The Art Instinct


Guyau

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Music is sound without referents. It has no meaning the way language does.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Even when the music is accompanied by the human voice?

Lyrics is language. Music is not.

Music, qua music, cannot convey a specific meaning. Why? No referent.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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This is just too easy.

Yes, it is. Maybe that is why it's so difficult for those who must tie everything to A is A.and must identify the significance of A flat or A sharp or minor or major.

For the record I love Rachmaninov, nearly as much as I love Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. They are two thrillingly individual notes in the endless symphony that is Music.

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Music, qua music, cannot convey a specific meaning. Why? No referent.

Bob,

I disagree. But this is a long discussion.

I have been mulling over musical epistemology for a long time.

I do agree that music has difficulty conveying a specific reference to specific referents for which the majority of the sensory input has been visual. But, that does not exclude all referents. Not even all external referents. For a very easy example, music conveys explosions quite well. Make a big boom and people think explosion. You will probably find that universal.

Michael

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Music, qua music, cannot convey a specific meaning. Why? No referent.

Bob,

I disagree. But this is a long discussion.

I have been mulling over musical epistemology for a long time.

I do agree that music has difficulty conveying a specific reference to specific referents for which the majority of the sensory input has been visual. But, that does not exclude all referents. Not even all external referents. For a very easy example, music conveys explosions quite well. Make a big boom and people think explosion. You will probably find that universal.

Michael

That is a very trivial example. Booms and bangs. If that is all music can convey, it is not a language.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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For a very easy example, music conveys explosions quite well. Make a big boom and people think explosion. You will probably find that universal.

The problem with that is that most composers have believed that imitating the sounds of things is an extramusical gimmick. If I recall, many composers, including Mozart and Beethoven, even expressed embarrassment over having included things like identifiable birdsongs and explosions in their music, because using them was thought to be an act of artistic failure -- of relying on artlessly signaling or signing for one's audience.

J

Edited by Jonathan
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In her remarks on musical experience, in “Art and Cognition,” Rand proposed that the existential reality re-created in music is the repertoire of emotions that come up in real life. In music the emotions are experienced in an as-if manner, she says. I can see that in programmatic music such as Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony portraying the failed 1905 Russian revolution. I feel the darkness, the stirring, the clashes, the solemnity, and the light from the future, just as the composer intended. I have those feelings in an as-if mode, as if those events were happening before me (with omniscience of the 1917 revolution), yet knowing all the while that actually they are not.

Rand’s idea was that in absolute music as-if emotions are evoked at a more abstract level, more removed from the references of as-if feeling in programmatic music. That seems right when I listen to Shoshtakovich’s Fifth Symphony, which is absolute music. There are various feelings in its course, but the overwhelming one is of long tremendous struggle climaxing eventually in magnificent triumph. This music is an important part of what is me. A lot of other listeners hold it tight in this personal-identity way too. Rand thought of as-if feelings in absolute music as part of her wider theory of emotional abstraction, which has a long developmental history with each of us, alongside the ontogeny of cognitive abstraction.

Rand would say the intense personal way I take Shostakovich is due to my sense of life, which she relates to emotional abstraction. . . .

In music the emotions are experienced in an as-if manner, she says. I can see that in programmatic music such as Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony portraying the failed 1905 Russian revolution. I feel the darkness, the stirring, the clashes, the solemnity, and the light from the future, just as the composer intended.

. . .

An additional problem is Rand's insistence that art must communicate without reference to "outside considerations," such as titles, artists' or composers' statements, etc. How much of your responses to music, Stephen, involve access to "outside considerations"? How much of Rand's did? In my experience, if you inform a person of what a piece of music is supposed to be "about," even with something as simple as a brief title, they tend to visualize what they were told to visualize. It's very hard for people to disregard "outside considerations" once exposed to them.

. . .

Of course, I reported as-if feelings of intended outside referents to things in the programmatic symphony; that is interesting and fun in such an experience. Of course, hearing that symphony without knowing it is programmatic or what the programme is would be listening to it in the absolute mode. Of course, one would report more general emotional contours such as the one I mentioned for Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, which is not programmatic. No expectation of more than that for music as absolute music is stated, implied, or insinuated in what Rand wrote on the topic.

How much of the response I reported to the Fifth involves “access to ‘outside considerations’?” None.

