Comment by LEDThereBeLight
14 hours ago
It is this way with all art. If you ask someone to describe a work which is “good art” or “well designed”, it usually takes longer to describe than things which are considered too simple (easily compressed) and also longer to describe than things which are considered too random (easily compressed). But not all things which take this Goldilocks amount of words to describe are considered well designed, just some of them. So art is also more than that.
How does this handle modern art which is very incompressible too? If we take your hypothesis then one could say modern art isn't good, which some do say.
There are things that can not be expressed in words, but which can still be expressed. Some of modern art lives within that gap.
Even traditional art often tries to do more than compress concepts, it tries to express the inexpressible.
Linguistic determinism/relativity (Sapir-Worf, etc) explains some of it. People can FEEL that their thoughts are being constrained by language, but they don't know how to express that and maybe don't even consciously realize that it's their real problem. They just figure out that art makes it feel a little better so they do art.
Yes, modern art is literal trash with no redeemable qualities.