Is this art?


jts

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Michael,

I don’t get what you mean by Roark being rude to Keating. I don’t recall that. Did you have a particular scene in mind?

(On getting all posts back into the search, glad to hear you will be trying for it.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Concerning the ape face, yes, it is an up-front aggressive expression of hostility towards people here, perhaps towards Objectivist types in general, perhaps towards people in general. It is in discussion context rude and expressive of hostility, whether Mr. Story realizes it or not, intends it or not, or cares.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

William,

Thanks for the good piece on the principle of charity of interpretation in the philosophic community.

Ah!--the influence of The Planet of the Apes lives on and Tarzan's is gone. (I don't think King Kong is a factor.)

--Brant

me Tarzan, you Jane, let's go swimming! ~~NAKED~~

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Michael, yes, those scenes sound familiar, and I see what you mean.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PS

"Really, Howard, you don't have to look at it like that. There's no limit to how far you can go with us [Francon & Heyer], once you get used to it. You'll see, for a change, what a real office looks like. After Cameron's dump . . ."

"We'll shut up about that, Peter, and we'll do it damn fast."

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Stephen,

I would have to look it up, but there were times when Keating said something and Roark responded with one-liners like, "Cut the compliments." Or even would tell him to shut up (but not in those words). I'm going on memory, but an image is nagging at the corner of my mind where Keating (or someone) got snide about Henry Cameron and Roark became rude about it.

By rude in this context, I mean barking out one-liner orders to be obeyed imediately by the person he is addressing.

As a response to a specific person for a specific act, I can see it working. Just showing up and barking out orders to people in general gives an entirely different impression. That, in my book, is aping the gesture and missing the essence.

Michael

Something like, "We won't talk about Cameron"?

--Brant

to the Dean?

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Deanna Delancey,

You said “this kind of reality.”* I get the impression from Rand that she would have regarded these as decorative arts, like fabric patterns or wallpaper. She seemed to want to reserve art for arts that did express metaphysical value judgments, at least unconsciously, and she didn’t think that every beautiful artifice did that. I expect fireworks displays would be another beautiful thing she would have thought not art under her definition. I don’t have a problem with trying to isolate with a definition a subclass of re-creations of reality and giving them special significance and a special name art, but the list of what Rand was able to imagine for metaphysical value judgments looks to me an incomplete list. Then too, it seems doubtful there will be always a sharp line as to how far a re-creation of reality could depart from a reality it has reformed and still qualify as a re-creation of reality in her conception for that phrase.

Mr. Story’s outset questions for this thread are good. I’ve written a little now on Rand’s conception of literary art (flaws in that conception noted) here. Hope to follow up in that thread with similar treatment for her attempts on visual arts and music in about three weeks. (Working on completing “Capturing Quantity,” at OL, first.*)

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Stephen,

Maybe you won't agree (or maybe you will), but in my understanding, "metaphysical value judgment" for Rand was intimately tied to the notion of human conceptual volition. Despite it being unconscious when operating.

As I understand it, decorative patterns would be judged by her through that filter. The impossibility of using them to arrive at anything resembling a goal a volitional awareness could project and fulfill (or not) would be a deal-killer for her to call it art. Whenever decorative patterns were presented as art, like with modern art, she tended to go ballistic. :smile:

Except in her early years. I recall reading a comment by one of the big libertarian guns (Doherty? Block? I can't remember) giving a quote from Rand. I think it was a passage cut from We The Living, but maybe not. She talked about the modern art that snuck into Russia and enticed people with the promise of the West with its gaity and laugher in dancing forms and carefree colors. Those aren't the exact words, but it was something like that. I tried to find a link just now and couldn't.

(mulling and time passing...)

Ah! Voila!

I found it right here on OL from 2006: Ayn Rand's Left-Libertarian Legacy. That's the OL link. The author is Roderick T. Long and here is his blog link by the same name. (Man was I off! :smile: )

I"m giving the quote below, but I'm cutting out Long's disparaging remarks about Rand so we can look purely at her and her thinking and not so much at him:

... in an early draft of We the Living, Rand wrote admiringly of the infiltration of Western abstract imagery into Soviet Russia: “laughing, defiant broken lines and circles cutting triangles, and triangles splitting squares, the new art coming through some crack in the impenetrable barrier.” So it seems she was not always immune to the expressive power of abstract art. Indeed, the entire Fountainhead could be seen as a hymn to abstract art – a fact that reportedly (and unfortunately) led her in later and more rigidified life to repudiate the account of architectural art she had defended in the novel.


