Signifiers and things

Obviously bereft of a picture, a nail juts out from a blank wall.
In some sense, this is representative of (or simply is) a fundamental criterion of “art”: presentation as such.

A signifier (such as “art”) can be applied in two ways. The first is from without: to say that a thing is of some category of thingness (ie, “art”). Having the label and the thing, perceivers resolve the qualities of the identified object with all qualities theretofore identified with the same label(signifier).

The second method is from within. In the absence of identification, a thing may be categorized by the perceiver through comparison to past experience- perhaps the thing possesses qualities known to be “of art”, and therefore it may be identified as such. The qualities evince artness, triggering the label to be pulled out from the preexisting semantic web and applied to the thing that culls it.

‘From without’ is to modify, and is contingent upon social discourse.
‘From within’ is to generate, and is the origin of that social discourse.