Art and Subobjectivity

[Jonathan]

E asked,

Now is this what Rand meant by "recreation of reality"? Oh, of course not!, of course not!, I expect the reply to be. OK, so just what did she mean?

Any takers?

She meant that art is a stylized simulation - a substitute, a model, an imaginary alternate or potential reality, not a replication of reality.

J

[reason.on]

E asked,

Now is this what Rand meant by "recreation of reality"? Oh, of course not!, of course not!, I expect the reply to be. OK, so just what did she mean?

Any takers?

She meant that art is a stylized simulation - a substitute, a model, an imaginary alternate or potential reality, not a replication of reality.

...which "brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of consciousness and allows him to grasp them directly...."

RCR

[Victor Pross]

E asked,

Now is this what Rand meant by "recreation of reality"? Oh, of course not!, of course not!, I expect the reply to be. OK, so just what did she mean?

Any takers?

She meant that art is a stylized simulation - a substitute, a model, an imaginary alternate or potential reality, not a replication of reality.

...which "brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of consciousness and allows him to grasp them directly...."

RCR

Perfect. :turned:

[Victor Pross]

The Cave Man Traditionalist with a Funny Bone.

I have been a called a “traditionalist” and an oppressor for defending representational painting. Ironically, it is Modernist ideologues that have suppressed traditional realists from the freedom to express themselves artistically. It is Realism which has been virtually banned in most of the fine art departments in colleges and universities throughout the western world. And while museums display realist art of the past centuries, living realists are black-balled and ignored nearly everywhere--while countless numbers of charlatans are given endless space for their “installations” or “conceptual” constructs, regardless how lacking they are in skills.

The classic modus operandi of any oppressor is to accuse their victims of oppressing them! If they can label the oppressed as “right-wing extremists” or “oppressors” then they have effectively silenced their opposition, and have done so in the name of ‘freedom of expression.’ They scream against the “tyranny of definitions”—which is really a shriek against rationally. Fact is, I don’t think Modern and Post-Modern works rise to the definition of “art”--but I don’t believe anyone should be banned from making it or exhibiting it. They can even call it 'art' if that’s what they want. It is a treasured right that they exercise in our free society regardless of how wretched their work may be. I don't have a political case to make against it, but a philosophincal one.

However, it is Modernist ideologues have restricted all the major museums in the free world. They control nearly every college and university art department, and their hand-puppets and carbon copies rule journalistic art criticism. They receive all government funding, and their propaganda epistles are called “text books” in secondary schools and college. Even in nursery school children are discouraged from drawing realistically---even though that’s what virtually every child is attracted to art, as I was. They are even mocked for wasting their time on real objects which they are told “anyone can do”. The teachers even take away their pencils to give them instead buttons, macaroni glue and magazines to make a meaningless collages. How nice.

-Victor

Jackson Pollack

Edited January 11, 2007 by Victor Pross

[Danneskjold]

I once literally saw graph paper on the walls of an art musem.

Edit: Sorry I about the worthless post, I had to get out of my house for school.

I was five and was in New Mexico and my parents decided to take me to an art museum. Now, this place had a good amount of really good art, until I went to the modern art section. That's when I saw what was literally graph paper on the walls. Probably one of the worst displays ever.

Edited January 11, 2007 by Jeff Kremer

[Rich Engle]

I know what Victor says to be right. It seems like it goes to extremes. Same thing if you are in college because you wish to be a writer. Same old drills. You get the guy that is a frustrated, mediocre writer, and you have to align with his goofy-ass standards and style. Or maybe they have a hero, and you end up in deep doo-doo if you don't have a little Hemingway emulation in your pieces. Or the free-flow guys who automatically think they need to unlock your creativity. I remember when I was in college, I ended up in a poetry class (I am almost thoroughly a writer of prose) taught by the university's poet-in-residence. Oh, the torture. For one thing, and there is no better way to say it, I'd rather crawl into a used coffin than read her stuff--in either event the effect would be the same.

Downtown Cleveland in the winter. She sends us out with pen and paper, into the frozen urban campus. Purpose? Well, of course it was to walk around, and write one's impressions. Then to return, and craft a piece based on said impressions, which would then all be critiqued roundtable style. Needless to say, the standard of quality was whether or not it had any of her style in it (I do not know what that style consisted of, other than being pompous and confusing).

