How Many Words is a Piece of Art Worth?

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many is a statue worth?  Or a cathedral or an expertly crafted acqueduct?

While writing about the political messages conveyed by the triumphal statues of Roman emperors the other day, I tried to come up with reasons why someone in 2012 should even care about these crumbling relics from a time long passed.

Why do people create visual art?  Paintings, sculptures, architectural feats of greatness.

I think it is because there are some feelings so deep, some convictions so intense, that no words can adequately convey them.  (Or, in the words of my art history professor, “Constantine needed something BIG to proclaim that he was emperor.  So his triumphal arch is kind of his way of saying, “I won! Ha-ha!  HERE’S my statue!”  Standing at 21 meters high, with a collage of spolia from previous emperors on its facade, the arch is quite imposing.

In addition to empowerment afforded by three-dimensional space in art, I also think that the pre-Colombus, flattened globe of words and text is confining.  Bound by the gated contrasts of dark and light, with no in-between.

No pools of color, no jutting shards of spears, and no three-dimensional transcendence.

Sometimes, you just need to experience a great painting to feel and know the comfort that someone, somewhere else has experienced the same feelings as you.  And not only have they experienced these feelings, a gifted artist was able to capture them and immortally frame them in something beautiful.

I think art and art history, is not something to be looked down upon.  Rather than a frivolous and superfluous study of line and color, it is the fibers of humanity, expressed in line, color, and three dimensional spaces that let our souls breathe.  It is the liberation of our thoughts from the confining jail cells of text.

Although Marcus Aurelius could have written more books of ‘Meditations’ and philosophy, even he deemed it fit to immortalize a facet of his personality in three-dimensional marble with a powerful cape and commanding horse that doesn’t exactly come across on crumbly second century papyri.