文化依賴著物質性，種種藝術行為勢必落實於某種「物化」上。本文探討的問題是：身體自我是否可以當成藝術的物質、質料發揮作用？藝術物化是否也包含身體性？環繞此課題為主軸，經由一種跨文化的現象學進路被揭露的是古代中國書畫工夫與現、當代歐美繪畫之間的交集，即「身體模擬」作為藝術物化的重要環節以及身體自我作為真實的藝術質料。本文首先闡明中國古代書畫上身體自我如何參與藝術行為，如何藉由「化為身體的文化質料」來活化歷史遺產。再來，藉於這些洞察本文進行一種跨文化的視角轉換，進而闡釋歐美現、當代繪畫上的質料向度與身體自我有何種關係。本文目標在於，要將歐美現、當代藝術上的質料問題回溯至通常被忽略的環節，即創作者的身體性。

As culture depends on the material sphere, artistic behavior always is related to some sort of “reification”. The problem discussed in this contribution is as follows: May our bodily self be seen as a material for art? Does artistic reification encompass our embodiedness? By means of a transcultural phenomenological approach, a correspondence is revealed between pre-modern Chinese brush writing and painting on one side, and modern, as well as contemporary, painting in Europe and North-America, on the other side. It is shown how artistic reification relies on “body mimesis” and to what extent the embodied self actually functions as artistic material. After briefly clarifying the ways in which the bodily self gets involved in artistic behavior in ancient China, so as to “incorporate cultural materials” in a lively way, by the bias of a transcultural shift of the perspective, an investigation into modern and contemporary Euro-American painting elucidates the intimate relation between artistic materiality and the embodied self which can equally be found here. Thus evidence is given for a mostly neglected, yet crucial, point, namely that the artist’s embodiedness is to be held responsible for artistic materialization.