Let's just say I did a little spicey free verse about what it's like to wander around a barren campus, freezing to death, looking for my Muse.

Yeah, I had to drop that class.

There is abstract art that pleases me. I really enjoy viewing some of Kandinsky's pieces, for instance.

There has to be some kind (some kind) of focused intent, a driving force propelling the artist.

The thing about abstract art, in my mind, is that you can't make it an excuse to just let go and be all wild and free primal, Pollock-style. You still have to work. There's art, and there's art therapy: know the differences. Pollock, I believe, on the whole, painted as he did because he was working on his psyche. I'd rather people work on that a little by themselves before sharing the process.

[Kat]

One of the nice things about the National Galleries in Washington, DC is that there are two buildings, one for art and one for modern art. How's that for convenience?

Although I am not a big fan of abstract expressionism, I do consider it to be art, although a bit of a stretch. There is creativity, technique, color form, expression, and emotionalism. Dada, on the other hand, was intended to mock art, be repulsive and promote irrationality so I have trouble calling it artistic, although it was the artistic movement that pretty much launched post modernism. It is closer to vandalism if you ask me.

Marcel Duchamp's Mona Lisa

[Rich Engle]

Dada...

There are upheaval movements in virtually all the arts. Things get to be too done or complacent, and then there's a violent backlash. In modern music is was the punk movement-- going onstage opening for the then-bloated and over produced classic and art rock bands... just sticking the pretense right in everyone's noses.

In writing, beat writers like Kerouac, and William Burroughs pioneering the cutup technique with books like "Naked Lunch."

It can be a healthy purge. The thing is if the purgers themselves then become too enamored with themselves.

[Ellen Stuttle]

E asked,

Now is this what Rand meant by "recreation of reality"? Oh, of course not!, of course not!, I expect the reply to be. OK, so just what did she mean?

Any takers?

She meant that art is a stylized simulation - a substitute, a model, an imaginary alternate or potential reality, not a replication of reality.

...which "brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of consciousness and allows him to grasp them directly...."

RCR

Perfect. :turned:

Perfectly bonkers.

Sorry, RCR and J., the comeback was too tempting to resist. I'll reply seriously in a while.

E-

___

Edited January 12, 2007 by Ellen Stuttle

[Victor Pross]

E asked,

Now is this what Rand meant by "recreation of reality"? Oh, of course not!, of course not!, I expect the reply to be. OK, so just what did she mean?

Any takers?

She meant that art is a stylized simulation - a substitute, a model, an imaginary alternate or potential reality, not a replication of reality.

...which "brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of consciousness and allows him to grasp them directly...."

RCR

Perfect. :turned:

Perfectly bonkers.

Sorry, RCR and J., the comeback was too tempting to resist. I'll reply seriously in a while.

E-

___

That was a comback, Miss Dorothy Parker? Don't be too long. Thrall us with your acumen.

Edited January 12, 2007 by Victor Pross

[Ellen Stuttle]

"Recreation of reality"?

Continuing with the issue of what Rand meant by "recreation of reality." I gave an example of a person (depicted in a movie, the movie "Sunshine") being frozen into an ice-incased statue by a stream of water directed at his body from a hose in sub-freezing weather, and I asked if that was what Rand meant by "recreation of reality"? Lest there be doubt, I knew that this was not what she meant. But there remains the question, What did she mean?

Jonathan replied:

She meant that art is a stylized simulation - a substitute, a model, an imaginary alternate or potential reality, not a replication of reality.

RCR added:

...which "brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of consciousness and allows him to grasp them directly...."

I think that this is an accurate statement of her meaning, near as I can figure out her meaning. I do not recall that she ever explains her usage "recreation." Can anyone give chapter and verse where she does explicate?

Here, however, are some quotes which are along the lines J cum RCR indicated (I picked these up from Roger Bissell's post #12 on the "Art As Microcosm" thread):

[Rand] Language is a code of visual-auditory symbols that serves the psycho-epistemological function of converting abstractions into concretes or, more precisely, into the psycho-epistemological equivalent of concretes, into a manageable number of specific units.

[Rand] Just as language converts abstractions into the psycho-epistemological equivalent of concretes, into a manageable number of specific units -- so art converts man's metaphysical abstractions into the equivalent of concretes, into specific entities open to man's direct perception.

