This one was sold for over 100 million dollars.



I don't know if it's worth that much. Maybe 50, 60 million dollars tops, eh? Maybe Picasso connoisseurs, message extractors, or even hardware engineers, can tell.

You might have had different opinion if Picasso wasn't heavily promoted to you as one of the genius artists of 20th century and Guernica as masterpiece. But he was promoted as such because meaninglessness is promoted, not because he created great art.

Picasso represents politics that today says there is no gender. That's what it is.

Do you think unisex bathrooms for children in schools just happened out of thin air? It's just the latest step in a march of meaninglessness, which previously brought forward Picasso and other abstract "geniuses".

Second painting is not especially great, I would say it's good, but Guernica is quite flat when you take away the name and the extra info and the promotion. There are more impressive cave paintings.

As for the non-subtlety of the second painting, war is not subtle. Woman's expression, the main thing in the painting, is strong, not "clumsy cliche". That's how pain for the loss of the loved one looks like. If you find the scene comical, that's actually sad. But perfectly in line with meaninglessness.

This is a discussion probably never had with a client:

Client: I have made my own definition of what hardware engineering is, because all definitions I saw seem to lead to a conclusion that only members of some elite are capable of recognising good hardware engineering. So, build me a chair.

Pattern-chaser: But Mr. Client, hardware engineering is not for building chairs. Let me explain you what...

Client: Don't act like some objectivity-trumpeting know-it-all. Just take your computer boards, stack them one on the other, and build me a chair to sit on.

Pattern-chaser: (To himself) What pattern is this?

You keep quoting me incompletely, making the thing I said it's opposite. I said - I believe I have a good hold on what is good and bad, objectively, but I don't get it 100%, as human, so I add, "as I see it".

Precisely because I don't claim to know it all, neither I claim to believe I know it all, I add, "as I see it".

But anyway, art being an experience transfer doesn't make it some exclusive fit to "members of the elite".

Maybe you could just be humble that you don't have great understanding about what art is, and once you do, you'll get much more from all the art you'll discover. As I recall, you were a hardware/software engineer. Becoming a hardware/software engineer demanded humbleness in learning and discovery, not pridefulness in ignorance.

I merely offered Guernica as one of (very) many examples. — Pattern-chaser

You offered Guernica as an example of a message without experience. You said: "Guernica offers a message to me: the savagery of war is wrong! To you it might say something different. It doesn't matter. But there is a message there, not experience."

I agree that there is not much experience to get from Guernica. Because it's a low level art.

Art is about the experience, not the message, so I provided an example of a piece of art about war that's more potent than Guernica. Guernica doesn't even provide a message about war unless you know extra information about it.

The fact that there is not much experience you get from Guernica, and the thing you get, a message, is after you learn some extra info about the painting, hints at how low of a quality that painting is.

It shouldn't be used as an example of good art, to demonstrate what art is. That's what I'm saying. It's an example of very limited piece of art, and one can make wrong conclusions about art if he extrapolates what art is based on Guernica.

That's good, because I didn't answer that particular question. — Pattern-chaser

But that joke is on you. You present these two paintings to people who didn't see them, with just a name of the painting and the painting itself. First one is named Guernica. They won't even have to know the name of the second, which in fact has "war" in to, to explain the second one in terms of war. For the first one, they (many, most, practically all?) wouldn't even get to the war. It's just what seems like some people and horses.

I didn't ask what is the difference between literal message of the paintings (which is always secondary thing), but what is the difference between two paintings having a feeling of "war is wrong". If you think that we just can't say, that it simply depends on a person, well, that's what promotion of meaninglessness does to people.

I add "as I see it" because I speak for myself. But I don't negate objective reality. I believe I have a good hold on what is good and bad, objectively, but I don't get it 100%, as human, so I add, "as I see it.". More precise phrase would be, "as I see it from here", where "here" is perspective that is both human and specifically mine.

Which one of the two provides more experience, a sense, a feeling, of "war is wrong"?




The second one is not subtle, which is often a minus in art, but war is not subtle, so war gets treated as war is.

With first one, I don't even get much of a "war is wrong" as a literal, intelectual message. It's quite flat.

