Apples - Rand on Still Life Paintings, Plus


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Disclaimer: I have no credentials related to art, art history, or art appreciation. I have never taken a class beyond what was required in high school, and I'm pretty sure my scrapbooking doesn't really count.

Doesn't your scrapbooking include artistic effects? From what I've seen of modern scrapbooking, it's very artistic.

J

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But I still think that the Objectivist Esthetics does require precise knowledge of the artist's intentions, since it demands that art must communicate (communication is the act of successfully conveying intended information from one party to another) and that viewers be able to identify the "artist's meaning." Anything which fails to deliver an intelligible message of precisely intended meaning "ceases to be art" according to Objectivism, and anything which was not intended to precisely convey a specific "metaphysical" meaning could not qualify.

I agree that the Objectivist Esthetics does require as you say, but the Randian trap I was warning against is that of accepting the specified requirements. You seemed to me to be accepting these requirements yourself. I gather from your subsequent remarks that you were using Rand's requirements "for the sake of argument," to point out problems IF they're accepted.

Ellen

Yes, I'm saying that I do not agree with those Objectivist Esthetic requirements, but that I'm using them for the sake of argument. I'm saying that if we were to accept the the Objectivist Esthetics as valid, then we would have to find some means outside of artworks to verify Rand's and other Objectivists' conclusions and judgments of the art and its creators. Their assertions of being right are not enough.

J

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Disclaimer: I have no credentials related to art, art history, or art appreciation. I have never taken a class beyond what was required in high school, and I'm pretty sure my scrapbooking doesn't really count.

Doesn't your scrapbooking include artistic effects? From what I've seen of modern scrapbooking, it's very artistic.

J

Said tongue-in-cheek. Yes, it is very much my chosen form of artistic expression.

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He could have had a beautiful landscape, glimpsed through an open door.

Which would ruin the focus of the light on the stream of milk and the bread loaves.

Reposting the links I gave:

Here and here are a couple sites where you can see an image.

The first one is more accurate to the color. The warm yellow of the upper part of the woman's garment, the sumptuous blue of her skirt and of the cloth draped on the table are washed out in the image from the Rijksmuseum. Also, the glow of the bread and sheen of the milk. In general, the second image is washed out, but it has the advantage that you can stretch it larger to get more of the detail.

Ellen

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He could have had a beautiful landscape, glimpsed through an open door.

Which would ruin the focus of the light on the stream of milk and the bread loaves.

Ellen

You're being serious, right? Or is that some dry wit? Gawd, Ellen, it's a f'rinstance, I made. In order to obviate listing all actual, possible and imaginable differentiae of the genus 'Backgrounds'.

There 'could' be many alternatives that balance out and cancel the over all impression of listless service or of stolid servitude by a bored-looking lass in a humble room.

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He could have had a beautiful landscape, glimpsed through an open door.

Which would ruin the focus of the light on the stream of milk and the bread loaves.

Ellen

You're being serious, right? Or is that some dry wit? Gawd, Ellen, it's a f'rinstance, I made. In order to obviate listing all actual, possible and imaginable differentiae of the genus 'Backgrounds'.

There 'could' be many alternatives that balance out and cancel the over all impression of listless service or of stolid servitude by a bored-looking lass in a humble room.

Why all this folderol to merely say you don't like a painting you presume to improve upon?

I have a bunch of paintings by one artist I like. They didn't cost all that much. They are now worth a little less. Now dead she won't be making any more. If you came to my home and started estheticizing on them I'd ask you to leave. If you told me they were immoral somehow, I'd get really nasty.

The attempt to inject overt philosophy into esthetics is an obectivizing attack on subjective preferences or cultural fascism, an attack on individual creation and taste, especially the former. Maybe most of it is mediocre or crap. I suspect so, but have yet to mount an investigation lacking interest in revulsion. You can explain why you like or dislike something qua esthetics but qua philosophy only if qua your own personal philosophy, not anyone else's and certainly not as a universal the way Ayn Rand liked to run at the subject. (Of course she was so smart it can be smart to study what she said. In that sense there is an "Objectivist Esthetics," it's just not Objectivism which is only four basic principles, three sequentially linking individualism to the reality first one.)