Notice that she does say "the psycho-espistemological equivalent of concretes," which leaves room, as Roger observed, to interpret her as talking about the art work as a symbolic form. However, I quarrel with the idea that the art work converts abstractions into "specific entities open to man's direct perception." (Now, please, let's not get side-tracked onto whether or not perception is "direct" in any respect. The answer to that issue isn't necessary to settle in order to quarrel with the claim that art has turned abstractions into "directly" perceivable entities.)

The idea that art works are "specific entities open to man's direct perception" is much easier to make a sort of sense from if we're talking about the visual arts. There, we have something which can properly be described as an "entity." But what, strictly speaking, is that "entity"? I'll talk about a painting for convenience. The painting as a physical object is a fairly flat, often rectangular entity which might or might not be hung on a wall. But is the imaginary world portrayed in the painting actually an "entity"? And is "perception" what's really grasping the visual display? I think not; and I doubt that other animals besides humans would even "see" the "picture."

I'll leave the visual artists here to ponder that one -- it's interesting to me talking about this subject with people who DO painting instead of only looking at it.

But turning to two areas in which I have considerable "hands-on" experience, literature and music:

Where is there any "entity" which is being displayed for direct perception in a novel? The story isn't the book. A book might be a beautifully designed thing to look at of itself; book design is an applied art. And a book might be illustrated, so that there are pictures as assists (or, in some cases, I've found, interferences) to the imagination. But consider just the story in a non-illustrated novel. Where is the, quoting Rand, "specific [entity] open to man's direct perception"? There isn't one. There are words comprising sentences comprising paragraphs. To imagine the story is a conceptual not a perceptual process.

Likewise in the case of a musical composition, there isn't an entity. The markings on the score aren't "the music," in the sense of actual sounds. They're instructions to the performer for producing sounds. And the progression of sounds which is heard isn't a perceptual entity; nor are the structures which are heard in those sounds. The "composition" and its various sub-structures are themselves abstractions, put together by the mind of the listener.

So neither in the case of literature nor in that of music do I find even a platform (such as a canvas) which is a "specific [entity] open to man's direct perception." In the case of representational painting and sculpture, "[the] substitute, [the] model, [the] imaginary alternate or potential reality [quoting Jonathan]" might I suppose be described as "a simulation [Jonathan]"; but how would the term "simulation" apply to literature (unless the literature is acted out or filmed) or to music? The whole issue might seem just quibbling over words if it weren't for the uses to which the Objectivist esthetics has been put (such as disqualifying "modern art" as being art) and the conundra it's led O'ists to wracking their brains over (such as how to get music under the umbrella and whether or not architecture belongs there).

Ellen

PS: Folks, I've spent a lot more time writing posts in the last couple days than the traffic will bear from the standpoint of both my health problems and work constraints. I hope to be reverting to read-only mode at least for several days now.

___

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

All well and good, but is it art?

Ta daaa!!!

or better:

Da daaa!!!

[Victor Pross]

All well and good, but is it art?

Ta daaa!!!

or better:

Da daaa!!!

Now that is a work of art.

[reason.on]

E asked,

Now is this what Rand meant by "recreation of reality"? Oh, of course not!, of course not!, I expect the reply to be. OK, so just what did she mean?

Any takers?

She meant that art is a stylized simulation - a substitute, a model, an imaginary alternate or potential reality, not a replication of reality.

...which "brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of consciousness and allows him to grasp them directly...."

RCR

Perfect. turned.png

Perfectly bonkers.

Sorry, RCR and J., the comeback was too tempting to resist. I'll reply seriously in a while.

E-

LOL. You've no need to apologize...."perfect" come-back moments like that, well they are made for the takin'. I look forward to your follow-up response.

It is funny, since GHS posted that Rand quote over on A2, I've been wanting to work it into the discussion here, and Soze gave me the perfect opportunity. This functional addendum to Rand's formulation of the boundary conditions of art is an important key to understanding Rand's aesthetic theory, and how she applied it to real life examples. Imagine, if art is inherently, necessarily, and always imbued with such a profound and singular responsibility in the development and refinement of human consciousness *itself*, well then and boy-howdy, anything which fails to fulfill this function to proper form is obviously toilet-bound without a second thought. It is ultimately irresponsible, in Rand's eyes, to let the chips fall where they may, in any way what-so-ever.

