Is art a language? Answering in the affirmative requires that we take it as a communicative tool with meaning posited in each work. Answering in the negative leaves us with the question of what to do with it.
By positing art as a language, whose visual images express meaning just as verbal language does, André Breton establishes a manner in which he thinks of visual works. That art should express meaning, whatever that meaning might be, is to interject an ethics into art that not all are willing to accept. With its previously stated intention to alter the cultural norms of reason, Surrealism has an agenda, and the works that come of it are attempting a shift in consciousness. This assumes that to engage with art is to be in a certain kind of quest. That may be the case for the artist, but not all would agree that art should offer a journey for the spirit.
Art may refuse what language offers. Communication, understood as being meaningful, may be a limit to the way we experience art. If communication is not understood as having to express a specific idea that can be comprehended in words that follow an ordered logic, then sure paintings communicate. Perhaps that is what people mean when they say that art must express something. Too often, however, that phrase "express something," is used not for what it states but as a way of saying provides meaning. I don't think art needs to be narrative, but nor do I think narrative art is irrelevant or dead. Art may be a way to be in the world beyond the confines of language.
Will much bad art be accepted on the basis of such an argument? Sure. But much academic painting is accepted because it says something, albeit boring and pallid. I think the greater challenge is on the viewer to attempt to engage with art not simply for its historical moment, the artist's established greatness, for the tale told on the canvas, tapestry, bowl, or wall, nor for the personal psychological reaction to what you see, but for a way of being alive in the world without the trappings of language as the means to thought, dream, aspiration, desire.
I don't know what that looks like, but I've had moments with art that did that. Briefly. I'm still figuring out whether it can be described, or whether even the experience is beyond language.
