Artworks, Heidegger contends, are things, a definition that raises the question of the meaning of a "thing," such that works have a thingly character. This is a broad concept, so Heidegger chooses to focus on three dominant interpretations of things:
Things as substances with properties,[5] or as bearers of traits.
Things as the manifold of sense perceptions.[6]
Things as formed matter.[7]
The third interpretation is the most dominant (extended to all beings), but is derived from equipment: "This long familiar mode of thought preconceives all immediate experience of beings. The preconception shackles reflection on the Being of any given being."[8] The reason Heidegger selects a pair of peasant shoes painted by Vincent van Gogh is to establish a distinction between artwork and other "things," such as pieces of equipment, as well as to open up experience through phenomenological description. This was actually typical of Heidegger as he often chose to study shoes and shoe maker shops as an example for the analysis of a culture.[citation needed] Heidegger explains the viewer's responsibility to consider the variety of questions about the shoes, asking not only about form and matter—what are the shoes made of?—but bestowing the piece with life by asking of purpose—what are the shoes for? What world do they open up and belong to?[9] In this way we can get beyond correspondence theories of truth which posit truth as the correspondence of representations (form) to reality (matter).