Intelligent listeners are able to sort such elements just fine. In writing of Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony (which I happened to play today and which inclined me to post this follow-up), which is not programmatic, Robert Layton writes of the spaciousness and inward looking in the first movement and of that movement’s unremitting intensity of feeling. Further: “It opens with a pair of ideas on the strings, first a vehement dotted rhythm on lower strings which gradually subsides to make way for a serene theme on the violins, not unlike the one that opens the Fifth Symphony but much darker in feeling and more anguished.” And so forth, through the composition. Thousands of listeners know what he means by their own experience of the work. And Layton keeps distinct just fine those responses from further thoughts about the music’s possible particular allusions. He knows that he had gone beyond the music and its emotional contours (the contours at least for someone not from a far different musical culture) when he talks about possible external references that naturally occurred to him when he first heard this 1943 work a year later in wartime England.

Your points about Rand’s non-parallel between music and abstract art: yes, that was much discussed in my little circle of quasi-Objectivist friends in college circa 1970. Some were art historians and artists. The consensus in my circle was along your lines, though in a strikingly more cool-headed way than yours, at least in the tone you have left with this reader by and large in your posts concerning Randian ideas in esthetics here over the years. It is possible to win—let's incessantly, if metaphorically, rub Rand's face in her errors, or at least faces speaking her errors, justifying our nastiness by Rand's nastiness—where "winning" is a matter of persuading interlocutors to our truth or, failing that, shutting them up or running them off. Of course.

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I just watched Being There again, which TCM aired recently. Peter Sellers plays an idiot whose silence is mistaken for profundity.

The opening scene sets the theme cleverly. Waking to hear this bit by Schubert on the television:

He searches for the remote, and turns to this nice piece by Buffy St. Marie (forward to 2:05):

Forward to 2:05

Edited by Ted Keer
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Intelligent listeners are able to sort such elements just fine.

Then the many Objectivists whom I've asked to identify such elements in other pieces of music, without allowing them access to "outside considerations," must not qualify as "intelligent listeners"?

The consensus in my circle was along your lines, though in a strikingly more cool-headed way than yours, at least in the tone you have left with this reader by and large in your posts concerning Randian ideas in esthetics here over the years.

I think my tone has been remarkably calm and reasonable compared to that of the people whose arguments and judgments I've been responding to.

It is possible to win—let's incessantly, if metaphorically, rub Rand's face in her errors, or at least faces speaking her errors, justifying our nastiness by Rand's nastiness—where "winning" is a matter of persuading interlocutors to our truth or, failing that, shutting them up or running them off. Of course.

My general tone has not been one of nastiness. I've been persistent, definitely, but not nasty.

I think you're probably too emotional when it comes to the subject of Rand and aesthetics, Stephen, which makes you imagine nastiness where it doesn't exist. Generally, in regard to other topics, you seem to be very cool-headed and rational, but certain issues of aesthetics seem to really get your blood boiling. Um, you mentioned in the paragraph above that the type of nastiness you don't like is where "winning" means shutting people up and running them off. Well, on a previous aesthetics discussion in your "corner," you did exactly that -- you censored me and other posters for disagreeing with your opinions on beauty. You deleted our politely-worded comments and examples, as well as our objections to your deletions. I would say that your doing so was significantly more nasty than anything I've ever said to anyone in any online discussion. It was nastier than the sum total of my "nastiness." But I guess it's what you felt you had to do to "win" the argument, huh?

J

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"An additional problem is Rand's insistence that art must communicate without reference to "outside considerations," such as titles, artists' or composers' statements, etc. How much of your responses to music, Stephen, involve access to "outside considerations"? How much of Rand's did? In my experience, if you inform a person of what a piece of music is supposed to be "about," even with something as simple as a brief title, they tend to visualize what they were told to visualize. It's very hard for people to disregard "outside considerations" once exposed to them." [Jonathan]

just where did Rand actually say this? or is this actually YOUR interpretation?

[eg - the title of a novel is an integral part of the work - you're supposed to have read Atlas Shrugged without knowing the title?? the same is, properly, with regards a painting, as it is the theme/title which sets the stage, in the same manner as so with the novel... and one could, for the same reason, say the same with music...

Edited by anonrobt
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Louis Torres has commented on The Art Instinct here.

Dutton replied to Torres here (scroll down; the reply is accompanied by a jpeg of a Sylvia Bokor painting).

Torres replied to the reply here.

Torres says:

Dutton asserts that Rand's definition of art--"a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments" (or "fundamental values," in my revision in What Art Is)--is "absurdly limited." In what respect? He does not say, except to note that the book cites "dolls, toy cars, model ships, billboard advertisements, magazine illustrations, children's play-acting, and celebrity impersonations" as examples of non-art. Each of these examples is a "selective re-creation of reality" in which factors such as marketing or entertainment value govern the selection process, as distinct from works of art, which are based on the maker's personal values, conscious or not. This is a crucial distinction which Dutton ignores in declaring that he "would happily include any of the items on that list as potentially art." Well, of course he would. From his perspective, anything can be art, its potential realized as soon as he declares it to be so.

