Arthur Danto's meditation, in his “Works of Art and Mere Real Things,” on a square of red paint and its various possible readings serves as a warning about multiple interpretations. This painting might be a story of the Egyptians and the Red Sea, after the Israelites crossed over. Or, then, a work by a Danish portraitist, labeled “Kierkegaard's Mood.” Or, then, one by a politically active painter, “Red Square.” Or by a disciple of Henri Matisse, “Red Table Cloth”—in this one, the paint would be more thickly applied. In my view, the most appropriate state we can muster is what the surrealists called “availability” (disponibilité)—openness to whatever might, of a sudden, happen in our understanding to achieve a presentness of perception, even as we note the clear risk of boundary crossings between the arts.