Note that for the Rand quote, Long linked to The Early Ayn Rand, which was publshed directly under the eye of Peikoff.

Michael

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Update: here's another 2006 discussion on OL about that passage from Long: Modern art.

I didn't mention my view on art in my previous post, so I might as well right now. My concept has grown over the years, especially with my readings in neuroscience, marketing and psychology (and some aesthetics--including a lot of stuff on writing).

It's a broad concept that nests Rand's view in it, but also has space for a whole lot more.

On skimming that thread over just now, I'm struck at how much has not changed here in O-Land. :)

Michael

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Thanks for the “laughing, defiant” quotation. I take Peter’s #14 to heart.

In this draft material cut from We the Living 1936, Kira is at a bookstore, where she asks for any foreign magazines. The clerk tells her there are none and directs her to the state propaganda ones available and to the novels available as well, which are also communist state propaganda. It is the latter Kira is looking at in this description:

The shelves were bright with white covers and red letters, white letters and red covers—on cheap, brownish paper and with laughing, defiant broken lines and circles cutting triangles, and triangles slitting squares, the new art coming through some crack in the impenetrable barrier, from the new world beyond the borders, whose words could not reach the little store where a picture of Lenin winked slyly at Kira, from a sign: “State Publishing House.”

By he way, about “cheap, brownish paper,” one thing in very short supply in those years was paper. The Rockefeller Foundation sent them some.

When Rand was writing We the Living, I’m sure art was used for works of abstract art just as now. And it is unlikely Rand had her later theory of fine art at that time. She is giving some purpose—breaking bounds—to the graphic art on the covers, which as Peter remarked, probably had lineage with fine art in the West. She was putting forth that purpose for part of her own message in the novel. (Similarly, one can ascribe purpose, especially moods, to weather for the decoration of relationships and events underway in a novel.)

In the passage, Rand has her Kira also find delight in the layouts, not only symbolism. That same delight is in Fountainhead. From an essay* of mine:

Enright House is sited on a broad space on the East River. The first impression one gets of it is “a rising mass of rock crystal” (ET IV 249). On a planar ground, Roark is playing with planes struck into being by man for function with beauty.

Marks of man come not only in straight line and plane figure, for purpose and beauty. The service station Roark designs for Jimmy Gowan is without straight line. Its design is a study in circles, a harmony of bubbles paused as if only until the next instant of wind. One stops for gas, perhaps food or drink at the diner, then resumes travel. Flow of traffic and its brief respite is one suggestion of this design. Then too, these forms sound the flow of fuel and a human gaiety, “the hard bracing gaiety of efficiency” (PK XIII 165).

I couldn’t say from the passage in We the Living if Rand would have liked the fine art as fine art that she seemed to indicate was behind the likable graphic design of the book covers. And I don’t know, of course, what inkling she might have had on the reasons for her preferences concerning such visual fine art at the time she was writing WL.

Then too, we require specific art to try to analyze using Rand’s mature thought about the arts (or using the esthetic theory of anyone else).* It helps when she names names or styles. Concerning Cubism, she said its aim was disintegration of consciousness. To talk about aim is slightly off the mark, I would say, in the first place. What one of my poems means is not only what I meant it to mean; it is also whatever other meaning one might find in it that is entirely well-fitting with what the poem says. One can talk about meaning in a painting or sculpture constrained only by what is there and what it evokes at various levels of awareness. One can make one’s case for meaning in a particular Cubist painting without talk about the artist’s intentions. One can argue by what is there that a certain modern or contemporary painting does disrupt integration of such-and-such and does effect such-and-such purpose, without needing to know those were what the artist was after.

Metaphysical value judgments can be a necessary part of analytical bases without being psychoanalytical of the artist, I would suggest.

I’ll have to think about metaphysical value judgments’ tie to “the notion of human conceptual volition” as I complete that essay on Rand’s uses of the concept integration at OO. For now I better get back to Carey’s book for “Capturing Quantity” here at OL.

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Can we say with some justification that in her esthetics especially is implicit psychologizing of the imagined reader who, in thrall already with her work and philosophy, in turn pychologizes him-her self usually with negative consequences and that this assumption can be generalized to the philosophy as a whole and that Rand also in turn can be pychologized as creating a philosophy by creating a different, controllable world for it (and her characters)--hence a cult that both attracts and repels?