In the above, Torres doesn't seem to consider the obvious idea that an artwork can be created for more than one purpose, that its serving of a utilitarian or other purpose doesn't necessarily conflict with its also serving a spiritual purpose (such as being created according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments), and, therefore, that, depending on the specific circumstances, each of the things that Dutton listed could indeed be art. (Rand contradicted herself on the issue of art and utility, and, if I recall correctly, during the Q&A session of her final Ford Hall Forum appearance, she briefly began to establish a line of reasoning which left room for certain utilitarian objects to qualify as art). Contrary to Torres's claim, Dutton did not appear to come from the perspective that "anything can be art." His perspective just seemed to be that many things beyond what Rand and Torres thought could be art can be art.

Anyway, Torres might begin to understand in which ways Rand's definition of art is "absurdly limited" if he were to attempt to answer Dutton's question, rather than avoiding it (and perhaps trying to wish it out of existence?):

"Personally, I find Rand's definition of art absurdly limited. By the way, exactly what reality is 're-created' in a Bach fugue?"

The way to deal with Dutton's question is first to tell him, as Rand would have: "check your premises." The premise in question is the notion that "re-creation of reality" means presenting an image that a viewer or listener or reader can interpret as being some ~thing~ from reality, some object or person--or perhaps an experience such as an emotion like sadness or a quality such as grace or an event such as a birdcall or an explosion.

If you take this route, you really have to stand on your head, and in a very unconvincing way, to make the claim that a Bach fugue represents or "re-creates" something like a dialogue or a set of related developmental process in nature, or something of the kind, involving two, three, or four interacting entities. Does that really sound like what Bach was trying to do?? On this approach, you have to stretch Rand's definition of "art" beyond credulity, and it does appear to be "absurdly limited," as Dutton claims.

There is a much more fruitful route, one that is suggested in some of Rand's writings, explicitly mentioned in the Blumenthals' lectures on music and in some of Peikoff's writings and lectures, as well as by other philosophers including Camus and Langer. I've written on this, too, in JARS, and the essay is posted elsewhere on this site. (I've also debated this idea with Torres and Kamhi in the pages of JARS, and I don't want to review all that conflict here.) I believe we've discussed it here on OL in the past, too, so this really should already be on the table, but no one has referred to it so far in this thread, so...

The idea is that art re-creates not a ~thing from~ reality, but a ~reality~, a world, an imaginary realm which the viewer/listener/reader can experience. To be experienced as an intelligible imaginary world, an artwork must present coherent figures, whether images of entities such persons or animals or plants or physical objects, or things such as musical motives and phrases and melodies, or even "moving" cartoon dots (a la the experiment with adults and children back in the 1940s) that are perceived ~like~ they were entities. (If you want to see how this applies to architecture, check out my JARS essay posted elsewhere here on OL.)

An artwork that ~fails~ to present some sort of entity-like images fails to function as an imaginary world, and thus fails to re-create (a) reality. That, IMO, is why Rand objects to "non-objective art" and regards it as being outside the category of art.

(I will note, however, that she and some of her closest followers didn't fully understand the implications of her definition of "art" in re music and architecture. They, too, sometimes slipped back into the view of art as re-creating ~things from reality~, and that view is a deadly, seriously limiting trap. Among other things, it led Rand to commit one of the most blatant howlers I've ever seen from any Objectivist, on the second page of her essay "Art and Cognition." I mean, how can anyone deserving of the title "Mrs. Logic" claim, within the space of a very few lines, that the essence of art is re-creation of reality, architecture is a form of art, but architecture does not re-create reality?)

People here on OL, and elsewhere, have compared abstract, "non-objective art" to music and said that either ~both~ are art, or neither is art, and that Rand can't have it both ways. I'm sorry, but she's right on this. There is melodic, objective, music (a redundant phrase) -- and there is non-melodic, "non-objective music." Good or mediocre or bad, the vast majority of both visual art and musical works create an imaginary world that is inhabited by something like an entity. Enjoyable or not by a given person, any artistic creation that does not present an imaginary world of entities is not an artwork -- by Rand's definition, as interpreted by me, with a good bit of support from Peikoff, the Blumenthals, and others.

