What are the valid forms of art—and why these? . . . The proper forms of art
present a selective re-creation of reality in terms needed by man’s cognitive
faculty, which includes his entity-perceiving senses, and thus assist the
integration of the various elements of a conceptual consciousness.
Literature deals with concepts, the visual arts with sight and touch, music
with hearing. Each art fulfills the function of bringing man’s concepts to the
perceptual level of his consciousness and allowing him to grasp them directly,
as if they were percepts. (The performing arts are a means of further
concretization.) The different branches of art serve to unify man’s
consciousness and offer him a coherent view of existence. Whether that view is
true or false is not an esthetic matter. The crucially esthetic matter is
psycho-epistemological: the integration of a conceptual consciousness.