How Art Communicates What Words Cannot Express
This paper examines how art communicates thoughts, feelings, and historical experiences in ways that verbal language cannot replicate. Drawing on Richard Hickman's framework of art as a vehicle for cultural and social change, the paper analyzes two concrete examples: Pat Catterson's modern dance piece "Tiananmen (Peaceful Gate)," which conveys the emotional weight of the 1989 Chinese uprising, and the twin-tower light tribute erected after September 11, 2001. Together, these examples illustrate how art enables viewers to bear witness to events they could not directly experience, deepens shared understanding, and touches human sensation with an immediacy that spoken or written language cannot achieve.
- Introduction: Art Beyond Words: Thesis and Catterson dance example introduced
- Pat Catterson's Tiananmen and Bearing Witness: Art enables shared witnessing of tragedy
- September 11 and the Limits of Verbal Comfort: Bush's address falls short for New Yorkers
- The Twin Towers Light Tribute as Visual Language: Light installation conveys grief beyond words
- Conclusion: Art's Power to Transcend Verbal Communication: Art deepens shared experience and understanding
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds its abstract claim — that art surpasses verbal communication — in two concrete, emotionally resonant case studies, giving the argument specificity and credibility.
- It uses a direct quotation from a dance review to bridge academic argument and lived aesthetic experience, demonstrating how secondary sources can validate experiential claims.
- The juxtaposition of President Bush's address with the light tribute is particularly effective: it sets up a clear contrast between the insufficiency of words and the communicative power of a visual art form.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper employs argumentative contrast — presenting what verbal language can and cannot do, then demonstrating with evidence what art achieves in those same contexts. This technique, sometimes called the "limitation-and-solution" structure, is useful in humanities writing when arguing for the unique value of a non-textual medium.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a thesis supported by a scholarly definition of art's cultural role. It then develops two body examples (Catterson's dance and the 9/11 light tribute), each illustrating a different dimension of art's communicative power. A short concluding paragraph synthesizes the argument. The structure is straightforward and linear, making it suitable as a model for short argumentative essays at the undergraduate introductory level.
Introduction: Art Beyond Words
Art is able to communicate thoughts, feelings, and ideas — as well as portray moments in history — in unique and completely distinct ways that language is unable to replicate. Art touches the full range of human sensations with an immediacy that words cannot match. As Richard Hickman observes, "While artists can act as a mirror to reflect cultural values — like all of us they carry cultural baggage that affects their personal value systems — they can also have a vital role within cultures in that they contribute to cultural, social and political change by challenging established cultural values and ideas" (Hickman, 114).
A modern dance choreographed by the gifted dancer and choreographer Pat Catterson, entitled "Tiananmen (Peaceful Gate)," is a prime example of how art can communicate raw human emotions and experiences that arise in the face of extreme events and tragedies. When the unspeakable occurs, art is there to express the inexpressible. A dance review captured the work's power vividly:
"An excerpt from Pat Catterson's 'Tiananmen (Peaceful Gate)' showed how constant movement forward and backward could acquire dramatic and even moral significance. Although no specific story was told, the choreography was clearly inspired by the Chinese uprising of 1989. At the same time, it could be viewed as a symbolic tribute to any resistance to oppression in any period of history. Dancers surged across the stage in one group after another. Then, after they appeared to be rebuffed by hostile invisible powers, they retreated. Yet another forward-moving group always entered to resume the struggle. The constant repetitions in the recorded music by Philip Glass that accompanied 'Tiananmen' helped emphasize the tenacity of the protesters Ms. Catterson depicted. And the dancers moved with mounting fervor, bringing the work to an eloquent conclusion" (Anderson).
As an observer of this elegant and precisely choreographed work, one can clearly see how the dancers — individually and collectively — were able to convey a sense of courage and devastation: the raw human emotions connected with this entirely unnecessary tragedy. In this manner, art conveyed the depth and severe trauma of the event by powerfully touching each human observer who sees the piece and bears witness to it firsthand.
Pat Catterson's Tiananmen and Bearing Witness
This point illuminates yet another aspect of art that standard verbal communication is simply unable to touch. A work of art gives each spectator the opportunity to bear witness to the piece. In the case of Catterson's "Tiananmen," the viewer is able to bear witness to the dance — a representation of the actual Tiananmen Square massacre — at a time when so many viewers were simply unable to witness the actual events as they occurred. In this sense, art opens the door to making something a shared experience.
By sharing the experience, the spectator is able to deepen his or her understanding of the event and even share the weight and burden of what occurred — essentially sharing the grief. This is all the result of art's ability to transcend the ordinary power of words and to truly touch an individual's senses of feeling and understanding.
Conclusion: Art's Power to Transcend Verbal Communication
These examples demonstrate the power of art as a form of knowledge and the many ways it can transcend verbal communication. Art can touch the senses with such precision, deepening an individual's understanding in ways that one may or may not be fully conscious of. Art also allows one to bear witness to events that time and space would not ordinarily permit, deepening one's sense of shared experience in ways that the written or spoken word alone cannot achieve.
Works Cited
Anderson, J. (1996, June 5). Dance review: Youth, attuned to love and political protest. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/05/arts/dance-review-youth-attuned-to-love-and-political-protest.html
CNN.com. (2001, September 11). Text of Bush's address. Retrieved from http://articles.cnn.com/2001-09-11/us/bush.speech.text_1_attacks-deadly-terrorist-acts-despicable-acts?s=PM:US
Hickman, R. (2004). Art education 11–18: Meaning, purpose and direction. New York: Continuum Press.
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