What is the job of art?

I had to share this excerpt that appeared in my Facebook feed today:

"Creative artists.....are mankind's wakeners to recollection: summoners of our outward mind to conscious contact with ourselves, not as participants in this or that morsel of history, but as spirit, in the consciousness of being. Their task, therefore, is to communicate directly from one inward world to another, in such a way that an actual shock of experience will have been rendered: not a mere statement for the information or persuasion of a brain, but an effective communication across the void of space and time from one center of consciousness to another."

--Joseph Campbell, "The Masks of God, Volume IV: Creative Mythology" (Copyright 1968 Joseph Campbell Foundation)

So, the job of art (and artist) is to provide an experience of communication that goes beyond words, or without words, straight to that part of us that is aligned with "spirit". That perhaps an experience involves the whole person, all of the senses, not only the brain processing a statement. That as we see, we feel, we recollect, and understand deeply and profoundly, that experience of the artist. Maybe we can't even really explain what it is we feel. I have felt sometimes when I see at a piece of art that is particularly moving, I just want to feel it, not talk about it. As if talking about it takes it out of its propoer realm and perhaps diminishes the experience.

The same could be said about words, however. Words constructed together in a way that evokes a similar experience are also art. I'll try to find an example of that to post next time. :)