I do not like art that depicts. I am uninterested in anything that art has to say. I find repulsive anything explicitly and intentionally conveyed by art—even if, or perhaps particularly when, I am pleased by what is conveyed. 

Art is something that releases. It is both a release in its creation and in its display. It is something that inspires, something that touches a part of the soul that cannot be touched by anything else in creation: a secret, beshadowed nook in the infinite labyrinth in man’s inmost, wherein the greater part of his essence dwells. 

Art is the opposite of language. As such, art that speaks in words and ideas is an abomination. 

Art is some bizarre, unearned, undeserved gift from Above. It is the simultaneous expression of the diametrically opposed: empathy and isolation. It is necessarily a form of connection—indeed, the deepest form of connection, between souls—and yet it can only ever be produced in its pristine and genuine form in a place of utter isolation.

This is the heart of the therapeutic nature of art. In the end, it exists as a relief of suffering. Great art relieves great suffering, both terrible suffering of the individual, and the widespread suffering of the masses. 

The greatest art, however, altogether transcends suffering. It is a release from what the Dharmics refer to as Saṃsāra, the ever-turning wheel of pain, bafflement, darkness, and want. 

Even if the release is only for a moment; if the inspiration—in the literal sense of the word, coming from spīritus, “breath”—lasts for just the blink of an eye; if the grazing of the soul by the awesome tendrils of the artistic work is ever-so-slight; even in such seemingly brief, miniscule, or fleeting times and spaces, the transcending and transcendental power of great art overwhelms him who is attuned to this ineffable birdsong of the human creature.