Parent here.

Art != Communication

And art is not a form of communication ether.

There is no shortage of literature on this topic but good place to start is Aristotle’s Poetics, essentially the first art theory ever written and it dives head first into the issue. In it, Aristotle laments on the corruption of communication at the hands of poetry.

> Art != Communication

I never asserted that.

> And art is not a form of communication ether.

That I did assert. Just because some books are written to argue something, doesn't make that truth. It took me 30 seconds to find 2 sources which support that art is a form of communication [1] [2]. So at the very least (if your sources argue your point, while your work is a response to another work) there does not seem to be consensus on that matter.

Now if you could refer to your source that could be great. Because [3] didn't explain your viewpoint at all.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication

[2] https://www.quora.com/Is-art-a-form-of-communication

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetics_(Aristotle)

I think my central mistake here has been using the word communication in place of literary expression, which carries with it a magnitude of efficiency and specificity that art elements cannot achieve. I did this in trying to work with the contextual uses of the terminology and I think it waters down my point. Sorry for the confusion.

The Wikipedia for Poetics does appear to lack an elaboration on Aristotle’s more critical positions on poetry. The exact nature of his criticisms are contested (but their existence is not) so maybe that is why. Check out thes Quora entries for some relevant discourse:

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Plato-hate-poetry

Bit of a stretch. You can argue that art is communication, but you can have communication without art and that's how I'd describe use of tech in the Arab Spring. I'm sure some people think Banksy is changing the world but we've had Brexit and Trump on his watch. Perhaps I'm being unduly harsh though, and we're just a few pretentious faux-warhol wall daubings from freedom.

There is no stretch whatsoever. It is difficult to assess when and how much art contributes because it is an indirect motivation. If an opinion is censored, the ability to spread it via tags (or pieces) tells the viewer: do not despair, you are not alone in your viewpoint.

Even if basic art theory is difficult, it is certainly not impossible, and it’s the best path to understanding your interest here.

“Viewpoints” are not very well “communicated” with art. Art correlates better with questions.

A helpful exercise would be to take a piece of art and break it into elements, then categorize those elements into Communication elements which would be ideas (sometimes subject and predicate but could be more basic literary expression too) and Art elements, being the poetics and aesthetics. It’s not an easy difference to describe in a comment but the Communication invokes ideas while the Art invokes emotion and other oddities. They are not always easy to decifer and articulate, but it’s very very fun to do if you like art in this way.

Once broken into these categories, you can now ask yourself what category is responsible for the revolution. It will be the communication category, sometimes with the support of the Art category.

Also, in critique, media only refers to medium plural, not content but strictly the matter which serves to represent the abstraction.

> you can now ask yourself what category is responsible for the revolution. It will be the communication category.

Only if you look at it from a short-term, narrow angle and only because communication is so advanced nowadays. If you look at the time when communication was more limited, you can find that there are several art movements who most certainly and quite obviously communicated their PoV, a zeitgeist, or flat out propaganda (a recent example is posters and paintings from WWII).

> “Viewpoints” are not very well “communicated” with art. Art correlates better with questions.

This is just pedantic. Those questions lead to viewpoints eventually. The author might or might not have intended those viewpoints but that is irrelevant.