--Brant

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She is giving some purpose—breaking bounds—to the graphic art on the covers, which as Peter remarked, probably had lineage with fine art in the West. She was putting forth that purpose for part of her own message in the novel. (Similarly, one can ascribe purpose, especially moods, to weather for the decoration of relationships and events underway in a novel.)

Indeed. Humans can see all sorts of human characteristics in things like weather and lines and shapes and colors, and that's why we create art which contains those things for the purpose of expressing human characteristics.

Then too, we require specific art to try to analyze using Rand’s mature thought about the arts (or using the esthetic theory of anyone else).* It helps when she names names or styles. Concerning Cubism, she said its aim was disintegration of consciousness. To talk about aim is slightly off the mark, I would say, in the first place. What one of my poems means is not only what I meant it to mean; it is also whatever other meaning one might find in it that is entirely well-fitting with what the poem says. One can talk about meaning in a painting or sculpture constrained only by what is there and what it evokes at various levels of awareness. One can make one’s case for meaning in a particular Cubist painting without talk about the artist’s intentions. One can argue by what is there that a certain modern or contemporary painting does disrupt integration of such-and-such and does effect such-and-such purpose, without needing to know those were what the artist was after.

And Rand was wrong that Cubism had the aim of disintegrating man's consciousness. That was only her own peculiar, frantic interpretation of its aims.

J

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Brant, concerning #34:

Anyone who wants to communicate will work with some ideas of what the mind of a hearer, viewer, or reader is like. The types of influence that novelists go for through the communications of their works seems pretty diverse. By the time of Atlas, it was a notably comprehensive influence on the life of the individual reader Rand tried for (much more than in We the Living). She had some nonfiction writing for general audiences thereafter, but overwhelmingly, her nonfiction writing was, as you suggest, tailored to readers captivated in a positive way by Atlas. Surely she would know that part of why that nonfiction audience would continue to read her nonfiction was because she would continue to give them some of the style they had liked so much in Atlas. That is, she would know that they knew that this was the same mind and artist they liked speaking to them. But that continuity, along with the continuity of ideology between the fiction and nonfiction writings, would not free her from needing, for that audience, to make the case for her esthetics theory and other theories by marshalling supporting reasons for them in the nonfiction writings. And I gather she would not have wanted it otherwise.

I don’t think that most followers of Rand’s nonfiction would be amenable to reforming themselves into a conception put forth in her nonfiction simply because they were in thrall of her works and philosophy; no readers I have known personally were like that, but maybe I was only connected to the upper half of the class. They would require that the reasons Rand put forth stood up to their own reason. Novelists, on the other hand, have more sway over readers’ reformations of themselves by inspiration. My first lover would say novels teach one how to feel. But even there, readers can think it through in their own experience and understanding of life. I think of the closing scene of Camus’ The Stranger.

As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the benign indifference of the universe. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

That gives the reader a perspective likely never seen before. The reader may become a little new on account of it, but the reader will generally have to tailor it for usefulness in their own understanding of life.

I ran into a classmate of mine from engineering school a few months after graduation. In our course on professional engineering, which included engineering ethics, our first assignment had been to read The Fountainhead. Those months later, the classmate was urgent to bring up the topic of that book when he saw me. He told me that it had got him thinking and making some alterations to himself. That was particularly on account of the character Peter Keating. There were some things in Peter he had seen in himself and did not like, so he was making some changes. Here too, there seemed to be a lot of real world (his world) pondering going on.

I don’t think philosophers just rationalize their own psychology. Nietzsche was wrong about that, along with most everything else. People are not free to think without connection to their previous understanding, including understanding of themselves, but they are free to rethink, learn, and remake to a significant degree.

(Good to see you with pistons firing.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jonathan,

I would say that its aims, meaning the artist’s and art-movement's aims, are rightly secondary for receivers of the art in their experience and thinking about a work (when they do want to think about the art and analyze their experience---certainly not the main objective for me when I go to the gallery). What is in the work itself and what can be sensibly and coherently made of what it does or conveys on that basis would seem rightly more important for the receiver. Anyway, that is certainly a legitimate way of reflection by the receiver. True, there can be some sameness between what an artist puts forth and what is received. But I doubt there is necessarily only one extensively fitting interpretation of a work, or that one should to be looking for only one such alternative.

