Art communicating truth

I saw a philosophy lecture this afternoon on “Photography, Film, and the Phenomenology of the Human Person,” delivered by Georgetown University’s Professor John Brough.

One of the claims he made in the lecture was that art communicates truth, but it is still imprecise to call it a language. That seems plausible enough to me. But I started to wonder just exactly how it is that art communicates truth to the viewer. (I use the term “viewer” loosely, since not all art is visual but off-hand, I can’t think of a better word to use).

I wondered if I could come up with some typology of ways that art communicates truth to the viewer, and came up with the following four:

1. It communicates something about what it represents. A picture depicting a moment of glory or of pain or of love, for instance, tells us something about human beings. A picture of nature tells us something about nature. The virtue corresponding to this type is the artist’s insight. The artist has some insight about some aspect of reality and brings it to the fore by his art.

2. It communicates something about the artist himself. Here, I do not necessarily mean a self-portrait. A work of art will often express the artist by its specific style, for instance. The virtue corresponding to this type is the artist’s authenticity. His task is adequately to express himself.

3. It communicates something concerning the viewer himself, while he views or remembers the art. The virtue in this case is the artist’s ability to evoke a response in others. His task is to create a kind of mirror that causes me to reflect on myself.

4. The fourth type differs from the others, in that the truth it communicates is not grasped primarily while I still view or consider the art consciously. Rather, art may contribute to my educational formation over time. People who develop their taste in art may begin to see the world differently. They may become better equipped to grasp certain truths even apart from an artistic setting. It seems very unlikely to me that this type of communication would occur with a single work of art, although I suppose this is a possibility. More likely, this can only occur through a wide exposure to great art. The virtue corresponding to this type belongs to the viewer rather than to the artist, and it is called aesthetic judgment.

I think that covers all possible ways that art can communicate truth to the viewer. In any work of art, we only need to consider three things: the artwork itself, the artist, and the viewer. In my typology, the first type focuses on the artwork, the second on the artist, the third and fourth on the viewer.

That should cover it. Have I missed anything?