Whether it is extant in a culture or not, philosophy is what should be, not just what it is. Esthetics, psychology, history, language, science, etc. are all about what is. The only proper relationship therefore to (Objectivist) philosophy of all these other things is what is true--objectively true if one prefers redundancy (for there is only one truth and His name is Reality). In art it's what the artist wants, one, and what the consumer wants, two. What you want as an esthetician, if ye be one, is what they want too, plus study and understanding and teaching--what is.

95 or more percent of the Objectivist philosophy commonly understood is not philosophy at all but cultural add-ons. You can call the mismash the subjectivist "Objectivist" philosophy of Ayn Rand, but it's not "Objectivism" just because she called it that.

--Brant

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These recurring brush-fires over this or that painting, on how it relates to Objectivism, are almost always fascinating. I love Tony's contributions to this forum, but his willingness to second guess Vermeer is almost comical. Really, there is no statutory requirement that I am aware of that requires an Objectivist to opine about art, but it's almost as though they can't help themselves.

Stoicism dominated the ancient world as the reigning philosophy for at least a couple of hundred years--and in a way Objectivists could only dream of. As far as I can tell, there was no "Stoic" way of looking at paintings. Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations--still highly relevant to life's challenges after 2000 years--and there is not a single critique of a painting in there. Same for Epictetus and Seneca.

How could this be? One almost gets the impression that a Stoic theory of esthetics was not necessary for the philosophy to dominate the then known Western world.

Jonathan is right. Objectivism was formed by an artist first, and a philospher second. There is a key insight in there.

Add on top of Jonathan's insight an additional somewhat crude fact: Rand wrote most of her artistic pronouncements near the end of her career, i.e., when she was something of a cranky old lady. If you think this is irrelevant to the overall tone of wave-of-the-hand-dismissiveness that pervades her pronouncements, then I would lke you to spend an hour or two with my mother-in-law.

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Ayn Rand as a "cranky old lady" could only apply to her after she moved back to NYC and wrote the last third of Atlas Shrugged, possibly as a consequence of writing Galt's speech, and might have not even manifested itself until the after publication Random House wine-and-dine publicity machine had moved on to other things and she became depressed in the decompression of the real world out there compared to the intensity of writing and meetings of The Collective and her affair with Nathaniel Branden. Coming out of that depression, in the early 1960s, is best described as her "cranky" period and it seems her sex life must have been pretty much over too, being contrived from the beginning with her adultrey. One might also speculate about a novelist out of novels to write. The creation and projection of an "ideal man" could not withstand any real life fleshing out so it hit a dead end with her most abstract hero. Pretending Nathaniel Branden was John Galt with a "few flaws" was, frankly, a no-go in spite of his mighty efforts to keep up appearances.

Regardless, her artistic-creative life after California was mostly out of inertia for her great novel was finished in her head long before the writing was over. This is because it was writing "by the numbers" instead of going with the flow except when it came to the "Wet Nurse."

--Brant

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Jonathan is right. Objectivism was formed by an artist first, and a philospher second. There is a key insight in there.

Add on top of Jonathan's insight an additional somewhat crude fact: Rand wrote most of her artistic pronouncements near the end of her career, i.e., when she was something of a cranky old lady. If you think this is irrelevant to the overall tone of wave-of-the-hand-dismissiveness that pervades her pronouncements, then I would lke you to spend an hour or two with my mother-in-law.

But Rand didn't form her basic views on art "near the end of her career," and she was already repressive about art at the time when Barbara and Nathaniel met her - i.e., in 1950.

Speaking of which repressiveness, see the next post. (I'm glad to have this one fall at the bottom of a page so I can start a new page with the next.)

Ellen

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I found an old post of mine which I like so well I want to re-post it in full, both here and on the "To Barbara Branden With Love" thread.

Explanation of why I was looking for this post will follow separately.

Dear Ellen -- thank you.You wrote: "I see the similarities in her own writing to his." That fascinates me, because I see them, but no one else ever has. Of course, practically no one today reads Wolfe. Do you care to say what you see?

Barbara,I'm so surprised at your saying that "no one else ever has." No one else? To me, it seems so obvious, the sense of rhythm, of image, of cadence of words, and of the searching...for that ineffable something, that delicate flame glimpsed in the caverns of a beckoning wind... Thomas Wolfe has a striving for just those words, just that image, evanescent, poignant. So often in reading your biography of Rand, I thought of Thomas Wolfe "...a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces. [....] Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When? O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again." It seemed to me that AR herself and the whole sense of what it all really was up close was a kind of "wind-grieved ghost" (changing the punctuation) the spirit of which you sought, attempting to make it all live again as it was. As I said, I'm not near so keen on Wolfe himself as you are. But your own writing seems to me to convey a kind of distilled essence of what does remain a forever-haunting feeling from Look Homeward, Angel (even the title of which strikes me like tones from a delicate harp in a lost cathedral).

