Communication, the transfer of ideas, implies absolutes, order, and truth. It implies God. Expression has intruded not only upon the fine arts, but on the performing arts as well. Once they abandon an artistic law outside themselves, their expression becomes law. If expression rules the theater they can perform anything and call it art.
Expression also invades music.
When the artist is expected to express, and not communicate, governing absolutes can be abandoned. Imagine if we tried to do math problems on the same premise. It is obviously absurd to apply arbitrary expression to mathematics, and should strike us as equally absurd to allow it in art. Expressional art cannot communicate unless, as Dr. Van Til often observed, it denies its own philosophy and borrows the artistic philosophy of the Christian. Having no objective standard, it is incapable of maintaining one internally or artistically.