h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Art "communicates forms of experience" within a cultural medium - that is, it endeavours, by juxtaposing objects, symbols, or concepts which are already possessed of some kind of meaning within that culture, to convey "truths" or meaningful information about that experience. The impact of artworks - be they pieces of music, paintings, novels, poetry, sculptures or more esoteric forms - stems from their ability to convey "messages" - revelations, commentaries, perspectives - about particular experiences, occasions or ideas.

So how is it done? When we hear a particular piece of music; when we look at a painting, read a novel, watch a play: what is happening to transpose the physical thing that is the artwork into the emotional, intellectual or visceral response that we, the "audience" grant it?

The "function" of art is to make the concepts that underlie its creation understood by its viewers. The power of art is that it illustrates concepts which may not be easily understandable when transmitted through the medium of conversational speech. It does this by creating intuitive links between symbols, objects and ideas that the inhabitors of the culture in which the work was generated already understand. By placing a urinal in an art gallery ("Fontaine" - Deschamps), Marcel Deschamps created a juxtaposition of objects which "discuss" the concepts of art, artists and institutionalism far more effectively than any words could do; by encountering the objects in the setting Deschamps has created, we are given an intuitive understanding of the problems inherent in the practice of conferring institutional approval on objects which somehow "make" them Art - and we are given it in one sensory burst, rather than through a tortuous verbal explanation.

Writers like Gertrude Stein and William Faulkner place words in strange relations in attempts to describe the indescribable. Faulkner's evocation of Benjy Compson's consciousness is at first almost incomprehensible; yet as the reader becomes immersed, suddenly she feels that she truly knows how it is to be retarded. Stein makes points about language itself and the human need for imposing order on, and giving meaning to, objects, events and symbols, in a way which simply would not be possible were she to use "conventional" speech. She presents us her reader with a slow accumulation of broken words; sentences; repeated phrases; slight modifications - from which a sense of meaning gradually emerges. The words themselves make no sense except in isolation - we understand, for example, that "button" means "small round thing used for closing jackets" - but the way in which the words are arranged illustrates Stein's concerns regarding the nature of memory, time and language, so that on contact with the work, we gain an intuited understanding of what it is trying to "say".

Art appropriates existing symbols and weaves them into a new form. Each "symbol" has a prior meaning or association known or understood by the inhabitants of the culture into which the artwork is born. The symbols have either a direct meaning (such as words), a function (such as a urinal or an art gallery), or an intuited meaning (such as a swastika). A new artwork, because it is created within the framework of a given culture, is implicitly "aware" of the meanings and associations of all the symbols it appropriates. The meaning, message or revelatory aspect of a work of art is contained in the way in which those symbols are juxtaposed by the artist: the work itself becomes the focal point of a discourse involving all of those symbols, objects, and their culturally-conferred connotations.

All of which sounds uncommonly like language. Any artwork we encounter is released by its creator into the world - at which point it becomes (if it was not already) a physical object independent of the person who made it. Yet it conveys meaning, sense or understanding - about itself, about some aspect of the world - and is commonly understandable by a large body of people who did not have anything to do with its creation: works of art are indices in newly-created "languages", which use given associations and meanings in unconventional juxtaposition, both to give an audience a "key" to understanding the new language (if we are aware of the connotations of the symbols being appropriated, then the way in which they are appropriated will tell us something about the concerns of the work in question), and to set up a conversation in that language. The work is understood fully when its viewer performs a creative exercise in his or her own head - contrasting the given cultural meanings/associations of the symbols, techniques of representation and objects it comprises with their apparent relations as evidenced in the actual, physical thing that is the piece in question - an exercise which is an analogue of the original "revelation" as it occurred to the work's creator.

So an understanding is gained through speechless communication. A discourse is started between all viewers of a work - whatever its form - and both each other and the work itself: and between the viewers of the work and its creator. Art is language, which makes language art by association. So where does "common" language end and art begin? It seems that art is granted a distinction, formulated by the culture in which it is created, which reads something like: "Art is that which can impart knowledge or revelation in an uncommon way"; i.e., art is elevated above "normal" language because it defines the indefinable - and the artist is envied because he/she can see the stranger links between things that when pulled together can form, as if by magic, a piece - a thing - that engages its audience in a conversation of whose words they are unsure, but from which they emerge with the feeling - "Yes - that's it."

Duchamp - Marcel Duchamp.