"Romanticist Art" Is Not The Essence Of The Objectivist Esthetics

[Brant Gaede]

Ellen, I can't get your comment about Objs analyzing Rebecca out of my mind. It's been haunting me, and since justice is a value, you'll need to pay for that. I was dozing off yesterday, and I had a vision of Rand on the podium. "What can one say about a book so disgusting? The title character is beautiful and full of spirit. She bravely lives by her rules and no one else's. Yet she is portraid as evil for her virtues. The so-called heroine is a mousy non-entity who does'nt even have a name. The hero, of course, kills Rebecca, a woman so beautiful he must destroy her. Beauty and spirit scare him. The heroic in life is being depicted as vile. This is ultimate in an evil sense of life. This is the horror of today's literature."

You know what's even scarier than the above? How easily words can be used to twist something around.

This moral evaluation of art should not be confused with an esthetic evaluation.

--Brant

the moral-esthetic dichotomy?--well, is water-oil one too?

morality is not subjective-not a moral morality, nor is Objectivism: an Objectivist esthetics does not exist, only Objectivists' opinions on esthetics; that is because esthetics is unto itself, so qua philosophy Objectivism can objectively depict esthetics but does not prescribe or proscribe content qua esthetics or qua psychology or qua physics, etc.

[anthony]

It appears the Platonists of art insist that art has no connection to a rationally-selfish morality. For an individual to selfishly seek an affirmation of man's existence, from art, is perceived as arrogance. To claim to be able to assess the artwork one way or other - is perceived as arrogance. They aver that the rationalistic 'beauty' of art should not be compromised by applying one's individual consciousness to it - and if you do, you must fail because you are not "qualified" to do so.. The only conceivable reason is that they refuse to believe the artist himself applied consciousness to its creation. (Or, that a person's consciousness must be

'perfect' to achieve comprehension.)

This indicates the fallacy that art is metaphysically 'given' (or epiphanistic) not man-made. That art has intrinsic value, and is superior to the conscious mind. That the elitist or collectivist Authority will tell us all we need to take from art.

(I am dead keen to read an attempt at rebuttal by any intellectual, of Rand's fundamental theory of art: but only by someone who understands it - which means a grasp of Objectivist metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Sniping tactics and ad hominems not recognizing the full context and hierarchy of her art theory just don't cut it.)

.

[Jonathan]

It appears the Platonists of art insist that art has no connection to a rationally-selfish morality.

Are these "Platonists" real people, or do they exist only in your head?

No one has said that art has no connection to a rationally-selfish morality. The very simple point that you're not getting is that any connection that a work of art has to a rationally-selfish morality is not relevant to judging its aesthetic value. According to Objectivism, a work of art need not present a rationally-selfish view in order to be judged aesthetically great.

For an individual to selfishly seek an affirmation of man's existence, from art, is perceived as arrogance.

No one is calling you arrogant for "selfishly seeking affirmations of man's existence from art." Rather, you're being laughed at for distorting others' words (as you've done once again in the entire post that I'm responding to right now) and for being so clueless in showing how inept you are at understanding the simplest, clearest of statements. Everything gets quite twisted around in your head.

To claim to be able to assess the artwork one way or other - is perceived as arrogance.

Wrong. No one has said anything like that. I would suggest that you re-read what I've written, and try to pay closer attention to what is being said. The point is that you are claiming to know things about others without sufficient proof. You appear not to understand that you would need to verify or disprove your interpretations of art by finding out what the artist actually believed. It's a simple issue of logic.

I'd suggest that you focus extra attention on this statement:

"Art is like a transmitter, and viewers are like receivers. The Objectivist Esthetics instructs the receivers that they are to judge the quality of the transmitter and its transmissions. In doing so, it doesn't address the possibility that the receivers might malfunction or be limited in some way -- that all receivers might not have the equal ability to receive transmissions clearly. The Objectivist Esthetics only addresses the issue of the transmitter's functioning or malfunctioning, and how it is to be judged. But if we are to be truly objective about it, don't we have to test and judge the levels at which both the transmitter and the receivers are functioning? If a receiver doesn't receive a message -- or even if several receivers don't -- is it rational to conclude that the transmitter failed to transmit?"

