Art is generally thought to be expression and illusion. Expression because every work of art is a result of human intention. And illusion because, however concrete or nonfigurative, a work of art is an enactment, a piece of drama, for show and for play. These two points-that art is expression and representation-are the twin pillars of our modern understanding of art. This essay argues that the focus on the expressive and the representative leaves out the most important dynamic of art- to wit, the communicative and the iconoclastic. By the former, I mean that art is primarily not the subjectivity giving shape to a private vision, but a form of sanctifying the human conversation, that is, the encounter between subjectivities. By the latter, I mean that art is an image that paradoxically strives to go beyond the realm of images. On this account, an image is artistic to the extent that it breaks through representation. Indeed, art has a destination beyond itself. One should not imagine, as postmodernism ruled, that the essence of art is formal or historical self-reflexivity. The aim of art is not just art. Its destination is a renewed, vibrant, live contact with reality. And the vehicle by which art travels into reality is not just skill, insight, knowledge, or intelligence. It is love. To defend these two propositions is the gist of this essay.