Objectivist Esthetics, R.I.P.

[anthony]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

An excellent case can be made, I think, that all art is abstract--that that might be what basically unites all the arts.

--Brant

Yes. Sorry, but Rand got there first...;) If you're not meaning, however, that art "is abstract", in itself. Like everything in reality it has a concrete form. Abstractions are epistemological tools and don't exist.

All arts are conceptually based and conceptually apprehended. We know the axioms, existence (identity)and consciousness (identification)can't be escaped or avoided, and newly-created existents, artworks, no less.

[anthony]

5 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

And it is good that we don't take our perceptions literally,  especially when they look like a contradiction. 

Physics has progressed as it has because we look beyond the first impressions given by our senses.  

"Literally", is the only way to take our perceptions. Mankind would have died out long ago failing that, I think.

Paraphrasing you: *concepts* progress, because we look beyond our senses - while sticking close to them too.

[BaalChatzaf]

16 minutes ago, anthony said:

"Literally", is the only way to take our perceptions. Mankind would have died out long ago failing that, I think.

Paraphrasing you: *concepts* progress, because we look beyond our senses - while sticking close to them too.

You mean we really should believe the magician cut his assistant in two?

[anthony]

18 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

You mean we really should believe the magician cut his assistant in two?

Asked like a doubting empiricist. To invoke an uncommon, momentarily doubt-inducing, incidental of entertainment which was purposely designed by men to fool the eye. Is your question meant to place uncertainty in one's mind - and 'validate skepticism'? (If that's not the biggest contradiction in terms, and a stolen concept fallacy). It is fitting to this debate about 'abstract' art.

Quite, in such a circumstance viewed for the first time and if you didn't know what a magician IS and does, then you would very briefly believe your senses. Then you'd immediately follow with inductive checks. Would they really do this? Can this be possible? -- No, almost certainly not. It must be an arranged trick. OK, then how does he do it?

The next time you see a magician at work, that prior experience will dispense with that process, except the 'how?' The mystery will only 'work' once on any sensible individual, before he regains his sensory certainty. Life and reality - clearly - isn't a series of illusions (staged or natural). In such a rare occurence, one simply checks his premises.

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, anthony said:

Asked like a doubting empiricist. To invoke an uncommon, momentarily doubt-inducing, incidental of entertainment which was purposely designed by men to fool the eye. Is your question meant to place uncertainty in one's mind - and 'validate skepticism'? (If that's not the biggest contradiction in terms, and a stolen concept fallacy). It is fitting to this debate about 'abstract' art.

Quite, in such a circumstance viewed for the first time and if you didn't know what a magician IS and does, then you would very briefly believe your senses. Then you'd immediately follow with inductive checks. Would they really do this? Can this be possible? -- No, almost certainly not. It must be an arranged trick. OK, then how does he do it?

The next time you see a magician at work, that prior experience will dispense with that process, except the 'how?' The mystery will only 'work' once on any sensible individual, before he regains his sensory certainty. Life and reality - clearly - isn't a series of illusions (staged or natural). In such a rare occurence, one simply checks his premises.

If what you "see" clashes  with the bulk of one's experience  he should examine the perception very critically.   Strange things do not happen frequently, but the do happen.  In such cases one must slice, dice and weight this perception of the strange  very carefully.   Seeing is seeing and  not necessarily believing. 

[Jonathan]

On 9/22/2016 at 5:49 AM, anthony said:

Just as the sort of stoned mind which fixes its gaze on a motif of the wall paper: Wow dude, d'you see those concentric circles expanding like waves...planetary orbits ... the spinning electrons of an atom ...  whatever a blank mind fancies.

"Blank mind"? Hmmm.

So, I use the exact same method that Rand used in interpreting the abstract art forms that she liked (architecture, music, dance, etc.), and her observations and interpretations are rated as being purely "objective" and praiseworthy, but mine are the "fancies" of a "stoned" and "black mind." And meanwhile, Tony and all other Rand-followers can't identify any "artist's meaning" in any work of art, and yet they've convinced themselves that others are to be ridiculed for being capable of experiencing and describing meaning?

 

On 9/22/2016 at 5:49 AM, anthony said:

"Faking reality" is what it is. I had a designer friend, a "commercial artist", and she regularly painted and drew similar designs, quite intricate some times. For e.g. gift wrapping paper, wall paper. Meaningless (she knew that) and pretty.

You say "meaningless" as if you're hoping that we've forgotten that you haven't identified any "artist's meaning" in any work of art, ever, including -- most emphatically including -- representational realist works.

 

On 9/22/2016 at 5:49 AM, anthony said:

If a section were reproduced on canvas and showed to you, you'd doubtless find your own subjective meaning in it.

And you doubtless wouldn't find any meaning in anything, including representational realist paintings. Fortunately, not all people share your personal limitations.

Rand found her own subjective meaning in the abstract (non-representational) forms of architecture, music and dance, as well as in works of representational realism. If the method is good enough for her, it's good enough for me.

