Reflecting on Reflection [with apologies for all the is's]

The art object (much like it's creator) is a index [an indicator, sign, or measure of something : exam results may serve as an index of the teacher's effectiveness] of it's timespace environment, an effect of all past causes, an extremity on the evolutionary tree of the universe, so to speak. Beyond that (if there is a beyond that) it is a materialization of the creator's subjectivity. the art object is filtered by the maker's body/mind body relationship, and by it's constituting materials.

All objects are indexes of all other objects, the physical universe becomes the net of semiotics.

So the art object can be a multi-faceted, filtered reflection? But it can't be a reflection in the sense that a reflection is a stable point, a referent against which to compare that which is being reflected. Because the reflection itself is a node in the same network as the things it reflects. So it changes, each time any other node changes.

[In relation to time] Time does not distance the art object from it's index, or congeal the art object's meaning because time affects the index that is the [art] object, historians frame and/or veil the object, something always does (politics, architecture, etc.), so there is no way for the viewer to see the clear reflection of the universe that is the art object.

Even if they could reach that event horizon, there would be no clear, unchanging reflection to find. There would be an index, the art object bearing to the universe the same relationship that clay bears to the hand that just imprinted it. The hand itself is not discernible, but a stray fingerprint, an odd bump or depression in the clay is, indicating the past presence of a hand to the mind that can make out such signs.

Should it be called an Art Subject rather than an Art Object?