Apropos of the lines that haunted you: Years ago, when I first began giving talks after my break with Rand, I gave a breakfast talk (I can't recall to whom) -- but now that I think of it, I believe you said you were there, Ellen -- and I mentioned my difficullties with Rand over Thomas Wolfe. During the question period, a young man I didn't know stood up and said: "'O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost' -- welcome home!" Tears spurted to my eyes -- and that young man became my friend for life.

Yes, I was there. It was the breakfast talk at the 1983 Libertarian Party Convention in New York City. Both Larry and I were there. Chris Grieb has recently on OL said that he was also. And I remember the young man standing at the back of the room -- Larry and I were at a table near the podium, so we turned to hear the remark -- and reciting that line. I remember that there was applause of such a warm kind, I think the first time I heard applause with that "tone of voice" in a remotely Objectivist gathering. I felt tears forming, too. It's a treasured memory.

Ellen

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Again, this is not about details or techniques etc. in artworks. While I emphatically don't hold myself to be an expert on Rand's thesis in TRM (and have read only a handful of scholars that are - Barbara was one) or as an art critic, I know it is the affirmation of man's consciousness (vis-a-vis art) which was Rand's focus and intent; it's that that I applaud, and from this I won't be distracted.

This reference to Barbara is why I went looking for the old post I repeated above.

Barbara was an expert not only on Rand's writings about art but on the repressive effects of those writings and, more directly, of Rand's personal use of aesthetic response as a morals exam. Barbara herself experienced this use from early in her acquaintance with Rand, over the issue of Barbara's love of Thomas Wolfe's novels.

"[T]he affirmation of man's consciousness" Tony says was "Rand's focus and intent." It was more like a test of man's consciousness in Rand's working out and use of her theory of art.

Ellen

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He could have had a beautiful landscape, glimpsed through an open door.

Which would ruin the focus of the light on the stream of milk and the bread loaves.

Ellen

You're being serious, right? Or is that some dry wit? Gawd, Ellen, it's a f'rinstance, I made. In order to obviate listing all actual, possible and imaginable differentiae of the genus 'Backgrounds'.

There 'could' be many alternatives that balance out and cancel the over all impression of listless service or of stolid servitude by a bored-looking lass in a humble room.

Yes, I'm being serious. The suggestion you made would wreck the composition of the painting.

Evidently you don't like the painting. But what you're doing, following Rand, is imposing "metaphysical value-judgments" into Vermeer's mind on no more evidence than your particular impression - which is far from being a universal impression. What you describe isn't what others who have talked about their reactions on this thread see. It isn't the reaction in a number of descriptions I've read, including one posted on a placard at the Rijksmuseum next to the original of the painting and on a lengthier description posted next to a reproduction at the Vermeer museum in Delft. I'd say that the typical impression of "The Milkmaid" is one of calm, serene concentration on her task. So where does this leave your belief that you know what's expressed in the work?

As to your objection to the maid's personal appearance and the humbleness of the room - those are part of the charm for me, and I suspect for many others who like the painting.

Ellen

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It's the false alternatives which get pushed on one. I did not say I didn't like the painting altogether- I will remember the falling light on the table's contents. I pointed to this quality from the start. Light has been an absorbing study of my life. I've said several times, that anyone can and probably does take something valuable from any work, even if it's a single component like its great aesthetics. There's always going to be a preponderance of Naturalism in art and literature and the best for me, has 'mixed premises', great style plus engrossing honesty. I've much, much prefered this to poor or sentimental Romanticism.

"Calm serenity"? You mean as you'd find in a mental asylum? Or in a bucolic existence milking the cows every day, and delivering milk to the Mistress, every day? Without even considering the title, I'd say my impression of servitude and drudgery has more validity than "serenity".

The only question remains, honestly, would you or anyone here be able to state, after a quick scan of The Milkmaid:

"THIS is what life means to me!"

Even acknowledging you don't cater to "cognitive and normative abstractions" is art, I don't believe you would. If charm is what you look for, charm is all you'll find - and I'd say you're not shooting high enough.