 

On 9/22/2016 at 5:49 AM, anthony said:

You're faking/fantasizing and it doesn't work on me.

No, I'm not faking anything, but just genuinely giving descriptions of what I see and experience, just as Rand did in regard to the art forms which affected her.

J

[anthony]

On 2016/09/23 at 8:56 PM, Jonathan said:

"Blank mind"? Hmmm.

So, I use the exact same method that Rand used in interpreting the abstract art forms that she liked (architecture, music, dance, etc.), and her observations and interpretations are rated as being purely "objective" and praiseworthy, but mine are the "fancies" of a "stoned" and "black mind." And meanwhile, Tony and all other Rand-followers can't identify any "artist's meaning" in any work of art, and yet they've convinced themselves that others are to be ridiculed for being capable of experiencing and describing meaning?

 

You say "meaningless" as if you're hoping that we've forgotten that you haven't identified any "artist's meaning" in any work of art, ever, including -- most emphatically including -- representational realist works.

 

And you doubtless wouldn't find any meaning in anything, including representational realist paintings. Fortunately, not all people share your personal limitations.

Rand found her own subjective meaning in the abstract (non-representational) forms of architecture, music and dance, as well as in works of representational realism. If the method is good enough for her, it's good enough for me.

 

No, I'm not faking anything, but just genuinely giving descriptions of what I see and experience, just as Rand did in regard to the art forms which affected her.

J

You are one size fits all, in your grasp of Rand's art theory. You know this. She treated the different genres quite differently. There are different perceptual-conceptual processes she distinguished for music, literature and visual arts. (While allowing that music is still not fully understood). Blending them together is deceptive of you and how you arrive at "Rand's self-contradictions" you are always claiming.

Second, no excuse for pretending you don't recall and what I answered recently. "Meaning" is not the objective, objectively. A picture doesn't have meaning - it is 'real, it is WHAT it is. And HOW the artist styles his subject is everything else, and displays his personal view of existence. An attractive face can be cynically made to appear misshapen or contorted and therefore derisable; a quite plain face might be depicted as strongly characterful. Or with lively intelligence. Ad infinitum.

Conversely, what you dug up out of that one abstract piece shows a fantastical quest to find "meaning". Do you truly look for "meaning" in reality with real things? Or do you "identify" it and them? 

You apparently fixate on one or two (hypothetically) 'real' existents, e.g. concentric circles, which could "mean" nothing, or anything at all - and build up the rest out of your head, to fit.

"...the abstract art forms that she liked..." - is funny. All art is therefore abstract?! ha! What you say is if there is 'abstraction' (concepts) involved, it must be "abstract"...? I think that is mixing up metaphysics and epistemology.

And funny is the artfulness in your using "the exact same method that Rand used in interpreting [those]." Sure glad you agree with Rand on something. But - wrong method, wrong subject matter. A subjective 'method' for a subjective painting: now that IS appropriate, and how minds turn into mush.

[Brant Gaede]

2 hours ago, anthony said:

You are one size fits all, in your grasp of Rand's art theory. You know this. She treated the different genres quite differently. There are different perceptual-conceptual processes she distinguished for music, literature and visual arts. (While allowing that music is still not fully understood). Blending them together is deceptive of you and how you arrive at "Rand's self-contradictions" you are always claiming.

Second, no excuse for pretending you don't recall and what I answered recently. "Meaning" is not the objective, objectively. A picture doesn't have meaning - it is 'real, it is WHAT it is. And HOW the artist styles his subject is everything else, and displays his personal view of existence. An attractive face can be cynically made to appear misshapen or contorted and therefore derisable; a quite plain face might be depicted as strongly characterful. Or with lively intelligence. Ad infinitum.

Conversely, what you dug up out of that one abstract piece shows a fantastical quest to find "meaning". Do you truly look for "meaning" in reality with real things? Or do you "identify" it and them? 

You apparently fixate on one or two (hypothetically) 'real' existents, e.g. concentric circles, which could "mean" nothing, or anything at all - and build up the rest out of your head, to fit.

"...the abstract art forms that she liked..." - is funny. All art is therefore abstract?! ha! What you say is if there is 'abstraction' (concepts) involved, it must be "abstract"...? I think that is mixing up metaphysics and epistemology.

And funny is the artfulness in your using "the exact same method that Rand used in interpreting [those]." Sure glad you agree with Rand on something. But - wrong method, wrong subject matter. A subjective 'method' for a subjective painting: now that IS appropriate, and how minds turn into mush.

(The above is Tony's reply to Jonathan)

I'd think "meaning" is in the eye (ear, brain) of the perceiver--which includes the creator (artist). That could, and likely would, shift over time and/or place and circumstance (what side of bed did one get out on?). So Jonathan has nothing on you, if not Rand, if you don't tell us anything about meaning objectified. There is no bad or good art qua esthetics only a moral evaluation. Esthetics and morality don't mix unless you lard the latter onto the former like barnacles onto a ship. Rand's esthetics are like her evaluation of homosexuality--"I think it's disgusting"*--except she pretends reasoning, just like you do except you generally refrain from avoiding discussion and keep at it--that is, Rand played King of the Mountain to the hilt.

