Isn there something incomprehensible, magical, or mystical about art?
Art can be subtle, complex, hard to understand, or difficult to explain, but there’s nothing literally magical about it and nothing about it which inherently defies analysis. I think the reason some people believe this is that art (good art anyway) often excites the emotions, and people think (or feel) that emotions are incomprehensible, magical, or beyond explaining, and because of this error and the relationship between art and emotion, they conclude that art is therefore similarly incomprehensible, magical, etc. Both the logic of this linkage and the premise of emotions being magical or incomprehensible are erroneous. Another flawed idea is that rational analysis and emotions are opposites and that indulging in one must come at the expense of the other. They fear that “peering behind the curtain” might destroy the potential for emotional enjoyment In practical terms, I don’t find that knowing more about how a painting, novel, movie, or symphony was made (which constitutes a decrease
