Ouch, I know that experience. "Hwaet" huh? Were you going to Beowulf me? Canterbury Tales?

I don't, however, ultimately believe that art requires an audience to be art

I do. The artist is the first witness, after all. In regard to language, I don't think that all art can be conveyed in terms of language, which is why my initial post was about poetry.

That's why there are still works from many disparate cultures that we still agree upon as "beautiful" today, even if the cultural division is vast

I disagree to an extent, especially in conjunction with this:

we can still use current cultural tools to interpret past tools and in turn re-draw the beauty behind past works.

This is like saying, "if I kiss a woman and you kiss the same woman, we know how she kisses" instead of "if I kiss a woman and you kiss the same woman, I know how she and I kiss and you know how you and she kiss." The first one (due to limitations of language) implies that if either of us kisses her, the kiss is the same. In the second one, clearly it allows for differences in experience, as there are different agents involved.

And no, we can't always divine artistic intent, but the most effective art exhibits its fundamental attributes independently of authorial intent. Has a life of its own.

Of course. And life has cycles. It also flourishes under some circumstances and not under others. It does not proliferate in the same way regardless of environmental conditions.

For that matter, Homer got through all of The Odyssey without using the descriptor "blue"

Cheap shot. You're better than that. Homer is a good example though.

First, there is doubt that he existed. Second, The Odyssey was, (at best guess) composed orally and spread orally and so is fundamentally different from the poetry today, which exists on the page, in the ear and in the mind. The fact that The Odyssey was part of an oral tradition and existed in its amorphous form until someone wrote it down makes suggests that its potency was sustained by people's continued interest in it, which likely meant that the orator would do things to sustain interest. Furthermore, by the time it did get written down, who is to say that Homer was indeed the author? Weren't all the people performing The Odyssey, also the authors?

I'd argue that much of what is considered beautiful, in considered so because of what the viewer brings to the piece upon viewing, as much as the creator does by creating the piece. Some potency is imparted by the creator, the rest by the viewers. But art does not "do". Art evokes and through evocation, changes a small part of the viewer's reality. To what extent, cannot be known, measured or compared in any real way. However, if a piece affects a number of people, then yes, I think it can rightly be called "potent". If no one is viewing it as an access point to "beauty", then I don't think it's potent. If no one is looking at it, then what does the creator's skill matter? It's not as if ability is the only factor in popularizing a work, or making it accessible.