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It's the false alternatives which get pushed on one. I did not say I didn't like the painting altogether- I will remember the falling light on the table's contents. I pointed to this quality from the start. Light has been an absorbing study of my life. I've said several times, that anyone can and probably does take something valuable from any work, even if it's a single component like its great aesthetics. There's always going to be a preponderance of Naturalism in art and literature and the best for me, has 'mixed premises', great style plus engrossing honesty. I've much, much prefered this to poor or sentimental Romanticism.

Tony,

It looks to me like a false alternate which you've pushed yourself into by buying Rand's ideas on "Naturalism" versus "Romanticism."

"Calm serenity"? You mean as you'd find in a mental asylum? Or in a bucolic existence milking the cows every day, and delivering milk to the Mistress, every day? Without even considering the title, I'd say my impression of servitude and drudgery has more validity than "serenity".

Of course I don't mean as per your descriptions. We'll just have to see the painting differently, but the fact that we do see it differently underscores the inherently subjective element in reactions to art.

The only question remains, honestly, would you be able to state, after a quick scan of The Milkmaid:

"THIS is what life means to me!"

Even acknowledging you don't cater to "cognitive and normative abstractions" is art, I don't believe you would.

I don't believe I would make such a statement upon viewing ANY art work. Certainly there's a range in

my liking->disliking art works, and there are greater to lesser extents to which I feel a similarity of sensibility, and there are works which might have aspects which remind me of features of myself and my life ("The Milkmaid" is such a work), but I simply don't recognize my way of reacting to art in the way Rand says everyone does react.

I believe that she reacted that way, and from an early age. (She described herself as reacting thus from an early age in the interviews Barbara did with her.) But I think that Rand made a big mistake in elevating her approach to art to universality.

For instance, consider her start to "Art and Sense of Life":

[A] painting of such a woman [a beautiful woman with a cold sore] would be a corrupt, obscenely vicious attack on man, on beauty, on all values - and one would experience a feeling of immense disgust and indignation at the artist. (There are also those who would feel something like approval and who would belong to the same moral category as the artist.)

The first time I read that essay, and every time since, I've thought that I can't come up with an example of any art work to which I've reacted with "disgust and indignation." There are some to which I react, Yuk!, but mostly these are ones which I think are badly done and, generally, imitative.

Rand was out to moralize about art. I don't approach art as she did at all.

Incidentally, it isn't "'cognitive and normative abstractions' is art." It's aesthetic abstractions, which Rand says are formed by the criterion "What's important?" I think that in some art - certainly in Rand's - the artist is trying to convey what the artist finds "metaphysically important," but that presenting a view of man in relationship to the universe is very far from being what all artists are doing, either deliberately or "implicitly" (a favorite fall-back of Rand's for making universal statements).

Nor do I think that an artist's "sense of life" guides every detail of producing an art work. I don't think that "sense of life" is a proper concept, that it names a "real." But even allowing a kinda sorta reality to the idea, I'd still say that there's loads more involved in the guidance of details. For instance, knowledge of grammar for starters if the work is verbal. And much, much more.

Ellen

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Metaphysical value-judgments do not get "imposed". They are. Whether clearly or not, they exist.

Obviously, any artist or human being has a conscious view of life, and anyone aware can hear and see it.

Especially in art, the most uncasual form of expression.

What I tried to do with citing alternative examples in Vermeer is to show that "it does not have to be this way". It is the old confusion of the man-made and the metaphysical given. Art, despite the art-mystics, is not a metaphysical given. If an artist can do one thing, he can do another, as well---so this exposes the existence of his 'metaphysical value-judgments'. Vermeer, a wry observer of life ("as it is, not as it should be") making social statements on the gentry and the peasant classes? Perhaps, I think.(But giving f'rinstances leads to literalist interpretations, I notice. :smile:)

Vermeer had a purpose. He also had choices. What subjects he chose and how they are rendered, in what settings, have a bearing on what he tried to convey --what was IMPORTANT to him. The details make the painting but the painting is more than details, it's 'an emergent property', greater than the sum of its parts, I believe. If anyone asserts that all details in a painting are equal (or subjective), it's equivalent to saying all facts in existence are 'equal' -in reality and in one's own value-system- (or subjective). This is anti-conceptual, and applied to this case, is what I'd call "art empiricism".