There is, of course, a tempting appeal to this almost scientific (almost, religiously scientific) way of thinking about art. It claims to have defined the borders of art, appears to have removed the mystery of art (arguably the soul as well)...but in return for Randian "objective" borders, standards, and criteria, we get a creative climate which is painfully frigid, predictable, and boring. It is ironic, when I look at "Objectivist" art I tend to find that the field is filled with people making the very same error Howard Roark so dramatically avoided. They are by-in-large making "Greek" temples, with "Greek" materials, "Greek" ideas, "Greek" limitations....Read any good "Objectivist" novels lately? Seem any great "Objectivist" gallery openings? Seen any good "Objectivist" plays? Movies? Television? I'd hazard to guess, no you have not. And that's because such things inevitably (though, not without exception) become "Greek" temples, boring, predicable, and disconnected with present realities.

None of this is to diminish the beauty and power of pure Randian aesthetics in action, such as we see in spades at the Cordair gallery, for example. There are pieces in there that I absolutely love, but I'm not willing to say, yup, that's pretty much all there is to art; as I think many O'ists are wont to say. And just to be perfectly clear, I'm not suggesting either that art can be anything and everything. I do believe there are borders to art (borders without boundaries?), but as I've said, I'm just not satisfied with Rand's cartography.

As has been pointed out many times in Randian listland before, Rand's aesthetics ultimately create a *formula* for art, which upon closer inspection becomes as absurd as a Peikovian "formula" or checklist for love. It isn't that criteria and standards can't be set, but the process for establishing art is going to be at best heuristic, and never algorithmic. Algorithms don't make love or art, and neither love nor art are algorithmic.

The curiouser element of Rand's aesthetics, imho, is that this very hard and algorithmic process of selection rests upon, as ES pointed out, the very soft, gushy and very un-algorithmic notion of "sense-of-life". Everything from artistic creation to appreciation rests upon this concept of "sense-of-life". A notion which by-in-large seems to be taken for granted by Rand's so-called champions. "Sub-conscious assessments", whatever they may be, don't appear to me to be capable of carrying so much weigh as Rand stacks upon them.

Btw, Ellen, you made a comment a little while back on one of these threads about abstract art striving in some cases to give symbolic form to "biological and chemical processes.." or something to that effect. Your comment made me think of the missing piece of that characterization, "physics", which in turn reminded me of a book I read years ago called "Art and Physics, Parallel Visions in Space, Time & Light", by Leonard Shlain, and I'm curious to know if you've read it.

RCR

Edited January 12, 2007 by R. Christian Ross

[Danneskjold]

Oh god.

Edit:Oops, that refers to Victor and Michael's posts.

Edited January 12, 2007 by Jeff Kremer

[Victor Pross]

R. Christian Ross

The Masters effectively took highly trained skills and used oils, pigments, canvas and brushes to conceive concepts about human life and composed and designed numerous elements drawn from tangible, concrete objects from the real world. They positioned them in juxtaposition so as to express their ideas. They skillfully developed skills to draw, model, paint with color, tone, light and atmosphere -- using their materials to recreate an imagined scene from reality that they successfully abstract in a stone block or piece of stretched canvas. The works are far from boring. And they did this before Ayn Rand.

By-the-by, I had troubling following your post; it was similar to playing with a Rubik's cube. It pretty much read like an abstract painting. Sorry.

-Victor

Edited January 12, 2007 by Victor Pross

[Wolf DeVoon]

Read any good "Objectivist" novels lately?

I like to think of myself as an Objectivist. Could I equal or surpass any of Miss Rand´s achievements as an author? No. Absolutely not. Would anyone else deem Mars Shall Thunder an Objectivist novel? Maybe, maybe not.

If asked my opinion, I would say that Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler, C.S. Forester, and Gene Rhodes were great authors. That´s a very short list, all of them dead. I don´t know one living author I admire. Perhaps that reveals my ignorance and prejudice. But I´ve made a long study of the publishing business, and I doubt Ayn Rand could be successful as a new author today.

Wolf DeVoon

Edited January 12, 2007 by Wolf DeVoon

[Danneskjold]

New authors today tend to be what she hated. I recently read Kite Runner, a highly acclaimed novel. What it all boils down to is exactly what Rand hated. It all ended up to be despair. Literature is doing exactly what the bad guys in Atlas Shrugged were trying to make it do. It is primarily about despair and how happiness is unattainable.

