Art Is A “Gesture Which Points”

Language has many functions, used for various purposes, most commonly for communication—for giving information. Other purposes are more practical. Sometimes we use words to get someone to do something, for example, rather than getting them to understand us. Still other times we use words to express our emotions, or to get others to feel our feelings—a more expressive purpose. But language also has a religious function that is unlike communication, instruction, or expression.

When speaking of spirituality, we often struggle with words. How do we explain the Incarnation, for example—that God became a man? The statement itself is a seeming contradiction, a paradox. It contains things that cannot be explained, only pointed to. Heinecken (1956) suggests:

“It is not the ‘fact’ which is contradictory, but the sentence [God became a man]. The fact is unlike any other fact . . . it cannot be communicated directly from one individual to another because language in this case does not function logically, it does not describe, it communicates no information. It is like a gesture which points” (p. 63).

Art is a language. Art that communicates information is simply decorative, for example (this color is nice, those lines are interesting). Art that provokes action often amounts to propaganda, for another (this message makes me angry over injustice). And art that expresses emotions is usually abstract or conceptual, as a last example (this shape that represents the artist’s feelings, arouses my own). 

The best art neither communicates, instructs, or expresses, however, but points. Art has a religious function: being a gesture which points to those things that can’t be explained, like beauty and meaning.

Reference:

Heinecken, M. (1956). The Moment Before God. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press.