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Ellen. First, my "buying into Rand's ideas" is such rot. You know from previous discussions, that I've stated repeatedly that I sensed or was aware of (e.g. Shakespeare's) 'view of life' as schoolboy, long before reading Rand. She gave me the reasons and the words for exactly my "sense". Maybe your experience of early Rand-followers has affected your opinions? But I'm sure there are many Objectivists today who are independent thinkers. Rand's erroneous authoritarianism - in many things - does not transfer well -and can never, automatically- to her students, now or then. I believe she over-imposed her authority partly for effect and emphasis, when all she finally wished for and promoted were independent minds. Ironic.

Second, there is still this either/or mentality about Romanticist art. Not from myself, but from you and others.

Look on it this way: that I, or other Objectivists can -or have- expanded the range and scope of the enjoyment and appreciation of art - further than others. Of course, on up to the "fuel" the best of Romanticist art supplies, as well. Enlarged its hierarchy in other words, courtesy of Rand. And so we probably or potentially can gain more than many people, from art. Simply because it is that important.

The moral 'condemnation' has to be reserved for only the most savagely immoral instances of art, I think. Do I differ here from AR? Could be, but it's no deal-breaker.

What you posted earlier on Barbara (I've still to read properly) doesn't surprise me in the least. (In light of the above). I recall one interchange I had with her on OL about a popular but critically sneered-upon American writer, whom we both loved. (For his 'sense of life', among other things - if I remember right.) Now, she - from Peter Taylor's archives of the Atlantis forum - I have also seen vehemently defending Rand's thesis, accurately and with deep knowledge. She understood and admired it, all the way from its premises and methodology to its intent. That I remember impressing me.

That you don't want or see the need of 'spiritual fuel' for the consciousness, is fine by me. I'm not out to persuade you.

Could you see that somebody else will?

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I remembered an old post I wrote pertaining to Rand's "What's important?" criterion.

As I explain here, I think that "What's interesting? would be more accurate.

A few quick comments about the idea that anything an artist presents, the artist is considering "important" in the way Rand was talking about with her idea of "metaphysical value-judgments."

That's an odd usage, I think, to begin with, since she wasn't meaning "metaphysics" as a branch of philosophy; instead she was talking about a feeling of the human's relationship to the cosmos, whether the human views the cosmos as hospitable or not to human life, and other issues of what one might call "cosmic" significance pertaining to the human's situation vis-a-vis the universe.

It isn't the case that every artistic production, or even anywhere near the majority of such productions, is making a statement on the sort of issues Rand meant. Sometimes, yes. Examples are: Dante's The Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost, Goethe's Faust, Rand's Atlas Shrugged -- or an example from music, Beethoven's 9th Symphony. All these works are deliberately "saying something" about the human status. But many art works are not. I think that instead of describing what the artist does as selecting what's "important," in the sense Rand meant, the more accurate generalization is that the artist is selecting what the artist finds interesting. And there are many, many possible sources of interest, many, many reasons why an artist might find some particular visual image, musical thought, story idea "interesting."

E.g., something which happened for me the night of February 2. We got our first real snow of the season that day. I love snow -- up to a point; there is such a thing as "too much," but a nice covering of snowy white, I love the sight of. And I enjoy shoveling our drive; I do it with a shovel, taking my time about it, provided the weather isn't "too cold." It's a winter wonderland sort of thing for me.

That night the snow was damp, and was sticking to the trees, outlining branches. The clouds were breaking up, getting "high" in appearance (rather than "lowering," as they'd been earlier) and jagged. The moon was full or near-full. At one moment when I was out there shoveling (this was well past sunset, about 9:00 pm), I turned and glanced up at the moon through the branches of the pinoak near the driveway -- and gasped in pleasure at the beauty of what I saw. The moon was just framed -- from the exact angle where I was standing -- in a diamond form among the tree branches, and in turn in a jagged-edged rift in the clouds. The branches of the tree, all snow-lined, fuzzy with snow, formed a tracery -- like a really neat abstract painting -- spreading out from the central fissure framing the moon. Were I a painter, I would have painted that scene. I wished that I could paint so I could have memorialized the occasion. Why? Because I would have been saying something about cosmic significances? Not at all. Because it was so enchanting to me, because I wanted to capture it, to hold it, to have it as a record.

I think it's just this sort of impetus from which a great many paintings come.