As far as Rand's writing style goes, it is par excellence. Even my english teacher (who regularly claims Rand as his least favorite author) says that she does an incredible job with her plots. Her foreshadowing is sheer genius in its subtlety by any standards (I realize to what extent as I continue to reread her Atlas Shrugged), her characterization is par excellence, and utilization of different types of conflicts (man against self, man against man) is rare in today's literature. The most valid criticism I have ever seen of her works are that they are too preachy. Being preachy, of course, is what she was shooting for and did an excellent job of that as well.

[Victor Pross]

MSK is an Objectivst and I like his creative writing. Very much so. Anybody else?

[Danneskjold]

I disagree that Rand, through her definition of art, creates a formula for art. Given that novels are microcosms and that art needs a base in reality, the rest is really pretty open ended.

[Victor Pross]

I disagree that Rand, through her definition of art, creates a formula for art. Given that novels are microcosms and that art needs a base in reality, the rest is really pretty open ended.

That's right, Jeff.

You need reality as a referent for creativity and imagination to make reality more interesting. Nothing is as boring as a paint spill by house painters—who have, incidentally, more skill than abstract painters.

Victor

[Ellen Stuttle]

I look forward to your follow-up response.

Look backward; I've already posted it (#261, above).

It is funny, since GHS posted that Rand quote over on A2, I've been wanting to work it into the discussion here, and Soze gave me the perfect opportunity.

I've noticed all the flurry over there, but haven't had time to read any of it.

As has been pointed out many times in Randian listland before, Rand's aesthetics ultimately create a *formula* for art, which upon closer inspection becomes as absurd as a Peikovian "formula" or checklist for love. It isn't that criteria and standards can't be set, but the process for establishing art is going to be at best heuristic, and never algorithmic. Algorithms don't make love or art, and neither love nor art are algorithmic.

The curiouser element of Rand's aesthetics, imho, is that this very hard and algorithmic process of selection rests upon, as ES pointed out, the very soft, gushy and very un-algorithmic notion of "sense-of-life". Everything from artistic creation to appreciation rests upon this concept of "sense-of-life". A notion which by-in-large seems to be taken for granted by Rand's so-called champions. "Sub-conscious assessments", whatever they may be, don't appear to me to be capable of carrying so much weigh as Rand stacks upon them.

The "sense of life" idea is a natural for people's feeling that they know what it means. It was Rand's way of getting love and art into her scheme while supposedly keeping the edifice tidily rational. ;-) (Ducking out.)

Btw, Ellen, you made a comment a little while back on one of these threads about abstract art striving in some cases to give symbolic form to "biological and chemical processes.." or something to that effect. Your comment made me think of the missing piece of that characterization, "physics", which in turn reminded me of a book I read years ago called "Art and Physics, Parallel Visions in Space, Time & Light", by Leonard Shlain, and I'm curious to know if you've read it.

I should have included physics also in those comments. No, I haven't read -- or even previously heard of -- that book.

Ellen

__

[Victor Pross]

Hey, least it be thought I have a closed mind about art, I have black velvet Elvis painting on my walls. Okay, I don’t. But at least I know of them. :turned:

About art and Rand, I want to quote a wise philosopher:

"The Romantic Manifesto was a great book, because it went back to basics, and, at the time, it represented a major, needed adjustment- it was a backlash. I'd recommend it to anyone that wants to be an artist, musician, or writer. It orients. But, it's not the goddamn Holy Grail, and it's not a mandatory style guide!

Being a decent artist requires work, and study. Those are the two practices that have to integrate into even the most wildly powerful talent."

This is from Rich Engle.

Edited January 12, 2007 by Victor Pross

[Danneskjold]

So, from where I'm sitting, for something to be art it has to be based in reality but cannot replicate it exactly. Visual arts such as painting and other such arts can do so through showing actual physical things witch changes made to them. Literature can do this through creating a microcosm. Music also creates a microcosm (see Victor's thread) which is its route to recreating reality. So there we have covered visual and auditory arts.

Any more new arguments?

[Jonathan]

Ellen,

Just a note to say that I've read your post #261 and hope to comment when I have more time.

J