Now what I meant when I suggested that all art is abstract is you have to experience it (1) then cognitively evaluate it (2) back to its existentially derived reality or acknowledge there are no referents except what happens in one's own brain experiencing it (3). Of course the physicality of an artwork is objective reality or it wouldn't/couldn't even exist to talk about.

--Brant

*so Howard and Gail don't get it on even though Roark loved Wynand much more than Dominique for whom Gail expressed his love to before sexual intercourse while Howard just plowed her a la Rand's primo sexual fantasy pre John Galt

 

[anthony]

But it's not "meaning" we look for in ... anything. We see. We look to establish the nature/causation of some thing. What it is, how it came about, what could be its consequences. (Causality, identity in action). Hardly "meaning". Nature doesn't have meaning, it has identity. Fine Art is made for an artist's purposeful expression, evident to vision and mind, and what he made has a concrete identity (which can ground one of your concepts). Religiously seeking "meaning"- out there - could be the first stage of subjectivity in art or existence.

In this respect, I think art, in general is where one may and will, learn to reason early on in life, first providing a kindergarten of conceptualism on through adulthood. There's as much philosophy in art as in anything else, may be clearer now. The big philosophers understood this.

Start with the wrong method, and thinking in general goes wrong too. Then, it could well be a permanent fixture. The wrong method may start in art: a). with seeing art as a metaphysical-given, delivered THROUGH the medium (artist), to be gratefully accepted as such - created mystically, unknowable - above reasoning. And interchangeably, b). something produced empirically, without a consciousness. Either way we'll get 'causeless' emotion, which one is fallaciously supposed to feel, PRIOR TO identification and value-judgment. The aim is: perceive with your emotions, judge with your emotions, act upon emotions. There go many people today and unsurprisingly the popular arts today.

Which is where Rand will always be excoriated and get people bitter and twisted. She blew the lid off the Sublimists' fallacy and turned her searchlight on the dark and "mystical" corners others would not acknowledge and question. To the empiricists, she showed the proper role of consciousness.

No doubt  - is there? - that "abstract" art is primacy of consciousness stuff. From 'artist's' - to viewer's, who must supposedly ingest the unidentifiable imagery direct-to-psyche, bypassing identity and value-assessment.

[anthony]

On 2016/09/23 at 7:12 PM, BaalChatzaf said:

If what you "see" clashes  with the bulk of one's experience  he should examine the perception very critically.   Strange things do not happen frequently, but the do happen.  In such cases one must slice, dice and weight this perception of the strange  very carefully.   Seeing is seeing and  not necessarily believing. 

We agree then, good. One's senses are trustworthy and must be relied upon. The aberrations and exceptions are too few contexts to matter, and can be adjusted swiftly.

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, anthony said:

But it's not "meaning" we look for in ... anything. We see. We look to establish the nature/causation of some thing. What it is, how it came about, what could be its consequences. (Causality, identity in action). Hardly "meaning". Nature doesn't have meaning, it has identity. Fine Art is made for an artist's purposeful expression, evident to vision and mind, and what he made has a concrete identity (which can ground one of your concepts). Religiously seeking "meaning"- out there - could be the first stage of subjectivity in art or existence.

In this respect, I think art, in general is where one may and will, learn to reason early on in life, first providing a kindergarten of conceptualism on through adulthood. There's as much philosophy in art as in anything else, may be clearer now. The big philosophers understood this.

Start with the wrong method, and thinking in general goes wrong too. Then, it could well be a permanent fixture. The wrong method may start in art: a). with seeing art as a metaphysical-given, delivered THROUGH the medium (artist), to be gratefully accepted as such - created mystically, unknowable - above reasoning. And interchangeably, b). something produced empirically, without a consciousness. Either way we'll get 'causeless' emotion, which one is fallaciously supposed to feel, PRIOR TO identification and value-judgment. The aim is: perceive with your emotions, judge with your emotions, act upon emotions. There go many people today and unsurprisingly the popular arts today.

Which is where Rand will always be excoriated and get people bitter and twisted. She blew the lid off the Sublimists' fallacy and turned her searchlight on the dark and "mystical" corners others would not acknowledge and question. To the empiricists, she showed the proper role of consciousness.

No doubt  - is there? - that "abstract" art is primacy of consciousness stuff. From 'artist's' - to viewer's, who must supposedly ingest the unidentifiable imagery direct-to-psyche, bypassing identity and value-assessment.

I'd have to say Rand didn't engage in giant floating abstractions dressed out in philosophical (and psychological?) gobbledygook.

--Brant

she bragged about being able to explain her philosophy to a cab driver, but I doubt if she was thinking about esthetics

I'm sure you explained elsewhere the difference between representational art and abstract art and what makes each what it is, but would you repeat it or link to it? (I'd say--tentatively--that representational goes back to or refers to someone/something like the "Mona Lisa" while abstract doesn't--that that is second level with the first level being all art is abstract (an abstraction.)

