If we are to come up with ways of talking about art that are less wedded to language exclusively, say, rather than honoring the languages of images, music, images, hybrid works; and if we are to recognize not only the greatest art forms in these traditions, but also the forms of art, derived from folk culture, from which, in addition to the tradition of the great works, people derive meaning everyday; and if we can also take into account great works of art, like the songs of Bob Dylan, or the plays and poems of Shakespeare, or the mid-career essays of Harold Bloom, that reach a wide audience while also being part of the everyday and the great, then we can begin to have a more robust understanding of art, and in doing so come to a better understanding about artists like Dylan, or Ben Katchor, or critics like Manny Farber, or thinkers like William James, or the beginning of this tradition of artists and thinkers who work in hybrid and parallel (but different forms) William Blake, and behind all of them Shakespeare, who offered us unparalleled opportunities to participate in the richest works imaginable that combine music, performance, song, languages of word and body and voice, visual art (the way the play is set for an audience), and an entire slew of aesthetic decisions that make one reconsider what art is or means or involves or suggests. If there is no intrinsic nature to human beings, as Richard Rorty argued, then there is no intrinsic nature to art; and, if we are to think about art in the 21st century, we need to begin to think about it in richer and thicker contexts that lend answers we can use to live our lives.