Last century, as it continued in this one too, was a century for destruction of meaning. There is no meaning. There is no God (by the way, God is He). There is no objectivity. There is no family. There is no gender. There is as you think it is.

So we also got meaningless art. Full abstraction promoted as highest value.

This Picasso is not full abstraction but it is high abstraction. And it doesn't hold much value nevertheless, as I see it. Not that there is no value. But it's puffed up to heights it doesn't belong to.

I think much of the value of this kind of art is a result of political, in a broad sense, movement. When people get swayed that meaninglessness is "the shitz", then abstracted paintings get the glory.

But it's an emperor with no clothes.

Art is about things that it is not about on the surface. — Coben

Yes, I agree. I meant product as a "produced thing". A piece of art as man made creation.

Art is not a product, I don't think. Art is a form of communication. — Pattern-chaser

It's a product as "a thing that is the result of an action or process". A man made thing. It doesn't just happen. It's produced. Maybe more precisely to say - a piece of art is a product.

I wouldn't say it's communication, especially not in terms of literal messages. It does communication as means to transfer experience, which is the goal. So it's a transfer of experience. If you want to call that communication also, ok.

When we see art for the first time (or hear, if it's music, etc), we don't know what it's for, or what it means, or is intended to mean. — Pattern-chaser

If you have listened to classical music but never heard "Ode to Joy", and then you hear "Ode to Joy" for the first time, I would find it hard to believe you'd tell me you "don't know what it's for or is intended to mean." And you don't need to know the name. You wouldn't be confused to name it "Ode to Sadness" or something like that.

But is the message sent by the artist the same as the message received by the audience? — Pattern-chaser

Generally speaking, yes. With the distinction that artist doesn't send a message but an experience.

Art (a piece of art) is complex product, but it's a product. When a chair maker creates a chair, customers are not scratching their heads wondering what to do with "the contraption". When a news writer publishes an article, readers are not bewildered in how to interpret sentences they read.

Essentially, it is the same with art. There is more complexity to art than to chair or news article, so an explanation can be expanded, but essentially, what author creates, the audience gets.

The primary difference (I believe) between the first and second painting is that the first is primarily about the subject and the second is about the artist (self portrait aside). — Brett

But what about the subject and the artist is it?

You could also extract an information in terms of race, and say, the difference is that one painting is about black person and the other is about white person.

But what is it actually about, beyond this surface identification?

What I'm saying is that art is not about an information, but about something that's being transferred beyond it's information or raw message. And that something is intangible, an experience.

I’ll go along with that.

Of course Zhoubotong will argue that ‘Transformers’ does exactly that. — Brett

Yes, ‘Transformers’ are a piece of art. But as I wrote previously:

"Being entertained is certainly a slice of what you can get through art. But it's a very small segment out of all experiences you can get. And I would say, among the most shallow, fleeting experiences at that."

So, a movie like ‘Transformers’ that does a lot of entertaining and not much of other things, is not an art with high value. But it's still an art.

Maybe to add, while it's not an art with high value in terms of whole art universe, it's a piece of art with high entertainment value. The difference between quality of it as an art generally and quality of it as an entertainment product is such that people don't even address this and similar products as art. But they are.

Here are three paintings with three levels of abstraction.

First is hyperrealism. It looks exactly like a photo, especially when viewed on screen. Last is full abstraction.

The limitation with last is rather evident, I think. There is a place for full-abstracted paintings, but they can take you only so far. It's too much separated from meaning, which makes it hard for us to create a connection and work with it. We can still get something from it, but the ceiling is not so high.

The first one has a problem with being seen as a document, and as such, not an art. I am not talking only about this one, but about hyperrealism in general. It would be better, of course, to see the painting live to get it's full impact. But that is especially true for the second portrait, so... Anyway, what works for the first painting is a juxtaposition, a contrast, between the quality of a simulated studio environment, including lighting placed on a subject, as if for some distinguished portrait, and the subject who is presented as ailing and poor (by looking at the shirt). That's unexpected, and I would say, if we are to simplify it, it is the main mechanism which creates art in what looks like a document. (That also makes it somewhat gimmicky.)

