Art is mimetic. It is made to resemble, in recognizable ways, how things look in reality. Works may range from highly stylized (as in the Japanese woodcut shown above) to highly naturalistic (as in Kensett's Lake George). Contrary to modernist theory, however, works of art are never wholly abstract. Nor are they merely symbolic. Nor do they literally mirror--or mechanically replicate--reality, as much postmodernist work does. To borrow Ayn Rand's useful formulation, they selectively re-create reality.