Gadamer consistently speaks of works of art as “events of being.” Is this anything more than Heideggerian mumbo-jumbo? I think so. Gadamer appears to mean at least two things.

First, with regard to the art work itself: The art work brings something into existence that wasn’t there before. The landscape that Constable painted was there before Constable himself and before Constable painted it. But the particular presentation and representation of the landscape did not exist before; the painting aims to express some truth about the landscape that wasn’t expressed before the painting was made. This is an “event of being” not only because something new comes into concrete existence because some meaning is expressed afresh. For Gadamer too, each encounter with the work involves an act of interpretation, and thus has the character of a “performance” of the work. And for that reason, the work is not only an event of being at its creation but also in every event of encounter with the work.

Second, with regard to the original of which the art is a representation:

Here is where Gadamer gets interesting, because he suggests that the work of art has a kind of retroactive ontological effect on the thing to which the work alludes, the thing represented and made-present by the work. Simply by being the source for a work of art, the landscape becomes a landscape-that-inspires-painting, an original of which representations have been made. That’s an event of being, an enhancement of the thing itself - of the landscape. The painting doesn’t suck meaning and power from the original but enhances that original power. After Constable, real landscapes are full of Constableness.

Besides, every encounter with the real landscape involves a moment of interpretation that is a “performance” of the thing, and after Constable (even for many who are not directly aware of Constable) the interpretive performance is inflected by Constable’s work, because the interpretive performance will take place within a tradition that includes Constable.

Now, what Gadamer doesn’t say exactly: I think the whole structure of his theory here points to vestiges of the Trinity: The image is an event of being, just as the Son is an eternal event of the Father’s being. The image makes the original what it is, as the Son makes the Father Father.