Now, what does music ~mean~? What is the ~character~ and philosophical point of a given piece of music, of the imaginary world it presents, and of the imaginary musical entities that populate it? E.g., what is the emotional meaning of a Bach fugue, of the imaginary musical realm it creates, and of the interplaying fugue voices that inhabit that realm? That's a different question. I've written a lot about this, too -- both in JARS and here on OL -- and will write a lot more before I "hang it up." (No freebies on the fugue for today.) I'll just say here that the key musical factors that I focus on in understanding the emotional meaning of a piece of music are its mode (major or minor), the upward vs. downward character of its melody, and the rhythmic organization (end-accented vs. beginning-accented) of the melodic and harmonic structure. The best writers on this are Leonard B. Meyer, Deryck Cooke, and a certain maverick Objectivist whose name I forget. <g>

From my own experience, it seems clear that the above ideas allow you to get a long ways down the road in understanding non-programmatic pieces of music, including a lot of Baroque and Classical and Romantic music (notwithstanding titles and program notes), as well as songs ~with words~ from the past 200+ years. So, to say (as Jonathan does) that the allegedly elusive conceptual vocabulary of music (only elusive to someone like Rand who has not studied music!) might somehow compromise the attachment of meaning to music by the lyrics is just not supported by the studies I have made so far.

REB

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just where did Rand actually say this? or is this actually YOUR interpretation?

[eg - the title of a novel is an integral part of the work - you're supposed to have read Atlas Shrugged without knowing the title?? the same is, properly, with regards a painting, as it is the theme/title which sets the stage, in the same manner as so with the novel... and one could, for the same reason, say the same with music...

Rand wrote that an objective evaluation of an artwork requires that one identify the the abstract meaning of his work "exclusively by identifying the evidence contained in the work and allowing no other, outside considerations." She said that music "employs the sounds produced by the periodic vibrations of a sonorous body, and evokes man’s sense-of-life emotions." So, Robert, if you think that a piece of music's title counts as being "contained in the work," does that mean that you believe that titles printed on sheet music, on CDs and in performance hall programs communicate by producing period vibrations? Printed words somehow count as music?

In your quest to save music by playing around with the meaning of "outside considerations," did it not occur to you that if a title printed on a placard placed next to a figurative painting counts as being "contained in the work," then a title printed on a placard placed next to an abstract painting counts as being contained in the work? If I were to produce what Rand called a "smear" of paint on a canvas, and title it "Existence is joyous, the universe is benevolent, mankind is volitional and heroic, and intelligence and self-confidence are mankind's proper, natural state," it would be very easy for even the visually incompetent to identify the subject and meaning "exclusively by identifying the evidence contained in the work" since the information included in the title would count as "evidence contained in the work."

J

Edited by Jonathan
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I would be interested in hearing from Jonathan in his own words what it is he thinks "conceptual language of music" means. From the way he uses it, I suspect he misunderstands Rand's meaning.

There's no need for me to put it into my own words when we have Rand's:

It would require: a translation of the musical experience, the inner experience, into conceptual terms; an explanation of why certain sounds strike us a certain way; a definition of the axioms of musical perception, from which the appropriate esthetic principles could be derived, which would serve as a base for the objective validation of esthetic judgments.

This means that we need a clear, conceptual distinction and separation of object from subject in the field of musical perception, such as we do possess in the other arts and in the wider field of our cognitive faculty...

In listening to music, a man cannot tell clearly, neither to himself nor to others – and, therefore, cannot prove – which aspects of his experience are inherent in the music and which are contributed by his own consciousness. He experiences it as an indivisible whole, he feels as if the magnificent exaltation were there, in the music – and he is helplessly bewildered when he discovers that some men do experience it and some do not. In regard to music, mankind is still on the perceptual level of awareness.

Until a conceptual vocabulary of music is discovered and defined, no objectively valid criterion of aesthetic judgment is possible in the field of music...Until it is brought to the stage of conceptualization, we have to treat our musical tastes and preferences as a subjective matter...

J

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In her remarks on musical experience, in “Art and Cognition,” Rand proposed that the existential reality re-created in music is the repertoire of emotions that come up in real life. In music the emotions are experienced in an as-if manner, she says. I can see that in programmatic music such as Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony portraying the failed 1905 Russian revolution. I feel the darkness, the stirring, the clashes, the solemnity, and the light from the future, just as the composer intended.* I have those feelings in an as-if mode, as if those events were happening before me (with omniscience of the 1917 revolution), yet knowing all the while that actually they are not.

Rand’s idea was that in absolute music as-if emotions are evoked at a more abstract level, more removed from the references of as-if feeling in programmatic music. That seems right when I listen to Shoshtakovich’s Fifth Symphony. There are various feelings in its course, but the overwhelming one is of long tremendous struggle climaxing eventually in magnificent triumph. This music is an important part of what is me. A lot of other listeners hold it tight in this personal-identity way too. Rand thought of as-if feelings in absolute music as part of her wider theory of emotional abstraction, which has a long developmental history with each of us, alongside the ontogeny of cognitive abstraction.