The difference in impact between first and second painting might not be super obvious at first glance, but it seems to me that first painting gets old relatively fast, and as it does it looses some of it's initially perceived depth. It sort of flattens.

But this is not primarily to judge these three paintings. This is just a little example of how level of abstraction sets different fields for artists, and for us as recipients. One can say, "They are different, and that's it." But I don't think that's correct approach. We could say that having a loving parental relationship with a child and having a hair cut are just two different experiences, who can say which one is better. But we don't say such things. While each good art is valuable and has it's place, it is not "just different" from other pieces of art.

What would you say art is for, then? — Brett

Art is for impressing on you a (human) experience through an agent. An agent is a piece of art in its raw, or direct, state - a story you read about or see on a screen or stage, notes you hear, a scene you see on a painting...

Yes, insults prove smarts.

You don't get what good means.

I tend to view art as entertainment — ZhouBoTong

Being entertained is certainly a slice of what you can get through art.

But it's a very small segment out of all experiences you can get. And I would say, among the most shallow, fleeting experiences at that.

If you measure art by the level of how entertained you are, your measuring instrument is not calibrated to measure all there is, but only to measure some there is.

In that case it's baseless for you to claim that you understand art better than people who get all what art provides. You are the one that gets less, not them. It's like colorblind person arguing with people with regular sight, explaining how those more colors they (regular-sighted people) see are in fact something less, not more. Being colorblind is a reduction of capabilities, just like getting one aspect of human experiences out of art.

Art could be said to be raising intellectual insights about art, could it not? — Brett

You could extract insight from anything, essentially. From reading a news article, having a blister on your hand, observing a toddler. And from art too, of course. But that's not what art is for. So, if one only takes some insights from art, he or she is missing on what art provides.

Maybe a metaphor would be seeing a gate of a city, but not the city itself as a whole and with all the details. You still saw something of a city, an outer gate, but you miss everything else about the city. And at the same time, the gate exists because of a city, as a sort of a consequence of building a city, not vice versa.

If this is the best you can do, I should like you to absent yourself from the discussion, as providing nothing of value to it. — tim wood

If your question was the best you can do, you got the best answer. Don't act smart and then cry afterwards.

Presumably God is not himself the destruction of any soul. Therefore if He can destroy any soul, it must be through some agency. With or by what agent does God destroy any soul? — tim wood

Hopefully you won't get to understand it first hand.

Kindly prove you're not insane. — tim wood

The irony.

What is the difference between God and Canada? — Matias

God can destroy your soul. Although some might argue that Canada can too.

But seriously, God can destroy your soul.

If you can't show the math you should not post these conclusions. — 3rdClassCitizen

You don't need me to tell you that when you fart no genius melody comes out of your rear, randomly. It's just a fart, every single time.

I am still waiting for an example of one of the incredible insights anyone has had from reading literature? — ZhouBoTong

Art is not about extracting (intellectual) insights. I guess you do mean insight as an intellectual, logical, deduction. A thought of wisdom of sorts. A moral. Reading a novel is not about extracting an insight, just as having a baby is not about extracting an insight, for example. You could get an insight from a novel, but you could also read a novel to learn a language. That doesn't mean the novel is a language-learning aid. It just means you are using it as such, by skimming a surface from the whole.

While we're at it, I could also use a novel to level a desk, by putting it under one of the desk's legs. And I am still waiting for an example where a DVD with a movie is a sturdier leveler for my desk than the hardcover, 200-page novel.

Gratuitous assertions are not acceptable here. — creativesoul

Based on what I see being presented here, I doubt that's the case.

Anyway, there are many calculations, done by both mathematicians and physicists, which you can research. You don't need me. You can start with understanding what probability is and go from there. I won't even present names you can research, to not be biased. Everybody can have his favorite scientist.

The thing is, various calculations, including one you could ultimately do, vary. But all are pointing towards 0%.

The small probability is incomprehensible for us.

Here's an example of the scope.

There are millions of information in a DNA. They have to be in correct order to produce something meaningful. If they are not in correct order, which is vast amount of possible combinations, they produce nothing. Like a software that has to be correct to produce something, or produces nothing if it's just some random collection of characters in a file. (And there are much more possibilities for garbage file than meaningful code.)

