Why is modern art so bad?

[Jules Troy]

DiDi run to the store we are almost out of popcorn!

[Jonathan]

Relevant to this discussion, note the excerpt where Rand talks about some subjects being aesthetic crimes - post #4 in the thread, title "Subject in Art as a Moral Issue."

Ellen

Here's part of that excerpt:

"The subject is not the only attribute of art, but it is the fundamental one, it is the end to which all the others are the means. In most esthetic theories, however, the end - the subject - is omitted from consideration, and only the means are regarded as esthetically relevant. Such theories set up a false dichotomy and claim that a slob portrayed by the technical means of a genius is preferable to a goddess portrayed by the technique of an amateur. I hold that both are esthetically offensive; but while the second is merely esthetic incompetence, the first is an esthetic crime."

Rand later recognized the difference between moral and aesthetic judgment, and adopted the alleged "false dichotomy" that she was opposed to in the above. Apparently when compiling her disparate essays on aesthetics from over the years, she didn't think to check them for conflicting positions.

J

[Brant Gaede]

The original title of The Fountainhead was Second-hand Lives. Someone, I forget who, pointed out to her that this gave the negative the emphasis.

What is the reference? No reference, no go. Sorry. The final title was perfectly right, however.

--Brant

I recognize "Second Hand Lives," sort of. It's the second sentence I can't figure. I do believe the story, however.

--BG

(I've been having trouble writing well these last two days)

[anthony]

.

Now I'll tell you what I've always said about hell...

Hell is right here and right now in this world. No one personally punishes you for the evil you choose to do any more than gravity personally punishes you for choosing to step off of a cliff. You are the only one who pronounces punishment on yourself by the just and deserved consequences you yourself set into motion by your own evil acts. And no one will ever escape what they become as the result of the evil that they do.

There, that's my view on hell. It's always been, and it will always be.

Greg

That's consistent with Greg's metaphorical view of Hell all along, I've found. As such, he sometimes nudges closer to Objectivism than just about any Christian I've heard. But if anyone can elevate consequentialism above any real causality, Greg can! Still, better by far a high degree of self-responsibility than little or none. Broadly, most Christians and other religions believe in justice in the hereafter, secular liberals believe in justice from society or the State, while Objectivists claim one can only make one's own justice ('justice in reality' - barring interference from people or State).

[Ellen Stuttle]

Relevant to this discussion, note the excerpt where Rand talks about some subjects being aesthetic crimes - post #4 in the thread, title "Subject in Art as a Moral Issue."

Ellen

Here's part of that excerpt:

"The subject is not the only attribute of art, but it is the fundamental one, it is the end to which all the others are the means. In most esthetic theories, however, the end - the subject - is omitted from consideration, and only the means are regarded as esthetically relevant. Such theories set up a false dichotomy and claim that a slob portrayed by the technical means of a genius is preferable to a goddess portrayed by the technique of an amateur. I hold that both are esthetically offensive; but while the second is merely esthetic incompetence, the first is an esthetic crime."

Rand later recognized the difference between moral and aesthetic judgment, and adopted the alleged "false dichotomy" that she was opposed to in the above. Apparently when compiling her disparate essays on aesthetics from over the years, she didn't think to check them for conflicting positions.

J

She's recognizing the difference between moral and aesthetic judgment in the paragraph you quote, and she never dropped judging art morally as well as aesthetically. Moral judgment of art is the lodestar of all her aesthetics articles and is inherent in the way she categorized "Romanticism" versus "Naturalism" (which latter term she extended beyond her initial 1961-62 use). She has various conflicting positions in her essays, including, I think, on the nature of volition - one which particularly interests me and which I'll get back to ("Romanticism..." thread), but I don't see her as ever adopting what she called a "false dichotomy" in the quoted paragraph.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Brant,

Passion and/or Who Is Ayn Rand? I'll look.

Ellen

[Jonathan]

Relevant to this discussion, note the excerpt where Rand talks about some subjects being aesthetic crimes - post #4 in the thread, title "Subject in Art as a Moral Issue."

Ellen

Here's part of that excerpt:

"The subject is not the only attribute of art, but it is the fundamental one, it is the end to which all the others are the means. In most esthetic theories, however, the end - the subject - is omitted from consideration, and only the means are regarded as esthetically relevant. Such theories set up a false dichotomy and claim that a slob portrayed by the technical means of a genius is preferable to a goddess portrayed by the technique of an amateur. I hold that both are esthetically offensive; but while the second is merely esthetic incompetence, the first is an esthetic crime."