Again, another issue, that of communication. Could I have painted that moon-through-snowy-trees moment, I wouldn't have been doing so to "communicate" anything to anyone except myself. Nor do I think that "communicating" in the sense of delivering a message is a prime purpose of art. Sometimes, yes, the artist has a particular message the artist wants to convey. But I think the primary issue is the desire to give form, for the artist's own sake, to whatever type of expression is involved. Rand herself, on that one, said that her primary goal in writing Atlas was to project the ideal man. It was something which she wanted to see projected which was first and foremost, not telling other people -- although Atlas does become didactic.

When I was a child, I used to make up stories a lot for my own amusement. Many children do this. I think it's the child's own pleasure which is the main impetus. At least it was in my case. Some of my stories -- they were better described as story/games, imaginal realms I enacted -- I never even told to anyone else.

I had several imaginal realms back then. I called them "Kingdoms." I'd gotten the name by virtue of completely misunderstanding a line I'd heard from Shakespeare's Richard III (I didn't know then where the line came from): "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse." The line as I heard it and just wrote it is differently punctuated from the correct punctuation. I thought that what the person was saying was that he was making a "kingdom for a horse," and I grooved on that idea. Thus I started to call my imaginary realms "Kingdoms": the Lion Kingdom, the Horse Kingdom, the Doll Kingdom, the Indian [American Indian] Kingdom, the Wizard of Oz Kingdom. The latter three I played with friends; we made up stories together. The first two were private games -- and the first, which was magical, I never even told anyone about until I was years older.

I think that the sort of thing I'm describing from my childhood is probably part of the background of a lot of people who become novelists -- and that the primary joy of it isn't really to communicate, except to oneself. Instead, the primary joy is that of tracing the trails of imagination, pursuing (a phrase Susanne Langer used) "an interesting idea to think."

Just some quick comments, sketchy. But maybe of interest to some of you.

Ellen

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But sure. You found 'something special' which you want to put down truthfully, for your own sake. Something of value, related intimately to your view of life - i.e. your metaphysical value premises.

To be able to convey it and share it, truthfully (so they know it too) to others is only an important secondary, and also selfish.

So what's new? Here is the implicit motivation for art. I thought this was self-evident to all.

The implicit is followed by the explicit, and this too is all-implicit in Rand's writing. But you have earlier dismissed 'the implicit', ("as a favorite fall-back of Rand's...") not so? Is this from buying into Carl Jung's ideas?

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Ellen. First, my "buying into Rand's ideas" is such rot. You know from previous discussions, that I've stated repeatedly that I sensed or was aware of (e.g. Shakespeare's) 'view of life' as schoolboy, long before reading Rand. She gave me the reasons and the words for exactly my "sense". Maybe your experience of early Rand-followers has affected your opinions? But I'm sure there are many Objectivists today who are independent thinkers.

I don't think that your "buying into Rand's ideas" is such rot.

You accept her theory virtually in toto, and you force fit works of art and responses to art into it. I've said numerous times that I think that what Rand talks about applies to some art and to how some people - especially Rand herself - respond to art. But thus doesn't make her theory universally applicable.

(As to Shakespeare, Jonathan has previously at length challenged that you actually know Shakespeare's view of life, as distinguished from the view he presents certain characters as having. Jonathan's also challenged that your reactions to particular works are universal reactions.)

Second, there is still this either/or mentality about Romanticist art. Not from myself, but from you and others.

I have no either/or mentality about Romantic art. To the contrary, I don't buy the way Rand classifies Romanticism versus Naturalism.

Look on it this way: that I, or other Objectivists can -or have- expanded the range and scope of the enjoyment and appreciation of art - further than others. Of course, on up to the "fuel" the best of Romanticist art supplies, as well. Enlarged its hierarchy in other words, courtesy of Rand. And so we probably or potentially can gain more than many people, from art. Simply because it is that important.

I think what's happened - and I certainly see this in you - is that adopting Rand's theory narrows "the range and scope of the enjoyment and appreciation of art." I feel sorry, sincerely sorry, for Objectivists who accept Rand's views. I think that they're missing out on so much which is so wonderful.

What you posted earlier on Barbara (I've still to read properly) doesn't surprise me in the least. (In light of the above). I recall one interchange I had with her on OL about a popular but critically sneered-upon American writer, whom we both loved. (For his 'sense of life', among other things - if I remember right.) Now, she - from Peter Taylor's archives of the Atlantis forum - I have also seen vehemently defending Rand's thesis, accurately and with deep knowledge. She understood and admired it, all the way from its premises and methodology to its intent. That I remember impressing me.