[Brant Gaede]

Epistemology in art is what you do with your brain making it and contemplating it, but it is actually not inside any artwork itself I can think of.

Literature requires different brain work than looking at a painting. Because most of us are taught to read and write but not how to see what's in a painting this difference is exacerbated. When it comes to music, especially classical--I don't get this with opera--one naturally makes pictures in one's own mind listening to it. Maybe some painters--I've never heard of this--paint some of those pictures. Why not?

Art strikes me as abstract creation. What's depicted is an abstraction. You don't tell an artist how to manage creation although he might ask. Sometimes structure is extremely important as in some poetry. Rules and regulations about what goes into the structure should only be suggestions, if that. The act of creation is honored by not pretending to be the artist for that's his bailiwick.

Criticism is after, not before, the fact. I can call an artwork "shit" as easily as anyone else, albeit it's just another opinion which, since it's about a work of art, needn't be explained although it makes you look dumb for sharing.

--Brant

[anthony]

4 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

I'd have to say Rand didn't engage in giant floating abstractions dressed out in philosophical (and psychological?) gobbledygook.

--Brant

she bragged about being able to explain her philosophy to a cab driver, but I doubt if she was thinking about esthetics

I'm sure you explained elsewhere the difference between representational art and abstract art and what makes each what it is, but would you repeat it or link to it? (I'd say--tentatively--that representational goes back to or refers to someone/something like the "Mona Lisa" while abstract doesn't--that that is second level with the first level being all art is abstract (an abstraction.)

Really? Have you read The Romantic Manifesto recently? plenty of "philosophical gobbledygook" in there...

To put it one more way, one's conceptual epistemology is what one brings to bear on reality to comprehend it and integrate it. Art is the "re-creation of reality" (in the artist's own image). Again, "reality" -  with one significant bonus: It is a real image made purposefully by men and women to be looked at, contemplated, thought about and felt about - while 'natural' reality was not 'made', it evolved.

In that case I ask you, do percepts and concepts by artists not require *at least* as much applied epistemology as all reality? If not moreso? And yeah, anybody can "tell" the artist whatever he thinks to respond with, as to anyone else who writes or speaks an opinion about life. Why is the artist above the same treatment? This tends to confirm the notion that he is seen to be a mystical 'medium'.

Abstract 'art', doesn't have a distinction from representational art. They aren't even related, except in paint on paper (etc). If a picture hasn't anything else perceivable, but patterns, shapes, lines (etc.etc.) it doesn't objectively qualify as "art". It's the equivalent of an anti-concept.

"Abstract" is a fanciful, made-up misnomer unrelated to man's "abstractions" - obviously a concrete entity can't be abstract - and "art" it is not.

(whew, and the beat/debate goes on...).

And there are no "rules" for art btw. Where did that come from? Can you see what it is, is not a rule.

[Brant Gaede]

2 hours ago, anthony said:

Really? Have you read The Romantic Manifesto recently? plenty of "philosophical gobbledygook" in there...

To put it one more way, one's conceptual epistemology is what one brings to bear on reality to comprehend it and integrate it. Art is the "re-creation of reality" (in the artist's own image). Again, "reality" -  with one significant bonus: It is a real image made purposefully by men and women to be looked at, contemplated, thought about and felt about - while 'natural' reality was not 'made', it evolved.

In that case I ask you, do percepts and concepts by artists not require *at least* as much applied epistemology as all reality? If not moreso? And yeah, anybody can "tell" the artist whatever he thinks to respond with, as to anyone else who writes or speaks an opinion about life. Why is the artist above the same treatment? This tends to confirm the notion that he is seen to be a mystical 'medium'.

Abstract 'art', doesn't have a distinction from representational art. They aren't even related, except in paint on paper (etc). If a picture hasn't anything else perceivable, but patterns, shapes, lines (etc.etc.) it doesn't objectively qualify as "art". It's the equivalent of an anti-concept.

"Abstract" is a fanciful, made-up misnomer unrelated to man's "abstractions" - obviously a concrete entity can't be abstract - and "art" it is not.

(whew, and the beat/debate goes on...).

And there are no "rules" for art btw. Where did that come from? Can you see what it is, is not a rule.

You left out "giant floating abstractions."

You're still ignoring music.

Natural reality is not to be "looked at, contemplated, thought about and felt about"?

Yeah, anybody can "tell" an artist anything. An idiot can make a genius statement accidentally and a genius can make an idiot statement. None of this is an objectification of any normative esthetics.

Some art is a re-creation of reality and some isn't. Pinning Rand's tail on the donkey is an un-universal and un-effective boresome chore except, it seems, for you and a few others.

You talk about taking percepts and cognition into art but only concepts out. Why not percepts out too? Percepts and concepts in, percepts out. Percepts in, percepts out. Concepts in, percepts out. Percepts and concepts in, concepts out(?).