To grasp how improbable DNA creation is, let's not look at millions of information in an order, but at 10-note melody on a piano. How many 10-note melodies are possible on a piano? Answer is, about 60-80 with 18 zeros after. Like 60 000 000 000 000 000 000. To play every single 10-note melody available, it would take about 2 trillion years.

Now, if such a small collection yields such huge possibilities, taking 2 trillion years to execute each, one time, which is another impossibility for random system on top of it, how many possibilities are there to randomly order millions of information in a DNA?

We cannot even comprehend how small probability for functioning DNA is. The presumed age of Earth is about 4 billion years. To play all 10-note melodies on a piano, one after another, one time, takes 500 times longer than this presumed age of the Earth. But DNA is not a collection of 10 notes. It's a collection of millions of information, ordered in correct order (otherwise it produces nothing). Some calculations say probability for random DNA creation is 0.1 to the power of above 100 thousand. 0.1 to the power of 50 can be considered mathematical zero. This is 0.1 to the power of 100000.

And this is only about DNA. We have to include probability of Earth coming to existence, with water and other life-producing elements, etc... On the top there is a probability for a reality, with it's laws, which allows life as we know it to exist, which is mathematical 0% itself...

But you don't even need to do any calculation to grasp the truth of how rarely randomness produces things. You can be aware that randomness produces new complex units of reality at either rate that's almost zero or is absolute zero.

How many outcomes are possible? What are the factors influencing and/or determining each? Are you saying that you need not know the answers to the above two questions in order to know the probability of an outcome? — creativesoul

?

I am saying that you can calculate probability with whatever information you have. That's what method of probability is for. The more information you have, the closest is result to the fact. It's a probability. Not a fact. But when you can calculate, with the information we have, 0% probability, that's game over, although it's still not a fact. It's a probability.

The bit about the probability for us to exist being a mathematical and/or 'absolute' 0% is rubbish. In order to know the probability of an outcome/event one must know all of the influencing factors as well as all of the possible outcomes. — creativesoul

So you are saying that in order to know probability you have to know all?

Then, sorry, but you don't understand what probability is. Probability is method for understanding outcome based on incomplete information. And based on information available to us, which is incomplete, we can calculate probability, because, again, that's what probability is - a calculation of outcome based on incomplete information. And that result, for case in point, is mathematical or absolute 0%.

But can you understand that probability for random-based existence is mathematical or absolute 0% when you don't understand what probability means?

It's easier, by Occam's Razor, to simply accept that this is the way things are. — Unseen

Actually, it is a definition of crazy to accept that one with 0% chance is how things are. Ironically, randomness is one which is magical in your vocabulary, and God, who is the existence, is actually easier to accept. If normal thought is applied.

By the way, you keep mentioning Zeus, for example, in your inquiry about who is God. You should at least be aware that Zeus is a claim for a god in certain sense, just as Michael Jordan is a god to some people, in certain sense. But Zeus is not a claim for God. And God is not a god. At least understand a claim when you pretend to argue about it.

Anyway, it's nonsense piled upon nonsense, starting from first post, and people are reading it and nobody says a thing.

With space highlighting the elitism of speed. — Shamshir

I always suspected there was something snobby about speed.

Rails highlight the elitism of transport. — Shamshir

And transport highlights the elitism of space.

I do think the universe is law driven, but I mean it more literally, in the sense that I think it is will-driven. — bert1

I used to think there is some sort of general or nominal will that drives the universe, or that every piece of universe has some part of that will, or some will. But that's also randomness, in effect. Like a rabbit chewing on a cord, cord breaks and a door that cord held open closes. So, we have a door closing as a result of an action of a conscious being, yet the act of the door closing is random. The same problem remains - probability for us to exist, as a result of randomness, regardless of a form through which randomness executes, is mathematical or absolute 0%.

What is good? Good is what is aligned with the reality.

God is the reality, or the existence. Everything God does is aligned with the existence, since God is the existence and is not constrained by some outside independent force, as such force doesn't exist, which makes every God's action good.

