, and was a happy man.
It is pleasing to think of him living in such a world now, literally now, although different worlds do not share a common time.
This does not change what happened to van Gogh here, but reaffirms that suffering is not a necessary condition of art.
Possible lives in other worlds, if we think about them, can inspire specific choices in this world and influence how we live in this place and at this time.
Thesis 9,5 — The No-Time Principle
An artwork becomes real in time and space, but during its creation, the feeling of time falls away, making the experience of reality stronger.
When I am creating, the falling away of time transforms into a feeling of no-time that brings memory and anticipation together in an experience of being.
Art is an experience of being, a striving to discover what it is, what is, and what is possible.
WODEMAN
January 2025 — September 2026