I'm not saying normative objective esthetics isn't possible it's just not been done. What's being done is esthetic Lysinkoism or normative esthetics as opposed to descriptive.

--Brant

[anthony]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

You left out "giant floating abstractions."

You're still ignoring music.

Natural reality is not to be "looked at, contemplated, thought about and felt about"?

Yeah, anybody can "tell" an artist anything. An idiot can make a genius statement accidentally and a genius can make an idiot statement. None of this is an objectification of any normative esthetics.

Some art is a re-creation of reality and some isn't. Pinning Rand's tail on the donkey is an un-universal and un-effective boresome chore except, it seems, for you and a few others.

You talk about taking percepts and cognition into art but only concepts out. Why not percepts out too? Percepts and concepts in, percepts out. Percepts in, percepts out. Concepts in, percepts out. Percepts and concepts in, concepts out(?).

I'm not saying normative objective esthetics isn't possible it's just not been done. What's being done is esthetic Lysinkoism or normative esthetics as opposed to descriptive.

--Brant

We're talking past each other. The root is identity. I won't ask what you see when you look around you there, but here I see many people who couldn't identify their way out of a paper bag. They hardly learned how to, or it was discouraged.

Politicians who won't call anything like it really IS, if their lives depended on it. Media (here too) who deliberately distort identification and "spin" news stories toward the ruling Party.. And the people. Also here, rioting; usually strikers, this time round self-righteous university students breaking up several campuses demanding by intimidation their "right" to free tutelage. And a large number who support that "heroic" narrative. Plain, isn't it, many people cannot identify even who and what they are, nor distinguish themselves from others' lives (and property). To a pathological degree the sense of self-identity is decreasing everywhere.

 I say it begins well before political upheavals with an individual's identification. Look at this here argument, with some accepting 'anything goes' to identify art - after all, "who am I to know better"- the artist alone knows. Mystical authoritarianism, self-doubt and subjective feelings are the causes and effects of that.

Art as laid out by the modern art intellectuals, seeping into popular arts, has an insidious effect on a culture eventually.

And for one to identify the best or worst of art? That takes individual value judgment and judgment has long been a dirty word.

(If you want to bring in the field of music, go ahead).

Where did I say one can't-won't contemplate, think about, etc. nature? There is the man-made vs. metaphysical-given distinction. Art alone is looked at and thought about -- knowing -- that it has been selected, isolated, emphasised and 'processed' by someone's mind.

[william.scherk]

[Jonathan]

On 9/25/2016 at 7:14 AM, anthony said:

You are one size fits all, in your grasp of Rand's art theory. You know this. She treated the different genres quite differently. There are different perceptual-conceptual processes she distinguished for music, literature and visual arts.

Yes, she made arbitrary assertions about the various art forms, with nothing objective to back them up. Her opinions were not based on any objective testing of individuals and their cognitive capacities, but rather were based on nothing but her own personal cognitive limitations. She made the mistaken and comically arrogant assumption that since she did not experience anything in certain art forms, then no one else could either.

Here followers make the same mistake. No objective proof. No research. Nothing but their own personal limitations being put forward as the universal limitations of all mankind.

 

On 9/25/2016 at 7:14 AM, anthony said:

Blending them together is deceptive of you and how you arrive at "Rand's self-contradictions" you are always claiming.

Rand "blended them together" by placing them under a common definition and stating that they must meet common criteria.

 

On 9/25/2016 at 7:14 AM, anthony said:

Second, no excuse for pretending you don't recall and what I answered recently. "Meaning" is not the objective, objectively. A picture doesn't have meaning - it is 'real, it is WHAT it is. And HOW the artist styles his subject is everything else, and displays his personal view of existence. An attractive face can be cynically made to appear misshapen or contorted and therefore derisable; a quite plain face might be depicted as strongly characterful. Or with lively intelligence. Ad infinitum.

False. Meaning IS the objective under the Objectivist Esthetics. A "view of existence" is just another way of saying "meaning." You're squirming, slithering, equivocating and evading.

Regardless of your stupid little games, you still haven't objectively shown that anything, ever, has qualified as art by Rand's theory, including by your own personal interpretation of Rand's theory.

 

On 9/25/2016 at 7:14 AM, anthony said:

Conversely, what you dug up out of that one abstract piece shows a fantastical quest to find "meaning".

Then Rand's interpretations of representational realist paintings were nothing but illusory "fantastical quests to find 'meaning.'" As were her interpretations of the abstract art forms of architecture, music and dance . I used the exact same method that she did.

 

On 9/25/2016 at 7:14 AM, anthony said:

You apparently fixate on one or two (hypothetically) 'real' existents, e.g. concentric circles, which could "mean" nothing, or anything at all - and build up the rest out of your head, to fit.

That's exactly what Rand did. Read her descriptions of the fictional buildings in The Fountainhead to see examples of the method that she used to arrive at meanings.

 

On 9/25/2016 at 7:14 AM, anthony said:

"...the abstract art forms that she liked..." - is funny. All art is therefore abstract?!