Rand would say the intense personal way I take Shostakovich is due to my sense of life, which she relates to emotional abstraction. She might have thought the fact that I could even bear to listen to him indicated a haywire mind, but she can be wrong about that, yet right about the rest. I do not know how far she was right about the rest described above in this note. Rand had a further idea, a conjecture about how it is that music effects (and affects) emotions so directly. She was unsure if she hit the right answer on this. (She can get this wrong, yet be right about the rest described above.) Marsha Enright examines the evidence, including scientific evidence, to 1995 in “Con Molto Sentimento”. Ted may be familiar with additional neuropsychological research on the question of how music effects emotions so directly.

If a tension between what Rand wrote about music and what she wrote about abstract art demonstrably amounts to a contradiction, it would not amount to an absurdity.

Stephen, why concede the point, even hypothetically? The alleged tension between Rand's writing on music and abstract art is based on ignorance, mainly hers, but also that of those who don't grasp the nature of music -- mainly because they haven't studied it and learned how it works. If Rand had learned even a modest amount about music theory, and then followed her own objective methodology already in use regarding literature, for instance, she would have done fine, and saved us all a lot of agony over recurring arguments about how music is "like" abstract art, and thus Rand's definition of "art" was wrong, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.

Instead, however, Rand tried to go through the back door in understanding music, by positing that sense of life emotions are triggered by mental processes generated in perceiving music, and that ~this~ is the root of the emotional response to, and of the meaning of, music. This completely sidesteps the obvious need to get at what is happening ~in the music~, not in the listener's ear and brain. Rand herself conceded that the objective nature of the music needed to be identified, using a "conceptual vocabulary of music" and a lot of analysis and inductive generalization. But she set this aside, claiming (through ignorance of what had already been done in the field) that no such vocabulary yet existed, and instead tried an indirect, hypothetical argument about sense of life and emotions.

Look, suppose Rand had applied her back-door approach to understanding music in analyzing literature's emotional effect. Suppose she said, well, we have no conceptual vocabulary to understand what is going on in a stage presentation of a piece of literature, so let's just look at psycho-epistemology. Somehow, we have the feelings, we hear them as somehow being "in" the drama, and then we attribute that emotional meaning to the drama. Ah, suppose it's because, somehow, whatever it is that's going on up on stage generates the mental processes in us that accompany a similar emotion in ~real life.~ Yes, that's it, the mental processes, the psycho-epistemology related to the emotion. End of explanation....

Oh, really? But what about whatever it is that's going on up on stage? Blank out. I.e., "sorry, can't help you, I have no conceptual vocabulary for that." Fine, but does that justify falling back on saying that more "abstract" ~emotions~ are being re-created (by generating mental processes associated with them)? Emotions aren't disembodied and "abstract" -- neither in real life, nor in literature and stage drama, nor (I maintain) in music! In dynamic art forms such as literature and music, the emotions we perceive as being "in" the artwork are ~embodied~ by the entities (or melodies, in music) that are undergoing certain courses of action. And it is to those entities, and their nature, that we must look in ~objectively~ understanding the meaning of the music -- not inwardly to our psycho-epistemological processes, which is an indirect approach at best.

Stephen, your "instincts" about the Shostakovich are right on. I share your deep appreciation of it, and have for over 45 years. But again, to understand its musical effect on us, we must look, in this case, to whatever it is that's going on in the music. And this ~can~ be done, as it can for countless (i.e., a very large, but finite and countable, number of) other pieces written in tonal harmony and dramatic form during the past 400+ years, including much of 20th century popular music. In contrast, I can assure you, there is also a distressing amount of 20th century "legit" music that does ~not~ re-create an imaginary musical realm with anything significant "going on" in it -- more like a stage with no actors, but just flickering, changing patterns (or not) of sense data or objects engaged in pointless motion.

I shudder to think of the taxpayer and foundation dollars that paid for such "art." For those who like such stuff, as well as "abstract art" that presents nothing but shapes, colors, etc. claiming to ~represent~ some emotion, fine, have at it. Far be it from me to interfere with people's enjoyment.

But please, Stephen, don't waste your time trying to answer those who want to con us with the transparent package-deal argument that all music is like "abstract art." It's not. Most music is ~objectively~ (in its factual nature) a lot more like literature, drama, and representational painting than most people might imagine. Ummm, let me rephrase that: most music is ~objectively~ (in its factual nature) a lot more like literature, drama, and representational painting that most ~musically untrained philosophical people~ might imagine.

This is not intended as an insult. It's just that non-philosophical people instinctively grasp what it takes a musical theory background to be able to prove. (Again, check out my JARS essay, "Art as Microcosm," posted elsewhere here on OL. Also, it would be helpful if the Blumenthal's had kept their music lectures available or, better yet, transcribed and published them. I offered, but they declined. Oh, well...)

REB

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To be experienced as an intelligible imaginary world, an artwork must present coherent figures...

