The article considers the relationship between word and image, logic and feeling, and the rational and irrational sides of art creativity, theory and practice, science and literature on art. The methodological basis is the concept of intermediation. The author identifies three interrelated subject areas of co-creativity between the artist and the spectator: art creativity, its scholarly study, and the intermediation area including criticism, essay writing, and implicit esthetics. The author separates the concepts of art criticism and art studies. The former applies to practical activities: dating and attribution, systematization, cataloguing, storage, exposition, restoration and reconstruction. Art study is the remit of a narrow circle of experts until it is realized in the third direction -mental reality which is parallel to art and created by artistic means which are adequate to art. Belles letters about art give completeness and practical value to the work of the theorist. The author calls it ‘intermedial realistics'. Without it, art study is doomed to isolation, misunderstanding on the part of the spectator and, hence, opposition to the main objective of art creativity.