No. You're being illogical again (actually I should say "still"). I have not said that all art is abstract. I haven't even remotely suggested it.

Rand liked certain abstract art forms -- art forms which do no present immediately identifiable likeness of specific things from reality.

Architecture is an abstract art form. Music is an abstract art form. Dance is an abstract art form.

My saying the above in no way implies that I believe that "all art is therefore abstract."

Please, Tony, try to at least make a minimal effort at practicing the Objectivist Epistemology. Rationality. Logic.

 

On 9/25/2016 at 7:14 AM, anthony said:

And funny is the artfulness in your using "the exact same method that Rand used in interpreting [those]." Sure glad you agree with Rand on something. But - wrong method, wrong subject matter. A subjective 'method' for a subjective painting: now that IS appropriate, and how minds turn into mush.

Again we're back to the absence of proof -- the thing you've been dodging and evading. Rand offered no objective proof that she was actually identifying "artists' meanings" or artists' "views of existence" or whatever you want to call them. She was merely reporting her subjective takes on paintings while calling them "objective." She was merely making arbitrary assertions without providing the requisite proof. Bluffing. Just as you and her other followers do. Which is why none of you can answer my challenges.

J

[Jonathan]

On 9/25/2016 at 4:44 PM, anthony said:

Art is the "re-creation of reality" (in the artist's own image).

But yet the Objectivist Esthetics classifies architecture as art despite Rand's having explicitly stated that "architecture does not re-create reality."

Nor does music. Nor dance. Yet the Objectivist Esthetics also counts them as valid art forms.

Pure irrationality!

 

On 9/25/2016 at 4:44 PM, anthony said:

Abstract 'art', doesn't have a distinction from representational art. They aren't even related, except in paint on paper (etc). If a picture hasn't anything else perceivable, but patterns, shapes, lines (etc.etc.) it doesn't objectively qualify as "art". It's the equivalent of an anti-concept.

 

Then architecture, music and dance are not art.

J

[Thorn]

On ‎2016‎-‎09‎-‎22 at 9:33 PM, Brant Gaede said:

An excellent case can be made, I think, that all art is abstract--that that might be what basically unites all the arts.

--Brant

Well, I can only speak for myself here but I've found that my enjoyment of art is very abstract. For example, one of my favorite artists - Glenn Keane - is a legandary Disney animator. While I enjoy the movies from Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks (I have, after all, spent a couple of years studying this kind of stuff), I'm not sold on the aesthetics. It's lacking, in a similar way that I find Thomas Kincaid to be lacking. Technically great, but... but... then you have some of the artists working on these films. Like Glenn Keane. Here's on of his drawing of Pochahontas:

 

I find that to be incredibly beautiful. The lines are so wonderfully weighted, full of emotion, nicely blended and expressive. He's said himself that "drawing [refering to linework, I believe] is the seismograph of the soul". Then you have stuff like the transformation of The Beast, which I enjoy a millions time more than the finished work:

 

Sure, this is representational art. No doubt about that. However, the real qualities I find are abstract. Like the transformation of The Beast, which to me is like one of Michelangelo's drawings or sculptures coming to life. It's all in the lines, proportions and movements. The subject matter is all secondary.

[BaalChatzaf]

26 minutes ago, Thorn said:

Well, I can only speak for myself here but I've found that my enjoyment of art is very abstract. For example, one of my favorite artists - Glenn Keane - is a legandary Disney animator. While I enjoy the movies from Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks (I have, after all, spent a couple of years studying this kind of stuff), I'm not sold on the aesthetics. It's lacking, in a similar way that I find Thomas Kincaid to be lacking. Technically great, but... but... then you have some of the artists working on these films. Like Glenn Keane. Here's on of his drawing of Pochahontas:

 

I find that to be incredibly beautiful. The lines are so wonderfully weighted, full of emotion, nicely blended and expressive. He's said himself that "drawing [refering to linework, I believe] is the seismograph of the soul". Then you have stuff like the transformation of The Beast, which I enjoy a millions time more than the finished work:

 

Sure, this is representational art. No doubt about that. However, the real qualities I find are abstract. Like the transformation of The Beast, which to me is like one of Michelangelo's drawings or sculptures coming to life. It's all in the lines, proportions and movements. The subject matter is all secondary.

Top illustration --- very erotic

[anthony]

12 hours ago, Thorn said:

Well, I can only speak for myself here but I've found that my enjoyment of art is very abstract. For example, one of my favorite artists - Glenn Keane - is a legandary Disney animator. While I enjoy the movies from Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks (I have, after all, spent a couple of years studying this kind of stuff), I'm not sold on the aesthetics. It's lacking, in a similar way that I find Thomas Kincaid to be lacking. Technically great, but... but... then you have some of the artists working on these films. Like Glenn Keane. Here's on of his drawing of Pochahontas:

 

I find that to be incredibly beautiful. The lines are so wonderfully weighted, full of emotion, nicely blended and expressive. He's said himself that "drawing [refering to linework, I believe] is the seismograph of the soul". Then you have stuff like the transformation of The Beast, which I enjoy a millions time more than the finished work:

 

Sure, this is representational art. No doubt about that. However, the real qualities I find are abstract. Like the transformation of The Beast, which to me is like one of Michelangelo's drawings or sculptures coming to life. It's all in the lines, proportions and movements. The subject matter is all secondary.

