Whenever I have a philosophical conversation with an artist, invariably we end up talking about reductionism, with the artist insisting that if they give up on some irreducible notion, they feel their art will suffer. I've heard, from some of the world's best artists, notions ranging from "magic" to "perfection" to "muse" to "God."

It seems similar to the notion of free will, where the human algorithm must always insist it is capable of thinking about itself on level higher. The artist must always think of his art one level higher, and try to tap unintentional sources of inspiration. Nonreductionist views of either are confusions about how an algorithm feels on the inside.

I don't think it is complexity that makes art. I think it is emotion/feeling. Emotion/feeling may look like complexity to the rational mind because it does arise from a complex system which can be figured out bit by bit by the rational mind. But the essence of art is not to love anything that is complex and hard for the rational mind to figure out, but rather to focus on the feelings produced, the gestalt, the irrational, emotional connections and reactions.

What about artists who think that reducing things to their bare essentials is the essence of art? Or styles like - well, broadly speaking, anime (or caricatures in general) - that are based on the emphasis of certain basic forms? Or writers like Eric Hoffer - "Wordiness is a sickness of American writing. Too many words dilute and blur ideas. [...] If you have nothing to say and want badly to say it, then all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice." ?