Rand later recognized the difference between moral and aesthetic judgment, and adopted the alleged "false dichotomy" that she was opposed to in the above. Apparently when compiling her disparate essays on aesthetics from over the years, she didn't think to check them for conflicting positions.

J

She's recognizing the difference between moral and aesthetic judgment in the paragraph you quote, and she never dropped judging art morally as well as aesthetically. Moral judgment of art is the lodestar of all her aesthetics articles and is inherent in the way she categorized "Romanticism" versus "Naturalism" (which latter term she extended beyond her initial 1961-62 use). She has various conflicting positions in her essays, including, I think, on the nature of volition - one which particularly interests me and which I'll get back to ("Romanticism..." thread), but I don't see her as ever adopting what she called a "false dichotomy" in the quoted paragraph.

Ellen

She wrote:

The fact that one agrees or disagrees with an artist’s philosophy is irrelevant to an esthetic appraisal of his work qua art. One does not have to agree with an artist (nor even to enjoy him) in order to evaluate his work. In essence, an objective evaluation requires that one identify the artist’s theme, the abstract meaning of his work (exclusively by identifying the evidence contained in the work and allowing no other, outside considerations), then evaluate the means by which he conveys it—i.e., taking his theme as criterion, evaluate the purely esthetic elements of the work, the technical mastery (or lack of it) with which he projects (or fails to project) his view of life...

Since art is a philosophical composite, it is not a contradiction to say: “This is a great work of art, but I don’t like it,” provided one defines the exact meaning of that statement: the first part refers to a purely esthetic appraisal, the second to a deeper philosophical level which includes more than esthetic values.

The above means that a purely aesthetic judgment would be one in which moral agreement with the subject is not relevant. One's moral judgment of the art is not relevant to appraising its aesthetic value -- its means. According to these later comments of hers, the portrayal of a slob by the technical means of a genius would be aesthetically great. Only when "more than esthetic values" are considered does the art become bad.

Her earlier, mistaken position was that a technically masterful painting of a slob was aesthetically offensive. Her later, correct position was that it was aesthetically great but morally offensive.

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

Brant,

Passion and/or Who Is Ayn Rand? I'll look.

Ellen

I don't find anything about the original title in Passion. [Edit: See post #211.]

It's on pg. 77 of the Journals, at the head of her first notes, dated December 4, 1935.

I'm not yet finding the point at which she changed the title. I think it was near the end of her writing the book.

I came across some other stuff in the notes, including that she briefly (maybe for only a day) considered changing the climax of the story because of some concern "that it might be difficult to make it 'plausible objectively' why Roark would be justified in such dynamiting" (pg.214).

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Jonathan,

I see what you mean (post #207) in terms of the details of word use, but I don't think she had any change of attitude. She continued to condemn some art as evil, and she continued to be opposed to the idea - which is the "false dichotomy" she was talking about in "The Goal of My Writing" - that art can't be judged morally for its subject, only technically for its means.

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

Passion and/or Who Is Ayn Rand? I'll look.

Ellen

I don't find anything about the original title in Passion.

It's on pg. 77 of the Journals, at the head of her first notes, dated December 4, 1935.

I'm not yet finding the point at which she changed the title. I think it was near the end of her writing the book.

I came across some other stuff in the notes, including that she briefly (maybe for only a day) considered changing the climax of the story because of some concern "that it might be difficult to make it 'plausible objectively' why Roark would be justified in such dynamiting" (pg.214).

Ellen

In the case of the dynamiting, it was a good thing she didn't know too much about the law.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

I don't find anything about the original title in Passion.

Oops. It's in the second paragraph of a later chapter (Sixteen) than the ones in which I was looking.

The Passion of Ayn Rand

pg. 175

From the inception of the theme in her mind, she had called the novel Second-hand Lives; that had remained its working title until the end. But when Archie Ogden pointed out that it stressed the negative, that it made it appear the novel was essentially focused on Peter Keating, Ayn agreed at once and chose The Fountainhead instead.

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Regarding objective aesthetics, I have thought long and deeply about this subject for decades and have pre-considered what (I think) are all the legitimate and "gotcha" arguments, which is why I find the discussions here about the video most interesting.

Robert,

I hope you are still following this discussion. Forgive me for being so late to add more to it, but I have been busy.

I have a particular observation to add to something you said:

I have to conclude that the behavior of Raphael's deft hand across a canvas has some universality to it that manages to translate to audiences centuries later, something I highly doubt will be the case with the 28-foot high sculpture of a dog unrinating on tan outer wall of the Orange County Museum.

I agree with you on this particular example, but I would be loathe to extend this to non-representational art.