You'd have to define how you mean "abstract". Abstract as in 'abstract art', is accepted to mean there are no real subjects ~at all~ to see, isn't as you apparently use it, which seems to me roughly "a subtle suggestion of something less well-defined and reduced to essentials". The minimalist styles in the drawings do suggest emotion or activity to the viewers, I agree. I quite like the one of the girl and its suggestion of the her vivacity and movement. As you say yourself, the abstract quality is what YOU make of the pictures in your eyes and mind - only human minds can abstract anything. iow "abstract" can't be inherent to a picture, here they are simply the artists' deliberate stylizing choices. So these aren't at all "abstract art" which is only incoherent lines and shapes etc. - but representational, as you say.

And if you think that the subject matter is ~ever~ "secondary", just try to visualize these images totally without real, intelligible subjects and you might see that the results can't be anything but a confused mess!

[Jonathan]

On 10/1/2016 at 10:08 PM, anthony said:

You'd have to define how you mean "abstract". Abstract as in 'abstract art', is accepted to mean there are no real subjects ~at all~ to see, isn't as you apparently use it, which seems to me roughly "a subtle suggestion of something less well-defined and reduced to essentials".

Accepted by whom?

Abstract art exists along a continuum of departure from accurate visual representation from partial to complete. An image may contain both highly representational aspects and highly abstract ones.

 

On 10/1/2016 at 10:08 PM, anthony said:

You'd have to define how you mean "abstract". Abstract as in 'abstract art', is accepted to mean there are no real subjects ~at all~ to see, isn't as you apparently use it, which seems to me roughly "a subtle suggestion of something less well-defined and reduced to essentials". The minimalist styles in the drawings do suggest emotion or activity to the viewers, I agree. I quite like the one of the girl and its suggestion of the her vivacity and movement. As you say yourself, the abstract quality is what YOU make of the pictures in your eyes and mind - only human minds can abstract anything. iow "abstract" can't be inherent to a picture, here they are simply the artists' deliberate stylizing choices. So these aren't at all "abstract art" which is only incoherent lines and shapes etc. - but representational, as you say.

And if you think that the subject matter is ~ever~ "secondary", just try to visualize these images totally without real, intelligible subjects and you might see that the results can't be anything but a confused mess!

You’re ignorantly blabbering out of your ass again. Uninformed, unintelligent Rand-follower.

 

On 10/1/2016 at 10:08 PM, anthony said:

And if you think that the subject matter is ~ever~ "secondary", just try to visualize these images totally without real, intelligible subjects and you might see that the results can't be anything but a confused mess!

Get it through your thick skull: Your personal limitations are not the universal limitations of all mankind; it does not logically follow that because something is unintelligible and confusing to you then it is therefore unintelligible and confusing to everyone.

J

[anthony]

5 hours ago, Jonathan said:

Accepted by whom?

Abstract art exists along a continuum of departure from accurate visual representation from partial to complete. An image may contain both highly representational aspects and highly abstract ones.

 

You’re ignorantly blabbering out of your ass again. Uninformed, unintelligent Rand-follower.

 

Get it through your thick skull: Your personal limitations are not the universal limitations of all mankind; it does not logically follow that because something is unintelligible and confusing to you then it is therefore unintelligible and confusing to everyone.

J

Thorn seems straight-up, and I'd like to hear if he believes he would gain his "abstract" feelings of "beauty and expressiveness" if the lines he complimented in the images - depicted exactly *nothing at all*, instead of those human figures. He said: "my enjoyment of art is very abstract". Not, you notice, "my enjoyment of abstract art". No mind can form abstractions from an 'abstract'. It needs to perceive real things. (Does anyone know otherwise?) To make his emotional abstractions - if there were nothing of reality to 'hang' it upon - would be impossible. Maybe he'll answer for himself.

You must be the last to notice that you've run out of steam. You have no arguments left, just appeals to "universal" authority and empirical assertions, empty of art's greatest value to man's percepts/concepts. To raise a "continuum of departure" roughly between Impressionist - 'abstract art', looks to me like a last ditch effort to enforce a stale argument and as ever instill uncertainty in some inexperienced readers, to undermine the trust in their perception abilities. I reckon it is so, that there can be a grey area of less-to- lesser coherency of visual art (before descending to totally unintelligible 'abstract art') which, in quantity and quality, doesn't represent ~anything~ like the vast bulk of all art. You know this. Those grey, ambiguous fringes you enjoy so much ... and which validates just the opposite to your intention.