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Jonathan,

I would say that its aims, meaning the artist’s and art-movement's aims, are rightly secondary for receivers of the art in their experience and thinking about a work (when they do want to think about the art and analyze their experience---certainly not the main objective for me when I go to the gallery). What is in the work itself and what can be sensibly and coherently made of what it does or conveys on that basis would seem rightly more important for the receiver. Anyway, that is certainly a legitimate way of reflection by the receiver. True, there can be some sameness between what an artist puts forth and what is received. But I doubt there is necessarily only one extensively fitting interpretation of a work, or that one should to be looking for only one such alternative.

I agree. I don't think that an artist's intentions should necessarily be important to a receiver, but I think that Objectivism does place a lot of importance on artworks communicating artists' intended meanings -- or at least communicating a single, objective meaning, whether the artist consciously intended it or not. Rand's belief seems to have been that all of the content/evidence presented in an artwork objectively added up to one and only one correct interpretation, that she was capable or unerringly identifying that correct interpretation for all art forms, and that her interpretations were so objective and reliable that she could divine not only artists' aesthetic intentions but their epistemological purposes.

It's nice to hear that you reject that mindset.

J

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Re art's "aims" (see J's #35)...

There's a SOLO thread going called "Another Reason Modern Art Is Rubbish."

The current most-recent post quotes from a lecture appearing on the front page of the Art Renewal Center's website - link.

"Our children, going supposedly to the finest universities in the world, being taught by professors with Bachelors or Arts, Masters of Arts, Masters of Fine Arts, Masters of Art Education ... even Doctoral degrees, our children instead have been subjected to methodical brain-washing and taught to deny the evidence of their own senses.

[..] And what was that discovery for which they have been raised above Bouguereau, exalted over Gérôme, and celebrated beyond Ingres, David, Constable, Fragonard, Van Dyck, and Gainsborough or Poussin? Why in fact were they heralded to the absolute zenith ... the tiptop of human achievement ... being worthy even of placement shoulder to shoulder on pedestals right beside Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Caravaggio, Vermeer and Raphael? What did they do? Why were they glorified practically above all others that ever went before them? Ladies and gentleman, they proved ... amazing, incredible, and fantastic as it may seem, they proved that the canvas was flat ... flat and very thin ... skinny ... indeed, not even shallow, lacking any depth or meaning whatsoever.

And the flatter that they proved it to be the greater they were exalted. Cezanne collapsed the landscape, Matisse flattened our homes and our families, and Pollock, Rothko and de Kooning placed it all in a blender and splattered it against the wall. They made even pancakes look fat and chunky by comparison. But this was only part of the breathtaking breakthroughs of modernism ... and their offshoots flourished. Abstract expressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, minimalism, ColorField, Conceptual, op-art, pop-art and post modernism ... and to understand it all ... to understand, took very special people indeed, since the mass of humanity was too ignorant and stupid to understand. Like that famous advertisement in the NY Times said so many years ago ... Bad art ... or Good art? You be the judge, indeed."

.

Comments, J? (or anyone, but I'm especially curious as to Jonathan's opinion of the description)

Ellen

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Re art's "aims" (see J's #35)...

There's a SOLO thread going called "Another Reason Modern Art Is Rubbish."

The current most-recent post quotes from a lecture appearing on the front page of the Art Renewal Center's website - link.

"Our children, going supposedly to the finest universities in the world, being taught by professors with Bachelors or Arts, Masters of Arts, Masters of Fine Arts, Masters of Art Education ... even Doctoral degrees, our children instead have been subjected to methodical brain-washing and taught to deny the evidence of their own senses.

[..] And what was that discovery for which they have been raised above Bouguereau, exalted over Gérôme, and celebrated beyond Ingres, David, Constable, Fragonard, Van Dyck, and Gainsborough or Poussin? Why in fact were they heralded to the absolute zenith ... the tiptop of human achievement ... being worthy even of placement shoulder to shoulder on pedestals right beside Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Caravaggio, Vermeer and Raphael? What did they do? Why were they glorified practically above all others that ever went before them? Ladies and gentleman, they proved ... amazing, incredible, and fantastic as it may seem, they proved that the canvas was flat ... flat and very thin ... skinny ... indeed, not even shallow, lacking any depth or meaning whatsoever.

And the flatter that they proved it to be the greater they were exalted. Cezanne collapsed the landscape, Matisse flattened our homes and our families, and Pollock, Rothko and de Kooning placed it all in a blender and splattered it against the wall. They made even pancakes look fat and chunky by comparison. But this was only part of the breathtaking breakthroughs of modernism ... and their offshoots flourished. Abstract expressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, minimalism, ColorField, Conceptual, op-art, pop-art and post modernism ... and to understand it all ... to understand, took very special people indeed, since the mass of humanity was too ignorant and stupid to understand. Like that famous advertisement in the NY Times said so many years ago ... Bad art ... or Good art? You be the judge, indeed."

