What art says about consciousness is very interesting, and certainly some forms of art may even cause ones consciousness to shift to some degree. It's even more interesting to look at how this happens.
For the intellectuals amongst us this article may be of interest. I'll quote a few paragraphs that addresses art directly - it would be nice to have the background for this: http://www.gebser.org/publications/pdf/introphiljgebser.pdf
If you look at the shift from Medieval art to Renaissance art you will find a striving topaint perspectivity. Prior to that there was a background which was dark andmysterious. On it there was a polar principle, using the light, the Cross, the saint. Butthen there appears through various minor artists, I think from 1420 to about 1460, atension of trying to depict three–dimensional perspectival space in art. This wasstressed to such an extent that they called perspectivity the eighth art on which allscience and all knowledge must be based. Look at what Leonardo daVinci was doing.He perfected perspectival painting. He was an engineer. He was a mechanic. He dealtwith everything as purely spatial. The spatial–mental (mechanical, if you like)consciousness ruled the day. Now, please understand, no one in their clear mind orturbulent psyche has ever seen perspectival space. No one. It is not given that way tovision. It is a consciousness structure which allows us to talk about perspectival space.Once we mutated from psychic to spatial consciousness, perspectival space becamepossible, not because we had seen it, but because the consciousness structuredemanded that we interpret space as perspectival.In the twentieth century what emerges, of course, is time. The age of anxiety is an ageof time. We are emerging with the awareness of time as we once were aware of spacein our mental consciousness. Now we have time consciousness, but it is no longer thelinear time consciousness and that fact is discoverable in every science, in every artisticproduction. For example, if you look at Picasso, what do you find? He developedthrough the magical African art, through the classical, through his own psychologicalproblems and finally emerged with temporic art. Watch Picasso’s works carefully andyou will find that they present you with the fourth dimension, with time which is notlinear.To give you a bit of background, whenever a particular consciousness structure comesto self–destruction and is moving toward mutation you will find one good sign,quantification. For example, when mythical–psychic consciousness was exhaustingitself it began to proliferate and fragment itself: gods, goddesses, myth after mythquantitatively. A good sign in our still–prevalent mental consciousness is a movementtoward fragmentation, separation of everything from everything else. There has beenspecialization to such an extent that as Nietzsche says we have specialists on the leftbrain of a leech. That is, all they know, that is all they want to know and they arespecialists; they have perspectively focused on one little thing and nothing else. Thisfragmentation is a sign that the predominant consciousness structure is coming to anend by fragmenting itself.At the same time, and correlatively with that falling apart, there appears anotherconsciousness structure which is different in its dimensions. The consciousnessstructure now is appearing as integral, aperspectival, atemporal. Why this alphaprefix? It is not alpha negativum, but alpha primativum., that is privatio from Latinmeaning “to free.” We are freed from spatiality in our consciousness. We are alsofreed from linear temporality which means that we are neither rhythmic, psychic, normental–linear, but integral. We can observe this in the attempts to paint or presentintegrally an entire human being such as Picasso’s painting of a man. You know attimes we think it strange the way Picasso painted. What he did was frontally presentthe back side of the person, the side of the person and the front of the person. WhatPicasso is doing is saying that in order to experience we must have a transparentconsciousness whereby the integral “something” appears in full force aperspectivally.You do not have to look at the person from perspective to perspective and thensomehow in mysterious memory add the perspectives, gluing the person together fromthe various spatial perspectives. Picasso wanted to present the whole thing from front,from back, from side, at the same time without any requirement of perspectivity. Sothese paintings could be called aperspectival and hence be considered transparent ordiaphanous.