Coherent to whom? By what objective standard?

I've provided a couple of examples of abstract art in O'forums in the past, and have identified "coherent figures" in them, as well as subjects and meanings:

369315155_6fca71f322_o.jpg

369315152_66ac0e08b7_o.jpg

Here's what I've written about the above art:

The first gives me the feeling of energy, determination and action. It's meaning is that mankind should be strong and bold, and pursue his passions. The specific angularity and proportions of the shapes is what conveys motion and rising to me, the dramatic contrasts and bold colors suggest passion, heat, pressure and struggle, and the bulk of the forms and the roughness of the textures give me the feeling of strength and rugged durability. I see it as a very physically masculine painting. It's extroverted, dominant, serious and aggressive. It's like Atlas pushing upward.

The second image gives me the feeling of serenity. It's meaning is that peace and gentleness are important human qualities. The colors are subdued and calming. There is practically no drama or contrast -- the forms are delicate and faint, and they convey a soothing gentleness, playfulness and weightlessness. The image is like a visual whisper. I see it as a very physically feminine painting. It's withdrawn and introverted, and anything but aggressive. It's like a mother caressing a child.

This is really easy stuff, and I'm not even a big fan of abstract art. You should hear the level of detail that serious fans can go into.

An artwork that ~fails~ to present some sort of entity-like images fails to function as an imaginary world, and thus fails to re-create (a) reality. That, IMO, is why Rand objects to "non-objective art" and regards it as being outside the category of art.

How would you propose that we determine whether the art has failed to function as an imaginary world or that the perceiver has failed to recognize it as such?

People here on OL, and elsewhere, have compared abstract, "non-objective art" to music and said that either ~both~ are art, or neither is art, and that Rand can't have it both ways. I'm sorry, but she's right on this.

In the past, you've been willing to accept abstract art as art. You've been willing to recognize that others might be able to experience things visually that you don't. What's changed? Are you seriously telling us that you can identify intelligible subjects and meanings in the abstract forms of architecture, but not in the exact same forms in abstract paintings and sculptures?

Enjoyable or not by a given person, any artistic creation that does not present an imaginary world of entities is not an artwork -- by Rand's definition, as interpreted by me, with a good bit of support from Peikoff, the Blumenthals, and others.

Have you bothered to read any of the theories behind abstract art? Don't you think it would be important to have an understanding of color and composition before announcing what is or is not art? Don't you see that refusing to learn anything about visual art puts you into the same category as you put Rand for not having studied music?

From my own experience, it seems clear that the above ideas allow you to get a long ways down the road in understanding non-programmatic pieces of music, including a lot of Baroque and Classical and Romantic music (notwithstanding titles and program notes), as well as songs ~with words~ from the past 200+ years. So, to say (as Jonathan does) that the allegedly elusive conceptual vocabulary of music (only elusive to someone like Rand who has not studied music!)...

And the allegedly elusive conceptual vocabulary of abstract art is only elusive to someone like Rand and her followers who have not studied abstract art.

...might somehow compromise the attachment of meaning to music by the lyrics is just not supported by the studies I have made so far.

If a certain musical phrase is discovered to have a specific, objective meaning (if it recreates certain actions or attributes) then it could be quite jarring aesthetically to attach words to that phrase which don't have the exact same meaning.

J

Edited by Jonathan
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So the entire substance of your response is "that's your opinion"? If not mine, then whose opinion did you expect me to hold?

No, "that's your opinion" is not the substance of my response. The substance of my response is, "Introspecting while willfully ignoring others' testimony about what they think and feel when looking at a type of art which causes no response in you is not a rational approach to the philosophy of aesthetics. Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy which pertains to all people, not just to Rand or to Ted or to anyone else who shares their mindset and limitations."

Neither introspection nor the testimony of others' introspections is a valid primary method for doing aesthetics. Understanding how the perception-identification-evaluation-emotion mechanism works is good for starters. Branden wrote well about this in The Psychology of Self-Esteem, and its precursor articles in The Objectivist, back in the 1960s. Understanding the nature of art and how it presents an imaginary world that represents a certain view of reality and life (by embodiment in its images of entities and their actions) is another requirement. (For music, this requires a good bit of music theory, informed by Rand's epistemology about entities, attributes, actions, relationships.)

The most important aspect of aesthetic analysis, though, is to understand what is there in the artwork. The testimony of any person claiming that such and such is "in" the artwork, but it can't be pointed out by them to a discerning, intelligent observer, is disqualified from the field of aesthetics. Such testimony might prompt someone to investigate on his own, but it is not a "trump card" establishing the aesthetic "validity" of a person's delight in meaningless art. (If I like a piece of music because it was playing when I first had sex, that does not validate my claim that it is a "great" piece of music. If shapes and colors representing nothing in particular happen to evoke a certain feeling in me, that is not aesthetics either.)