.

Comments, J? (or anyone, but I'm especially curious as to Jonathan's opinion of the description)

Ellen

It sounds very Randian, especially the bit about children being "subjected to methodical brain-washing" and being "taught to deny the evidence of their own senses." If anything, modern art was about getting more in touch with the "evidence of the senses."

The quotes that you provided are the typical gripe, both in style and content, that comes from people who don't grasp the expressiveness of the compositional/relational aspects of visual art, who are upset that others claim to experience what they don't, and who are adamantly opposed to learning anything about it. Look at the anger expressed toward the end of the third paragraph. The writer appears to be very upset that he is not one of the "special people" who are capable of understanding.

Not that I agree that one needs to be "special" to understand; one just needs to not be visually deficient, and one needs to avoid willfully refusing to see what others are talking about because one is emotionally invested in one's theories about what is proper art. I would say that anyone who can be taught to appreciate the abstract forms of music, dance and architecture can also be taught to appreciate abstract visual art in the same way, as long the person being taught isn't bent on heroically impeding himself from learning anything.

J

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Objectification in art seems to me to be applicable to techniques not final consequences to them. Or, here's a better way to do something. If not, then one gets esthetic fascism and the killing off of exploration and experimentation. If you don't like it don't buy it; let the starving artists starve.

--Brant

don't worry; they can walk to McDonalds and order a McDouble for a buck and tax, even work there

(humanitarian--really!)

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Objectification in art seems to me to be applicable to techniques not final consequences to them. Or, here's a better way to do something. If not, then one gets esthetic fascism and the killing off of exploration and experimentation. If you don't like it don't buy it; let the starving artists starve.

I don't think that Randians or those at the ARC have that much power. I don't think that their "aesthetic fascism" really has much of an effect, at least not the effect they intend. I think that anyone who agrees with their silliness wasn't very likely to be doing a lot of creative exploration and experimentation in the first place, so it's unlikely that creativity was "killed off" in them. They never had it to begin with.

To me, the more important issue is that the irrationality of the ARC's and Objectivists' condemnations of abstract art is internally inconsistent with their own aesthetic theories, and that makes the ARC and Objectivists look very foolish and emotion-driven. The simple act of testing their theories by applying their rules consistently across all art forms reveals blatant double standards, and it shows how laughable their condemnations are.

When tested with actual works of visual art, the "mass of humanity" that the ARC says "was too ignorant and stupid to understand" abstract art is actually too ignorant and stupid to understand realistic landscapes, still lifes and genre paintings. When denied access to what Rand called "outside considerations," the masses can't identify meanings in most works of art.

The ARC and Objectivists just haven't thought their ideas through very carefully, and, that, in combination with their self-certainty and self-righteousness, just makes them look amateurish and aesthetically backward. With Objectivists, it has the additional negative effect of potentially tainting the rest of Objectivism in some people's minds.

J

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William,

Thanks for the good piece on the principle of charity of interpretation in the philosophic community.

Thank you, Stephen, I appreciate it. When I asked MSK above to forgive me for the cut/paste, and whined about cramp and a discussion elsewhere I did not add enough detail

Michael, I should have been more clear. When I asked forgiveness for the cut-and-paste, whining about cramp and a long discussion day elsewhere, I was talking about the a struggle to have me removed from that other place I have discussions at.

Here is what stopped me from writing a long post in to MSK's detailed and intriguing comments above.

The other discussion is about the same thing here: Linguistic Charity, newcomers being welcome, and who has the right to be in a place or not, what and of course, What is WSS's aim and how dangerous he is to be loose. I know MSK will get a kick out of the bottom parts.

Now that I have better explained why I put the cut and paste above, from my POV, I again ask MSK to forgive me.

My questions to you were also sincere: why does the newcomer get such shit when the oldtimers are let go with a caution? Who is worse and why ...

I think MSK and I agree on the basics, and it hurts to be assumed insincere, game-playing, avoidant at this place. I try and I fail to do the right thing, and to treat people with Charity; Charity is something not guaranteed, of course, nor should be. Sometimes Man is very cruel to Man, including me.

I apologize to Jerry Story unreservedly for the terrible things I have said about him as a person. This is a good engaging thread, and was engendered by your first entry. I am glad when he triggers good discussion, and I am glad that our (apparent) Newcomer friend who slagged Jerry is still in a commentator coma.

