Artists speak the language of Aesthetic: a polyglot of image, sound, gesture, and form. Aesthetic has thousands of dialects, each spoken by no more than a single artist. Students of art, and serious critics of art, can often interpret large portions of the language of artists – but of course, much is lost in the translation.
Whether we look to English, Choctaw, Farsi, or any other language, there are few words consonant with the concepts expressed in Aesthetic. Such words as do exist are vague, and even these must be strung together with comparison to something more concrete before any semblance of meaning is conveyed.
Does it matter? Aesthetic concerns have only marginal practical application. No real harm has ever been traced to a lack of art. Many foolish people, and even a few wise ones, too, have observed that art is most often a pointless activity whose only clear value is amusement.
If that’s true, why should serious people care about it at all, let alone worry themselves about understanding it?
I’m not sure there is a good answer to that question, but
I think there may be one.
There is something that abides in the aesthetic that is irreducible. That’s why it is so difficult to translate. It cannot be referred to something else, or pared away to something else. It is something else – a concept, a way of experience, a way of knowing that has no parallels. That’s also why it can’t be taught, but it can be recognized. Artists recognize it intuitively. Scholars recognize it with more effort – intellectually. Some, unfortunately, seem unable, or unwilling, to see it at all.
That’s too bad because the real value of art is that it directs the mind to dimensions beyond ordinary reality – it lifts the veil on mysteries that can be detected in no other way.
Goodness, truth, and beauty are linked in ways that may not always be explicable, but that may be knowable. Ordinary language serves well enough to discuss goodness and truth. But in matters of beauty words fail us. We can only point. To discuss aesthetic content we resort to simile, metaphor, and analogy.
Perhaps that is because beauty affects us spiritually as much, or more, than it affects us cognitively.
I think some portion of the Logos: the geometry of God’s will is revealed in beauty – and we have no words to fathom that.
The study of Aesthetic provides our only clue.