[Meyer] Schapiro asks Heidegger what seems like an innocent art-historical question: Which Van Gogh painting of boots are you talking about? It turns out he wrote Heidegger about this in 1965, and Heidegger's reply was vague. Schapiro thinks he knows which painting it must have been (it is reproduced), but he also thinks Heidegger could have developed his peasant rhapsody without looking at the painting at all. But if he had tried to look, he would have had to see that Van Gogh represented boots in two sharply different ways: when they belonged to peasants, he painted them clear, smooth and unworn, as an unproblematic element in still-lifes; when he painted them old, wrinkled and worn-out, in the way Heidegger describes, they were his own.

¶ 5:54 PM