I put together a small sample of screenshots I took from all over the Internet:

All of this is non-representational art and it has been around for centuries, except the Rorschach blots and the Nazi implementation of ancient symbols and runes. But I believe they will be with us for a long, long time to come.

Notice that this art has not just been in museums, but has helped change the world in different ways. Persuasive ways. I cannot look at this and say it happened by chance and could have been any other squiggles or forms. These particular things resonate deeply in our minds for whatever reason (but I have a few ideas ) and they are cross-cultural.

The alphabet itself is made up of non-representational forms. I agree there is more arbitrariness with these kinds of symbols due to the different alphabets, but I also note that there are both representational and non-representational symbols for words and phrases in all cultures. When we get to Chinese characters or hieroglyphics, we can have a field day thinking about this stuff.

Re modern art, I bring this up because, to me, the uniformity and universality of these non-representational symbols are a pretty good argument for claiming that modern art, when it is based on what they resonate with deep in our minds--is not only valid as art, it can be great art.

But instead of daydreaming about a story (already known or making it up on the spot), which is what representational art induces, this kind of art induces a more right-brain daydreaming where all kinds of odd but creative connections are made. Fantasy on steroids, if you will. Weird stories. If you don't like the term daydreaming, I can live with "aesthetic trance" or something like that.

I believe this happens because of a metaphysical position I am coming to more and more, that the world contains both fixed structures and randomness. The randomness runs within fixed structures, like molecules of water running through a ditch. The molecules are bouncing all over the place at random, but they stay within the outline the ditch determines. (They also help deepen the ditch, but that is getting outside the scope here.)

I think modern art (when it is done well) appeals to the "ditch" part of our minds, the template part for lack of a better term. In stories, these templates are archetypes and standard sequences of events, but in visual art, they are shapes and forms.

I have another point I want to mention, but I don't have time to elaborate on it right now. I believe all thinking is done in stories, even technical thinking, lists and so on. The story may not be in the foreground, but one is always in the background as context. Otherwise we get nonsense and gibberish.

This means I believe stories are fundamental for all art, even modern art. This does not mean other components like form, color, etc., are not part of it, too. I just don't think one can divorce stories from an artwork and have an aesthetic experience. Even with bad modern art, people subjectively transpose personal stories of losing face before peer pressure (for not understanding a work) onto it and pretend to have an aesthetic experience. I see that a lot and I believe that's where a lot of fishing for forced symbolism comes from.

I include music in this story condition, too, but now I am opening a can of worms that needs to be presented elsewhere because that is a long discussion.

Getting back to your "28-foot high sculpture of a dog urinating on tan outer wall of the Orange County Museum," I think so long as the stories this conjures up in people's minds actually mean something to them, this kind of art will be with us. I don't know about that particular work, but I don't see snark stories being washed out of mankind's soul anytime soon.

Incidentally, I am not a fan of snark qua snark (like the dog sculpture), but I do like satire (like Voltaire for fiction, but also New Yorker-style cartoon drawings). I even think great art can be made out of satire. But what's the essential difference? That can be a hard line to draw. But we have to try if we are going to claim objectivity.

Like I said above, I hope you are still following this thread. I am interested in your thoughts (and those of other OL members, of course ).

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

All of this is non-representational art and it has been around for centuries, except the Rorschach blots and the Nazi implementation of ancient symbols and runes. But I believe they will be with us for a long, long time to come.

[....]

Longer than centuries. Such shapes have been around since way-pre-historic pottery finds.

When we get to Chinese characters or hieroglyphics, we can have a field day thinking about this stuff.

I once got into an extended conversation with a native English speaker who had been studying Chinese for years. She told me that there are "sets" of Chinese characters, and that nuances of meaning are added by association with other characters from the particular set used. I've never had time to try to explore how this works, but it sounds as if there's a kind of visual-art additional layer to denotative meaning with Chinese.

Interesting post.

Ellen

PS: I, too, hope that Robert is still reading.

[Brant Gaede]

I imagine myself able to learn Japanese, but not a tonal language like Mandarin.

--Brant

[moralist]

I put together a small sample of screenshots I took from all over the Internet:

I agree there is more arbitrariness with these kinds of symbols due to the different alphabets, but I also note that there are both representational and non-representational symbols for words and phrases in all cultures.

People assemble letters to make words that describe ideas. However, these symbols are a bridge over words because they represent ideas directly. Then those ideas can be translated back into the words which describe them. This has relevance to me because, being a mechanic, I think more in pictures than in words.