Could you find the material by Barbara you're talking about?

Barbara and I exchanged an awful lot of e-mails back in the days of Old Atlantis, and I know that Barbara had very much negative to say about the effects of Rand's views on art. So I think that if Barbara was defending Rand's thesis, she was doing so in a selective fashion. I can believe that Barbara was sensitively discussing the importance to Rand of what Rand got from the art which was important to her. I think that the art she valued was indeed a lifeline for Rand when she was trapped in Soviet Russia. I'm thoroughly sympathetic to that myself.

That you don't want or see the need of 'spiritual fuel' for the consciousness, is fine by me. I'm not out to persuade you.

Could you see that somebody else will?

Yes, I can see that somebody else will, as I said in regard to Rand above. I don't begrudge this to anyone. But when people universalize this possibility of art, that's a claim of something which isn't true. And when people demean great artists by erroneously applying Rand's theory of art to those artists' work, that's an injustice.

Ellen

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But sure. You found 'something special' which you want to put down truthfully, for your own sake. Something of value, related intimately to your view of life - i.e. your metaphysical value premises.

Tony, that is so perfect an example of your force-fitting what others say into your presumptions.

What I was describing is NOT an issue of "metaphysical value premises," just of something I found interesting and attractive, no cosmic statement about man in relation to the universe.

Ellen

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If we take Rand's idea that her philosophy was designed for her ideal man--especially the ethics or morality--and her ideal man was central to her art, that her starting with these abstractions then means they're really deductive in the extreme. Abstraction to abstraction? Ergo: her Objectivism is reality oriented? There's a fundamental contradiction roving around in it.

Her heroes are so pure and above and beyond what is going on that the heroic adventure/quest for her greatest hero is not stopping the motor of the world afterall, that's pr, but pulling some select others out of the muck so they no longer need be futile, self-sacrificing heroes down there in the trenches, fighting impotent(!?) irrationality and altruism played out to their ultimate (world-wide--actually US-wide) consequences.

Noah's ark, with people replacing the animals, saving them from the flood of altruism washing over the planet. Going back into the world means going back into a deductrive reality rescued from an empirical one--i.e., people.

The altruism-selfishness bifurcation needs to be re-examined.

--Brant

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I recently thought that Ayn Rand (her philosophy which was also her) could be deconstructed then reconstructed after examining the pieces. Since her Objectivism is actually up there in the clouds, it can't be done--it can't be put back together. Only the basic principles are grounded. Many of the pieces are keepers, of course.

--Brant

"Leave the gun. Take the cannolis."

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Cognitive abstractions are formed by the criterion of: what is essential? (epistemologically essential to distinguish one class of existents from all others). Normative abstractions are formed by the criterion of: what is good? Esthetic abstractions are formed by the criterion of: what is important?

Critics would keep art at the level of "esthetic abstractions", regarding the cognitive and normative abstractions as out of bounds. They drag art towards mysticism while Rand dragged it into light, consciousness and identity. Does it mean that every instance of visual art is easily identifiable? no of course not. Much can give pleasure, for its aesthetics or originality alone. Etc. However, revering just

the aesthetics is like stopping at the level of percepts, never integrating them into concepts.

"This is what life means (or doesn't mean)to me" - is the almost greatest ~selfish~ statement which could be made.

It presupposes an ego, volitional judgement and authority in oneself, usually squashed down by the altruism-collectivism of previous and modern times.

I have yet to see anyone claim that what Vermeer or Shakespeare depicted is what "life meant" to him or her. "Ah but we don't accept those premises!"(Convenient cop-out). But the beauty of Shakespeare's brilliant words, his aesthetics, does not gainsay his -obvious to anyone who can read- gloomy view of a determined existence. Vermeer portrays the humble folk and the privileged gentry with an accurate and caustic eye. The beauty of his aesthetics only makes his view of life worse by comparison to that beauty, by showing it up with his outstanding technique and light.

In all this discussion of Vermeer there has hardly been a single personal evaluation of his work: "charming" is about all I recall. Easy enough to challenge my submissions, without taking in my intent (as poor as it is next to Rand's intent), less easy to honestly make your own judgements- and possibly open oneself to ridicule.

All of this is essentially not about art, it's about conflicting philosophies. The anti-conceptual, the determinist, the mystical, the empiricist, the intrinsicist, the altruist and the subjectivist. Contra Objectivist.

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