This essay describes a mathematical approach to reconciling various critical and philosophical perspectives on art that language has left us understanding as perhaps more disparate than they actually are. The work first makes use of the inclusion-exclusion principle to generalize comparisons of the expressive potential of different artistic media over time and space as explained by Gottfried Ephraim von Lessing. Then I proceed to a discussion of Kant’s distinction between the beautiful and the sublime, employing calculus concepts to explain the relationship between the two with respect to creative process and outcome. Finally, I explore Nietzsche’s famous assertion about the relationship between art and living, through the lens of number theory, showing the quick and severe emergence of complexity from seemingly shallow sets of descriptive vocabulary.