Greg

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

People assemble letters to make words that describe ideas. However, these symbols are a bridge over words because they represent ideas directly. Then those ideas can be translated back into the words which describe them. This has relevance to me because, being a mechanic, I think more in pictures than in words.

Greg,

When you look at mechanical, electrical and architectural picture-symbols, you will find that many are representational but many are not.

In other words, both work just fine.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Are the works of M.C. Escher modern art? If they are, what is so bad about them?

If they are not modern art, then what are they?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

Un-modern art.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just discovered an obscure feature on Facebook. In messages, there is a hidden category. It is so hidden, I didn't even know I had messages there.

To see what I mean, if you have a Facebook account, sign in to it. Click on the tab at the top called "Home." On the left there is a category called "Messages." Click on that. At the top left you will see "Inbox" and "Other." If you click on "Other," you might find a bunch of messages you didn't know about.

I saw Robert Bidinotto complain about this (he had an inquiry to publish his book in France about from three years ago) and looked for myself on my own page. Sure enough, I have messages going back to 2008.

I didn't know about any of them.

One was dated September 7, 2014 from Robert Florczak. Since he said good things about me, I am publishing the message here.

Hello, Michael

I want to thank you for some of the most cogent comments on "Objectivist Living" regarding my video and its positions that I have read on the internet. It is certainly causing a hornets' nest of debate and your insights indicate a greater understanding than most.

Regards,

Robert Florczak

I can live with that.

And thank you, Robert.

At least if he comes back to OL once in a while to see what's going on, he will see that I finally received his message.

btw - I reread my comments on this thread. Dayaamm! I like me.

Michael

[Jules Troy]

It's always a good thing when one can honestly say "I like myself!".

Lol if I did not like myself it would be hard to expect anyone else to!

Wait a minute..

"Facepalm"

[Newberry]

To be perfectly honest, I too believe that true objectivity regarding aesthetics is impossible (just don't let anyone outside this blog know I said so. Deal?!)...

One other thing I must throw into the mix is the somewhat synergistic behavior of truly great art..."

Robert

I like these two statements.

[Newberry]

This highlights our wholly subjective nature... An artist pictorially represents their subjective view of the world, and it is then subjectively interpreted by the viewer!

Greg

Ha, some truth to that!

[Newberry]

I watched the video, an interesting detail at the end was the plug for the Art Renewal Center. It's an organization founded by Fred Ross, which believes the greatest period of art came from19th Century Europe, with Bouguereau being the leading exponent. Ross also has a significant collection of Bouguereaus and other 19th Century artists, and he is or was (I'v not followed him for a few years) active in buying and selling them. The presentation was suspiciously similar to the AR mission statement, and presented by an illustrator makes, for me, not a compelling set up.

The video's main argument is that classical art instruction leads to great art. I've read all of the thread but sadly missed the thoughts of people on my blocked list. What's nice about the video is that it addresses the problem with our current state of art. But classical training is not the best solution. One major problem with it is that it is a rigid rule based platform, and most of the classical institutions and ateliers lose sight of perception of real life. Their students copy plaster casts of marble copies of original Greek bronzes, which where amazing innovations by artists that started with living models. They then end up with very slick, and very dead looking drawings, and when they finally work with real models their goal is to make the real model look like the plaster cast. The most sad thing is that the classical education can be so domineering that once the students graduate they often never can shake off the influence, and never evolve their unique voice.

There will be exceptions, if the students are lucky enough to have a great artist/teacher that can honor their uniqueness, yet help develop enough technique that they can unlock their visions. And principled enough, no rule based, that the student can evolve.

I have no plans to, but if I were to start an art college it would be neither classical nor modern, and the main thrust would be about creating life and vitality in the works.

One of the greatest examples of learning art comes from Maria Callas giving a masterclass at Julliard. She weaves through music history, period styles, musicality, singing techniques, how to interrupt the music, and even how to automatize the meaning of the lyrics into one's "sense of life." But what we have here is a genius who knows how this all works, and she can explain and give demos of it. It's available here in 3 cd audio set, or MP3 download. I highly recommended it if you are serious about wanting to understand how art works through a genius' insights. It will also give an indication that there are quite a few objective answers but none of them are the end all be all, it is the synergy of mastering the essential tools, and having talent.

[Brant Gaede]

I attended one of her classes--anyone could--at The Lincoln Center in the early 1970s. As I recall she didn't so much tell as show. In any case, she was all business, one on one.

--Brant

[atlashead]

Art is created from INTENTION which objectivly exists.  For simplicity's sake we'll say the subject is like a perpetual motion machine, choose the wrong one (an immoral one) & you will become a hater of your life-losing the will to create.