>is photorealistic painting (when a painting looks as though it were a photograph) the best art? because it contains the best skill at imitating reality?

Imitating reality is not the only skill. I can look at e.g. Seurat and see that it takes more skill to produce something that looks like that than to do a photorealistic version of the same scene.

>Lastly, here's an interesting spin on modern art: it has a greater effect on you than regular art does. You've probably had a lot of conversations about modern art but little about real art. And it has a greater emotional effect on people (generally anger or disdain) than regular art, which usually leads to boredom

Sounds exactly like trolls on the internet.