We are a creation of the existence. The existence can create an entity that does things contrary to the existence, and that entity would be doing bad.

We don't have free will, unlike what some other Christians say (no human is perfect). We are not judged based on our will being free or not. We are judged because we are doing things contrary to the existence. Even more so, we are created to do things contrary to the existence and we have no say in the matter, because it's impossible for us to have such say in the matter.

As God can only do good things, since everything He does is aligned with the existence, which is Himself, creating a creation that acts contrary to the existence, and is doing bad, is also a good act by God.

Imagine, if you will, a lab scientist who creates toxic powder in his lab. He has his own purposes to do so, let's say. This powder had no say in whether it wanted to be created and with what characteristics. After the lab scientist got what he wanted from the powder, it is good for lab scientist to destroy that powder since it's toxic. It doesn't matter whether powder had free will or not. Lab scientist had good reason to create it, for his own purpose, and then to destroy it when the purpose is fulfilled. Powder is toxic, but actions of lab scientist in creating and destroying the powder are good.

? During the movie, what you got is shallow experience, and after the movie, you remember the thing nominally, but it's as if you didn't even watch it, it's inconsequential. That's the meaning of "forget a movie 15 minutes later".

I am not interested much in a dialog with you, really... How your memory works is not important factor in this discussion. The experience itself is richer, as you are experiencing it. The example of a movie in a cinema you forget 15 minutes later is about a consequence of having a shallow experience itself.

...the novel is superior to film — Brett

I agree with a lot of what @Janus has written, so I won't repeat. I have also come to conclusion that because of the nature of what art is, some art forms are just limited in format, regardless of how skilled the artist is.

Art communicates something that's beyond it's physical state. To simplify things let's say that art communicates to our imagination. Well, some art formats present too much direct obvious information which doesn't allow our imagination to work much. Like movie, even more so, photograph. The thing is given to you on a plate. A face, a color, a shade, an angle, a move, a speed, a sound.

That's why a lot of movies move you superficially, as many have experienced, having a great time in cinema and then walking out and forgetting what you were seeing just 15 minutes before. Your mind just didn't work much to get it, and it's out of it. Like what a candy, empty calories, does.

But when you read a novel, you are creating along with it, you are working with it much more. So the experience is much more ingrained in you, deeper, richer. Better.

Of course, there are degrees of quality in any art form. Great movie is better than bad novel. But I would say that great movie cannot be better than great novel, simply due to format constraints.

That's why music is so powerful as an art form, too. It's abstract yet relatable. Our minds have no option but to work with it.

With any art form, a great artist is able to create a product that can dance with your mind in a way to extract the most "imaginative work" out of you, so you get the most ingrained experience. Both artist and you are humans, both of you bleed, dream and die. What best artists are able to do, in a way, is to get closest to the core of what human is within their piece of work, making a piece which ends up communicating with your mind, through your imagination, like a glove to a hand.

Now, as Janus mentions in one of the posts, it's a feedback system of sorts. It is not only about the piece of art, but about your mind that works with it. It does take a certain exposure, certain "training" or "getting used to", certain experience, to be able to receive the art the most. Especially the greatest art, since there's greatest intricacy in it. Probably even an attitude of humbleness to receive is needed. But it's not about intelligence, as I see it.

Great observations.

I guess I'm out of this roundabout.

What do you mean by "would be"? — Unseen

I meant - it would be if this is random-based reality.

In that sense, regarding your ethical question, one from the OP I guess, in random-based reality everything exists and ceases to exist, ultimately, randomly. There are no principles of survival that govern such reality. So there is no need to be puzzled why we would have this or that. We would have it just because. And it would be to our advantage or disadvantage just because. Like some presumably failed species, in evolution story, that randomly got some attributes which put them on the path to extinction.

Now, if you see that this is a purpose-based reality, question becomes, "Why did God give us consciousness?" You don't ask that question because you assume there is no God, but that's absolutely illogical assumption.

Art is not just man made, all animals have their arts. — Schzophr

I especially enjoy African goose special haiku. Marabou storks are up there too. But man, even masters like Taneda or Samukawa don't hold a candle to what male African goose can produce while in heat. But that's my opinion.