Art: Magical Mystery or Definable Beauty?

I was listening to a recent Radiolab podcast (March 19th's "The Turing Problem") the other day, and one of the concepts that was discussed on the show really struck me. By the way, if you don't know what Radiolab is, please stop reading this blog right now and go educate yourself. The question that caught my attention was "are humans anything more than machines?" and if they aren't, what are the implications of this fact for humanity?

One of the commentators, author James Gleick, explored this notion by commenting that even if we are machines, this fact doesn't necessarily diminish any art we create, whether it's a beautiful song or a painting.  It doesn't matter if we are machines, as long as we still have a sense of mystery about how we create that art. Addressing the question posed by host, Robert Krulwich, "…if I built you a computer that could create equally beautiful watercolors and equally beautiful musical composition [to those created by human artists], would you feel happier, or diminished?" Gleick answers,

"I think in a way you’re asking is that if you see how the trick is done, does it then vanish?  Does it just become a trick – the trick being a great painting or a great piece of music? I feel the art I love is always art that I don’t fully understand. There’s some mystery there, always. I don’t quite fathom it [...] And when the machine produces music that is as lovely as the music that you and I love, I believe it will still be unfathomable."

I found this answer to be particularly interesting because of the effect it had on me: initially, I wholeheartedly agreed, and upon analysis, it all fell apart.  To reduce "beauty" and the act of classifying "art" to something being simply "mysterious" and "unfathomable" is a notion I find myself a bit weary of; it implies that we shouldn't try to understand something, and if we understand it, we will no longer appreciate it, and it will cease to be art.   

Why do we need to not understand something for it to be beautiful? To understand something is to destroy it?  And of course Gleick covers his bases by saying that true art will ultimately be mysterious no matter what, we won't be able to figure it out.  And I think, again, that's a little ridiculous.  It goes against a lot of things I believe about writing and about other forms of art- mostly that it can be analyzed and understood as a process.   

To argue that true art cannot be understood is to also imply that true art cannot be deliberately created.  I think to say that understanding the concepts behind photography and then taking a photo with those concepts in mind- to say that that would impede an individual from creating a piece of art implies that the only true art is created by ingénues or created spontaneously without knowledge or just with some sort of deep inherent knowledge and without any discussion of the process, and in some ways, this is an extremely anti-intellectual, anti-academic argument. And, as much as academia can sometimes miss the point through over analysis, I think it's an important element of all of our forms of art, of all of our culture, and all of humanity- the analytical element.

If we don't seek to understand art (to figure out why The Great Gatsby seems so perfect, why Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know" is so catchy, or why Degas' "Waiting" is so haunting), and if we are content to classify it as mysterious magic only, what else will be content with not looking at more deeply? Culture? Humanity? The universe?  Art is not some inherent ability that is bestowed upon only a select few at birth and that the rest of us can only look on in awe.  Nothing is too beautiful to be understood and through understanding, beauty is not diminished, but reaffirmed.