If what interests you are assertions of relativism strangely juxtaposed with objective proof of what you in your "opinion" see as Rand's inconsistency, have fun.

I'm not being relativistic, if that's what you mean. In fact, I'm being the opposite. I'm suggesting that if Rand's and your emotional responses to an abstract form of art like music are real and valid, and if such responses allow music to qualify as art, then everyone else's emotional responses to other abstract art forms art just as real and valid, and also allow it to qualify as art. The validity of emotional response isn't relative to who claimed to have the emotional response.

Correction, you're being ~hypothetically~ relativistic, with a faulty premise to boot. Your faulty premise is an equivocation or package-deal: "music is an abstract form of art." "Abstract" can be taken to mean that it is general, or that it is removed from reality. A statue that embodies an ideal man, using body and facial attributes that belong to no specific person is "abstract" in that sense. However, a sculpture that presents no discernible entity, but instead just a bunch of shapes and forms, is "abstract" in quite another sense.

The former is representational art and, even though abstract (in the first sense) can still embody meaning and can be pointed to objectively and analyzed to explain that to which you are responding. The latter is non-representational art, embodies no meaning, and cannot be used ostensively to support one's emotional response to it. There are parallels in music; see below.

Denying the existence of others' emotional responses, or dismissing them as "mystic elitism," is as ridiculous as a blind man asserting that those who claim to see are being "mystic elitists."

Again, package-deal. Some "music" (purported auditory art aka "modern music") ~is~ like "abstract art" (purported non-representational art) -- containing nothing like entities that can inhabit an imaginary artistic realm and embody a meaningful view of life and reality. Other music is ~not~ like "abstract art," but instead a lot more like representational art or, better, like literature and theatrical drama. The vast majority of musical pieces, in fact, are of this type.

"Mystical elitism" applies to, but ~only~ to, those people who try to pass off "modern music" and "abstract art" as meaningful, while not being able to objectively specify what it is in the music that can reasonably be expected to convey such meaning and evoke the corresponding emotions. It does not apply to those who, through ignorance, are not able to explain why they experience most music of the past 400+ years as being meaningful and as conveying emotions. As Rand conceded, such ignorance leaves musical taste in the realm of the subjective, but there is a simple remedy for that!

REB

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Stephen, why concede the point, even hypothetically? The alleged tension between Rand's writing on music and abstract art is based on ignorance, mainly hers, but also that of those who don't grasp the nature of music -- mainly because they haven't studied it and learned how it works.

Which books on abstract color and composition have you read, Roger? How deeply have you studied the subject? Isn't your opinion of abstract art based on ignorance? In fact, aren't you more ignorant of it that Rand was of music?

J

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The most important aspect of aesthetic analysis, though, is to understand what is there in the artwork. The testimony of any person claiming that such and such is "in" the artwork, but it can't be pointed out by them to a discerning, intelligent observer, is disqualified from the field of aesthetics.

I've given a couple of examples in post #42 above in which I point out what is "in" the artwork. Abstract art theorists and enthusiasts from Kandinsky on up have done the same. Your willful refusal to expose yourself to what people have had to say about works of abstract art doesn't erase their statements from existence.

J

Edited by Jonathan
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To be experienced as an intelligible imaginary world, an artwork must present coherent figures...

Coherent to whom? By what objective standard?

I've provided a couple of examples of abstract art in O'forums in the past, and have identified "coherent figures" in them, as well as subjects and meanings:

369315155_6fca71f322_o.jpg

369315152_66ac0e08b7_o.jpg

The first is a set of plane figures bounded by straight lines (or visual approximations thereto).

The second look like sine or cosine curves (or visual approximations thereto).

What message am I supposed to get from them?

Ba'al Chatzaf

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To be experienced as an intelligible imaginary world, an artwork must present coherent figures...

Coherent to whom? By what objective standard?

I've provided a couple of examples of abstract art in O'forums in the past, and have identified "coherent figures" in them, as well as subjects and meanings:

369315155_6fca71f322_o.jpg

369315152_66ac0e08b7_o.jpg

The first is a set of plane figures bounded by straight lines (or visual approximations thereto).

The second look like sine or cosine curves (or visual approximations thereto).

What message am I supposed to get from them?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Sorry, Ba'al, you have just failed "Abstract Art 101." And the instructor even provided a detailed explanation of the meaning ~he~ got from them. It was like an open-book test, and you insist on instead going with your perception. Tsk-tsk.

My wife, who is a very sensitive appreciator of art and a well trained musician, looked at the paintings and Jonathan's comments and said "Give me a break."