Still, who cares what "meaning" anyone claims to see? If an image can't be made real, with ~some~ clarity by its painter - and contain ~some~ amount of distinguishable subject matter - and therefore cannot be quickly identifiable - it won't be of perceptual use to make concrete a viewer's concepts, so to be seen as no more than an ornament (often not even beautiful). 

Get this in your head: Men see reality. A mind needs it, more than ever from art, made by men. (That portion of mankind's minds at least that hasn't been seduced by neo-mystical Kantian krapola).

 

[Brant Gaede]

On 10/4/2016 at 5:24 PM, anthony said:

Thorn seems straight-up, and I'd like to hear if he believes he would gain his "abstract" feelings of "beauty and expressiveness" if the lines he complimented in the images - depicted exactly *nothing at all*, instead of those human figures. He said: "my enjoyment of art is very abstract". Not, you notice, "my enjoyment of abstract art". No mind can form abstractions from an 'abstract'. It needs to perceive real things. (Does anyone know otherwise?) To make his emotional abstractions - if there were nothing of reality to 'hang' it upon - would be impossible. Maybe he'll answer for himself.

You must be the last to notice that you've run out of steam. You have no arguments left, just appeals to "universal" authority and empirical assertions, empty of art's greatest value to man's percepts/concepts. To raise a "continuum of departure" roughly between Impressionist - 'abstract art', looks to me like a last ditch effort to enforce a stale argument and as ever instill uncertainty in some inexperienced readers, to undermine the trust in their perception abilities. I reckon it is so, that there can be a grey area of less-to- lesser coherency of visual art (before descending to totally unintelligible 'abstract art') which, in quantity and quality, doesn't represent ~anything~ like the vast bulk of all art. You know this. Those grey, ambiguous fringes you enjoy so much ... and which validates just the opposite to your intention.

Still, who cares what "meaning" anyone claims to see? If an image can't be made real, with ~some~ clarity by its painter - and contain ~some~ amount of distinguishable subject matter - and therefore cannot be quickly identifiable - it won't be of perceptual use to make concrete a viewer's concepts, so to be seen as no more than an ornament (often not even beautiful). 

Get this in your head: Men see reality. A mind needs it, more than ever from art, made by men. (That portion of mankind's minds at least that hasn't been seduced by neo-mystical Kantian krapola).

You certainly haven't "run out of steam." I'm afraid it's not to your credit qua your arguments, only qua you to you.

Purely abstract art--we're talking about visual art here--in the sense you seem to mean it, can be made from nothing in reality and everything out of the artist's head, qua epistemology. It can be very provoking/invoking to some people, one of whom told me she couldn't be in the same room with a certain painting; it was a horror to her. To me it was very interesting for personal and other reasons, but not a horror. Her reaction was extremely interesting. I did think it was very powerful.

I have quite a few paintings mostly representational and therefore worthy of your sanction, I suppose. To me they are all abstract to some extent.

You don't want Jonathan to stop replying to you. This Tango needs two. I'm just a bit player.

--Brant

[anthony]

7 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

You certainly haven't "run out of steam." I'm afraid it's not to your credit qua your arguments, only qua you to you.

Purely abstract art--we're talking about visual art here--in the sense you seem to mean it, can be made from nothing in reality and everything out of the artist's head, qua epistemology. It can be very provoking/invoking to some people, one of whom told be she couldn't be in the same room with a certain painting; it was a horror to her. To me it was very interesting for personal and other reasons, but not a horror. Her reaction was extremely interesting. I did think it was very powerful.

I have quite a few paintings mostly representational and therefore worthy of your sanction, I suppose. To me they are all abstract to some extent.

You don't want Jonathan to stop replying to you. This Tango needs two. I'm just a bit player.

--Brant

You have the gist of it. But what do you say to the guy who speaks in gibberish to you, no matter how musically-pleasant it sounds, but is apparently convinced it's real language? You eventually tell him he's faking reality and ignore him, presumably. Whatever is expressed from inside some artist's "head" doesn't automatically qualify as art, any more than garble from inside that man's head qualifies as language.. However, the artist is forgiven and applauded for faking reality or for assuring others he feels he knows what abstract art represents, if they can't. I don't take anyone's word for it, and can't abide reality-fakirs. "Worthy" of my "sanction" is any single thing I can recognise in reality. Not just me, vision and mind is the one "universal", common to all.

You've often shown an interesting, if ambivalent outlook on what "abstract" is, which I've inferred from other people too. But the artist's act of 're-constituting' reality by accentuating his work with a special treatment, is what many do mistake as abstraction, I think. Rather, it's due to his eye, his consciousness, his personal view of existence, and learned and tirelessly practised technical skills that add the 'glow' to a subject he isolates, and which he considers a highly important aspect of existence. In a sense, a representational artist plays God, and improves on the original - of course - why not?. He can even add further things from his memory and imagination. I assume all that's the root of the almost mystical reverence he's traditionally paid. "Abstract" concepts only exist in one's mind and cannot be re-created in concrete form on canvas. They need a vehicle.

Setting a 'mood' is what we have decoration for.

Qua argument, argue with that. ;)