It was your praise of Jerry's entry, Stephen, that was most encouraging to me. I allowed me to better understand the dynamics of Newcomer versus the Tribe.

This entry from the 'busy day elsewhere' place by a (crypto)Newcomer to Syria Comment further explains my rather cryptic note above. This old progressive cut/paste/ avoidant nitpicker is secretly a member of a Rand cult. Now we all know. Nice Stalking with you all.

Love, Charity, Rational Inquiry and good pickings to all here, or rather, to those who deserve it by their value to me. I am not an Altruist, after all. I am in it for myself, rationally self-interested.

"Fountainhead" Bill

83. REVENIRE said:

It has come to my attention that rabid anti-Syrian William Scott Scherk is a member of Ayn Rand’s cult of Objectivism.

We wonder if Bill is advocating replacing “Assadism” with Objectivism? Somehow I doubt very many Syrians would go along with being led by the evil philosophy of a woman who was a totally insane drug addict – a speed freak.

http://theweek.com/article/index/203764/ayn-rand-speed-addict

“There was her 30-year use of amphetamines, beginning with Benzedrine in 1942, as she was rushing to complete The Fountainhead, and continuing with Dexedrine and Dexamyl into the 1970s. Until now it has been described as a two-pill-a-day prescription for weight control, but evidence in Heller’s book indicates that it wasn’t seen that way by everyone. As early as 1945, her then-close friend, journalist Isabel Paterson, was berating her in letters with passages such as, ‘Stop taking that benzedrine, you idiot. I don’t care what excuse you have — stop it.’ Heller presents other evidence that Rand had periods of heavy use in the 1950s and ’60s. But the exact extent of her dependence on amphetamines is peripheral here to the broader self-delusion. As anyone who has had the experience knows, a good way to get a really, really distorted sense of reality is to swallow a couple of Dexedrines. If you want to take them anyway, don’t go around bragging that you never ‘fake reality in any manner.’”

“Anthem” Bill doesn’t like to mention these uncomfortable facts about his life.

“Fountainhead” Bill isn’t even Syrian but he has developed a rather large hard-on for President Assad.

https://twitter.com/wsscherk/status/287885034017402880

“William Scott Scherk @wsscherk

@rallaf — I felt that repulsion in my guts, and I am not Syrian. The arrogance was appalling, horrifying.”

What the heck is a Canadian ex-punk rock has-been who pretends to be an intellectual sticking his nose into Syria for? A hobby? An odd one. Passion? Not from a Rand devotee.

Ironic that some of the most jackal-like people that hate Syria are not even Syrian.

Now we know where the hubris comes from Bill: being a member of Rand’s cult.

1_14_gray_up.png6 1_14_gray_down.png22

January 6th, 2013, 12:04 pm

Edited by william.scherk
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Jonathan ... is this Art or Objectikitsch or what? I trust your judgement here on all matters art-ish.

RQWf.png

SjNu.jpeg

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83. REVENIRE said:

It has come to my attention that rabid anti-Syrian William Scott Scherk is a member of Ayn Rand’s cult of Objectivism.

Ah-Ha! So you are a 'Rand devotee'!!! And I bet you're a card carrying member of Neil Parille's faction. That refutes everything you'll ever say on any subject.

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Ninth, I am feeling some cognitive dissonance, me. If you are right ... mein gott.

Back to the bed to whine some more, and spin in confusion. Thanks, he said crampily.

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Jonathan ... is this Art or Objectikitsch or what? I trust your judgement here on all matters art-ish.

RQWf.png

SjNu.jpeg

It's Art, but it's not Objectikitsch. The bottom image has elements of Objectikitsch, but not enough to qualify -- it would have to have no traces of darkness or conflict to be Objectikitsch. You know, radiantly sunlit universe, figures leaping and bounding about naked with head thrown back in joy, angel wings, kittens and butterflies, etc.

J

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William your second one in #43 reminded me of a painting I once saw in person. I mean in subject, I was reminded of it. But in artistry, the painting I saw was far better. That painting is The Spirits of French Heroes Welcomed by Ossian into Odin's Paradise by Anne-Louis Girodet. It is stunning, quite an experience in person, even though it is propaganda and mystical.

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Btw, Bill, do you want to be intellectual heirs together with me? I'll be yours if you'll be mine. What do you say?

J

I think that is a great idea, Jonathan. We can exchange the necessary documents privately. Look for a note in your inbox under the rubric "You are hysterical."

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