A "meta-argument" against all future arguments for God's existence ?

[emjay]

Anyway, just out of curiosity, what do you think of modern art? I realised when I was talking about it before... about agreeing with you guys in principle... I realised that to the extent that I like it or try to create it, it's kind of reductionistic and symbolic... ie I like the concept of it as a useful way of representing information/ideas by visual analogy as it were. But that's very different from what I think of as modern art. So this is me being a Philistine again I guess, unless that is doing that but at a much more subtle level. I guess to me there's skillful art and there's symbolic/meaningful art, but I'm not really sure where a lot of modern art fits into that, but granted I haven't shown much interest in it.

Interesting and difficult questions. 

As with Christianity, anything I say in general won't be true of every artist. They're a varied and ornery bunch.

I'd like to think that art isn't simply "representing information/ideas by visual analogy." This would make a painting the same sort of thing as the graph in an economics paper. With a work of art there is always a fundamental integration of form and content -- they're not separate things. So a painting's content may just be the way it looks, the way it's painted.

I don't mean it quite as blandly as it might sound there... ie I don't mean as akin to a graph... indeed graphs are usually about the least evocative thing I can think of

I can only give an example of what I mean. Say I want to represent my idea of a stream of consciousness, as a piece of symbolic 'art', I'd look at that idea and look at the constraints... such as it flows through time, seems to exist parallel to other minds, exists independently of other minds in a non-sequential manner (unless you believe in reincarnation, which I don't)... and then try and figure out how to represent those aspects visually in a way that meets all those constraints. So what I came up with for that idea was something like a cylinder to represent time, and lines of various lengths, representing different streams of consciousness/lifespans, extending along its length at different starting points, and at different points on the circumference... all lines regardless of length and starting points parallel to each other, and enough space for all due to the theoretical notion that that circumference of the cylinder would be infinitely divisible, as any length is, in theory, allowing any number of consciousnesses to exist in parallel at any given time.

Basically, first and foremost this is an abstract idea in my head... ie it including notions such as infinitely divisible, means it could never be faithfully represented if trying to put it into any external form, but at least simplified versions of the idea could in theory be made into 'art'... either as a picture or some sort of sculpture. I've never done that, but it's always been a possibility in the back of my mind. Would you, as an expert in art, consider such a thing art? I don't know... maybe/probably not... but I know I would. It would be something I would look at, just as I can 'look at' the symbolic/abstract version in my head, and see the meaning and be moved by it.

So when you describe art as a 'fundamental integration of form and content', that's probably not anything like what I've described? So what I've described is probably not art in any standard definition, but it's still nonetheless evocative and meaningful to me as a concept, whatever it is. I would want to do the same sort of thing with poetry or any other artful medium... try and capture the essence and constraints of some idea.

There is a potential richness in each painting. It can have story-telling or message-type content, as in a narrative Rembrandt. It can be about looking carefully at everyday items, as with a Chardin. There can be a kind of wit or playfulness in how the thing is presented, as with Picasso. 

Except for the obvious story-subject these things reveal themselves over time to people who have spent a lot of time looking. Everybody's a philistine about some things, just because we haven't taken the time with them yet. One of the great pleasures in life is when some work or genre which didn't speak to you before starts to make sense to you, and its value becomes apparent at last. Fortunately there is so much in the world that no lifetime is long enough to exhaust all the potential pleasures. 

That said, much of the art of our own time has little or nothing to enjoy. Up through Picasso, Balthus, or Lucian Freud, painting was still about looking at what's on the canvas and benefiting from that. With the latest crop, however, that's all over. Banksy, or Jeff Koons, or Damian Hirst, have nothing in their work that repays actually looking at it. Their medium isn't in fact paint but exchange value. Their talent lies in taking worthless things and making them extremely expensive. They don't manipulate visual materials but resale value, and they're really good at it. The work is about as interesting to look at as a stock certificate, and serves the same function. It is the perfect art for the age we live in, where capitalism supersedes all other values. So if you wonder why those works don't move you, it's not your fault. There is nothing in the work to see.

To the extent that modern art tries to do something like I described above, that's how much I'd be interested in it, but to the extent that it's just being weird or contrary for the sake of it, or just trading off a name, then that's something that wouldn't interest me. As for other types of art... ie skillful/classical art, then that's something I can appreciate the beauty and meaning of, but obviously not with such a keen eye as you, an expert in art. It would be nice to see/discern some of that richness though, so maybe I should get into it a bit more.