Artists often possess an uncanny ability to analyze and manipulate these experiences into an expression that speaks to the masses of the human condition, and they are usually quite possessed of their experiences until they can no longer handle the haunting images and they use their medium to express their emotions over the situation. The art of creating itself often serves as catharsis for the artist himself, and ends in a piece that communicates both a uniquely powerful experience, and one that the audience can relate to and understand. Ultimately a war affects everyone in the community of the concerned parties, and as such it will touch and inspire artists of every medium, which results in certain movements and common themes being woven throughout the poetry, fiction, screenplays, paintings, symphonies, etc., of the time.
Great art is also very much inspired by ideas as well as events. Many artists truly thrive on the intellectual static of debate and the pursuit of knowledge. Time after time we can see a congregation of artists in one place who all deliberately interact with one another, working to inspire and stimulate each other. Major examples of this kind of phenomenon would be the Left Bank artists, who, though most commonly associated with writers, were composed of artists of all kinds who spent their days completely immersed in their work and their nights drinking and bouncing ideas off one another in between intellectual, or quite base conversation. This creates an atmosphere of high creative energy that they all feed off of. Once person's success is the success of all of them to effect a change or movement from their one tiny place on the globe. Greenwich Village in the 1960s is also a good example of this kind of congregation and shared creativity. Certainly none of the arts were...
This isn't to say that every poet and musician experience their love in the same way, but the assertion is that these emotions are often experienced to deeply that almost every artist is driven to express it. The idea that their art can be used as such a therapeutic tool is most definitely universal in all media, even if not all artists choose to use this as the vehicle for their inspiration. Artists are often extremely introspective and so the use of their art can be used as a vehicle of release, exploration, or understanding of the workings of their own psyche. Since artists are, of course, all members of the human race, even those not possessed of artistic drives can still relate and appreciate the artist's message when they work with such universal truths like emotions.
Ultimately the arts are so interconnected that it is quite impossible to completely unravel and separate any of the mediums from another. The simple act of creation like how a film will start with the writing of a script or the adaptation of a work of literature shows how there would essentially be no film without literature, or how an opera begins with a libretto, often from a popular or classic piece of literature, or how a well composed painting can inspire a great piece of literature based upon the figures of those in the painting as if they were to step out of the frame and begin life as usual. The support structure that is developed by each of the arts is to delicately balanced and intertwined that to remove the influence of one, you then subject the rest to tragic atrophy.
