As a mere physical object, the work of art is just an arrangement of materials—pigments on a canvas in the case of a painting, gestures and other movements in a dance, words in a literary work, or tonal materials in a musical composition. What draws our attention, however, is something that seems to emerge from the arrangement of colors, gestures, words, or tones that define the existence of the work as a physical object—a complex array of qualities that seems to be charged with life and feeling, and is imbued with a significance that reaches beyond the mere physical datum with which we are presented.