Here is the ultimate work of Modern Art, that truly defies all rules: It isn’t mine, it isn’t real, and no one knows it exists...
It’s...it’s beautiful.
Great post for the most part, though I do have to agree with Tim’s straw man alert.
Something I learnt while studying postmodern fiction (yeah Eliezer, that’s right): Art can be referential, or memetic, or both, or neither. Most is both, in that it (very roughly) is ‘like’ reality (i.e. it’s memetic) and ‘seeks to tell us something about’ reality (i.e. it’s referential). However, there’s some really interesting stuff that is neither—defying ideas like logic, causation and induction (let alone plot, character etc) and blatantly having no regard for what Eliezer would call terminal values. (Except, in some cases, at a meta-level outside the text. But not in all cases.) Read up on Alain Robbe-Grillet’s fiction and Sam Beckett’s ‘Trilogy’ (and later poetry) for a start. Oh, and John Cage—yes, even 4′33.
Randomness, noise and so on can be astonishingly beautiful, in art or in nature, even to the novice. Or do you think that there are two parts of your brain, one which finds a painting beautiful, and one that finds the night sky beautiful? Yes, there’s some high-minded bullshit out there, but as Tim says, please don’t draw false boundaries simply to justify your profound bottom line.
And beware of putting a nuts-and-bolts heuristic in place of a sense of aesthetic beauty. You may then find yourself conflicted between finding something beautiful and being unable to understand why. And that truly would be a tragedy.
Here is the ultimate work of Modern Art, that truly defies all rules: It isn’t mine, it isn’t real, and no one knows it exists...
It’s...it’s beautiful.
Great post for the most part, though I do have to agree with Tim’s straw man alert.
Something I learnt while studying postmodern fiction (yeah Eliezer, that’s right): Art can be referential, or memetic, or both, or neither. Most is both, in that it (very roughly) is ‘like’ reality (i.e. it’s memetic) and ‘seeks to tell us something about’ reality (i.e. it’s referential). However, there’s some really interesting stuff that is neither—defying ideas like logic, causation and induction (let alone plot, character etc) and blatantly having no regard for what Eliezer would call terminal values. (Except, in some cases, at a meta-level outside the text. But not in all cases.) Read up on Alain Robbe-Grillet’s fiction and Sam Beckett’s ‘Trilogy’ (and later poetry) for a start. Oh, and John Cage—yes, even 4′33.
Randomness, noise and so on can be astonishingly beautiful, in art or in nature, even to the novice. Or do you think that there are two parts of your brain, one which finds a painting beautiful, and one that finds the night sky beautiful? Yes, there’s some high-minded bullshit out there, but as Tim says, please don’t draw false boundaries simply to justify your profound bottom line.
And beware of putting a nuts-and-bolts heuristic in place of a sense of aesthetic beauty. You may then find yourself conflicted between finding something beautiful and being unable to understand why. And that truly would be a tragedy.