Jonathan seems to have misunderstood what I meant by "coherent figures." I didn't mean discernible shapes and curves and plane figures. I meant entities or something like them. You know, people, animals, plants, buildings...oh, and melodies.

I could construct an auditory composition with spikey chunks of sound or quavery rising and falling sounds, but that wouldn't make it music. Just because I'm startled or soothed by them doesn't give the composition meaning, nor status as an artwork.

But sad to say, that hasn't prevented scores of parasites from living off the taxpayers who fund their university music departmental positions and their arts grants. Even not being a well-read expert in "abstract art," I can't help thinking that much the same is true of a lot of what passes as visual art since the early 20th century.

REB

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Stephen, why concede the point, even hypothetically? The alleged tension between Rand's writing on music and abstract art is based on ignorance, mainly hers, but also that of those who don't grasp the nature of music -- mainly because they haven't studied it and learned how it works.

Which books on abstract color and composition have you read, Roger? How deeply have you studied the subject? Isn't your opinion of abstract art based on ignorance? In fact, aren't you more ignorant of it that Rand was of music?

J

I'm approximately as well read on "abstract art" as I am on "modern music." And no, Inspector Jonathan, I have ~not~ stopped beating my wife.

My point to you was that ~most~ music is not "abstract" in the same sense as "abstract art," and that ~most~ music is ~provably~, ~demonstrably~ representational, once one has the same kind of conceptual vocabulary at hand as people who analyze representational paintings or literature. This representational meaning is dependent upon there being demonstrably present entities or something like them, such as melodies, not just shapes, colors, spikes of sound, etc.

The latter may ~connote~ or remind you of certain qualities or feelings or aspirations, etc., but they cannot embody them in the same way that an entity can. And they cannot help form a convincing basis of another realm (an imaginary world, a "re-created reality") into which you, the viewer, have temporarily entered. Such abstract elements of "modern art" are much more powerful when put to the service of coherent figures, i.e., entities or melodies.

A realm of shapes, spikes of sound, while perhaps enjoyable to some, is not a philosophically significant world, not a world important to one's survival, well-being, and happiness, not like a world of entities and their actions, or of things that behave like entities do. As I gather from Rand's comments in "Art and Cognition," the only deep significance of such a realm would be to a person whose grip on the real world has fragmented perceptually, and to whom any shape or sound is a potentially frightening or reassuring phenomenon, out of context of what it is the shape or sound ~of~.

So, the question is: why would ~any of us~ want to enter and revel in such a realm? Let alone a realm in which not even coherent shapes and patterns are discernible. I'm not interested in either the non-integrated (into entities or something like them, such as melodies), nor the disintegrated (into unconnected sense data), and I'm very leery of those who are.

REB

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The most important aspect of aesthetic analysis, though, is to understand what is there in the artwork. The testimony of any person claiming that such and such is "in" the artwork, but it can't be pointed out by them to a discerning, intelligent observer, is disqualified from the field of aesthetics.

I've given a couple of examples in post #42 above in which I point out what is "in" the artwork. Abstract art theorists and enthusiasts from Kandinsky on up have done the same. Your willful refusal to expose yourself to what people have had to say about works of abstract art doesn't erase their statements from existence.

J

Hey, I can point to shapes and colors all day and speculate or make claims about what they "represent." Where's my big bucks?

But no, I haven't stopped beating my wife, but even if I had, it would render such statements as being valid analyses of the deep philosophical meaning of "abstract art."

REB

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I would be interested in hearing from Jonathan in his own words what it is he thinks "conceptual language of music" means. From the way he uses it, I suspect he misunderstands Rand's meaning.

There's no need for me to put it into my own words when we have Rand's:

It would require: a translation of the musical experience, the inner experience, into conceptual terms; an explanation of why certain sounds strike us a certain way; a definition of the axioms of musical perception, from which the appropriate esthetic principles could be derived, which would serve as a base for the objective validation of esthetic judgments.

This means that we need a clear, conceptual distinction and separation of object from subject in the field of musical perception, such as we do possess in the other arts and in the wider field of our cognitive faculty...

In listening to music, a man cannot tell clearly, neither to himself nor to others – and, therefore, cannot prove – which aspects of his experience are inherent in the music and which are contributed by his own consciousness. He experiences it as an indivisible whole, he feels as if the magnificent exaltation were there, in the music – and he is helplessly bewildered when he discovers that some men do experience it and some do not. In regard to music, mankind is still on the perceptual level of awareness.

Until a conceptual vocabulary of music is discovered and defined, no objectively valid criterion of aesthetic judgment is possible in the field of music...Until it is brought to the stage of conceptualization, we have to treat our musical tastes and preferences as a subjective matter...

J

I suspected as much.

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