The paper considers the issues of modernism in the context of contemporariness in the author-work relation. The leitmotif is the appearance of the painted image in the situation of the painter's current viewpoint. The issue of commencing and realization is set as a correlation between the subject-author equipped with the viewpoint and the object-work equipped with the appearance. The theme of commencing is developed through the examples of Aristotle's 'empty mind' and Descartes' methodic doubt that precedes cogito, to grow into the theme of observation exemplified by Husserl's phenomenology and Bergson's interpretation of consciousness. The return to 'commencing' is dealt with in the last chapter devoted to Žunec's explanation of the original meaning of mimesis. The latter was reached through the analysis of Berkeley's 'esse…', as well as Lacan's and Žižek's interpretations of the subject as an 'empty space'. These reflections were aimed at pointing out specific problems of the painting from the author's position and vice verse. Since an appropriate (scholarly) language for this content is nonexistent, it is the metaphorical, as well as philosophical metalanguage that is reached for. In that sense the text is also an attempt of inauguration of a discourse that is an outcome of art practice, to which it is primarily dedicated.