Read it again, then see if you can come up with an objective means of judging the quality and capabilities of the receivers.

My solution is that we would need to know what is being transmitted, by some means other than the transmission, so that we can compare what was actually transmitted with what was received. It's like if we were to transmit via radio the phrase, "Hello, brother," and a person half-way around the globe listening to his radio receiver heard the phrase as, "Chellsho, Kshrushther," we would have to send him a written note explaining that the transmitted phrase was "Hello, brother" in order for him to judge whether or not he properly received, heard, and understood what was tranmitted. See? It would not be rational for the receiving person to assert that the message that he received was "Chellsho, Kshrushther," and that therefore that must have been the message that was intended and sent, and that therefore the sender was sending nonsense, and that he therefore liked nonsense and thought it was important enough to share in a broadcast.

Starting to get it yet?

If some uptight moron listens to a song like Cop Killer and misinterprets it to be advocating the initiation of force rather than making a fictional threat of retaliatory force, we wouldn't accept his analysis of the person who wrote the song, but instead we'd see if we could ask the song writer which of our interpretations represents what he had in mind in creating the song. See what I'm saying? See how easy it is for a self-important aesthetic ignoramus twit to come to a completely wrongheaded interpretation of a work of art? Ice T wasn't advocating that people go out and kill cops, just as Rand wasn't advocating that people go out and rape women, or blow up buildings over aesthetic disagreements. Claiming to know what Ice T believes and values based on listening to one song through a set of Objecti-Crazy-Phones is going to prove nothing but that the listener is a cult kook.

They aver that the rationalistic 'beauty' of art should not be compromised by applying one's individual consciousness to it - and if you do, you must fail because you are not "qualified" to do so.

No one has said any such thing. Once again, it's just your Objecti-goggles distorting your vision. On the issue of beauty, I've been challenging Objectivists to identify an objective standard of judging beauty, and to demonstrate the volitional application of that standard using logic and reason. They have yet to do so. You haven't done so.

Judgments of beauty are subjective. As such, they are the act of applying one's individual consciousness.

The only conceivable reason is that they refuse to believe the artist himself applied consciousness to its creation. (Or, that a person's consciousness must be 'perfect' to achieve comprehension.)

This indicates the fallacy that art is metaphysically 'given' (or epiphanistic) not man-made. That art has intrinsic value, and is superior to the conscious mind. That the elitist or collectivist authority will tell us all we need from art.

I don't think that I'll ever get through to you, Tony. It's like talking to a zombie. You misinterpret almost everything that you read and then your mind goes spinning off making idiotic judgments based on those misinterpretations, compounding errors on top of errors. You exhibit some the most cluttered and confused thinking that I've ever seen. You're lost in your own distortions.

Have you ever heard the saying, "Measure twice, cut once"? It's good advice. You would do good to start following it. Currently, you make a half-assed wild guess, and then rush right into the cutting, and then you blame the two-by-four for not conforming to the imagined infallible reality of you half-assed wild guess.

(I am dead keen to see a rebuttal by any intellectual expert of Rand's fundamental theory of art: but only by someone who understands it - which means a grasp of Objectivist metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Sniping tactics and ad hominems not recognizing the full context and hierarchy of her art theory just don't cut it.)

I'd be dead keen on hearing you address the content of this thread that you've evaded, such as the fact that Objectivism holds that a work of Romantic art can be judged to be bad and that a work of Naturalism can be judged to be great.

You don't seem to be able to grasp the very simple distinction between aesthetic judgments and any other type of philosophical judgment. Regardless of the fact that art can be interpreted as expressing ethical positions, or metaphysical views, or senses of life, or what have you, none of those things are aesthetic judgments, and none of your preferences in ethics, metaphysics, sense of life, etc., is relevant to making an aesthetic judgment, no matter how rational your preferences are. According to Objectivism, an objective aesthetic appraisal is one in which you judge how well the artist presented his views, not how well he presented a rational view of man. He can present a very anti-man, existence-hating vision, and his art can still quality as being aesthetically great according to Objectivism. Works of Naturalism can be rated as being aesthetically great. Works of Romanticism can be rated as being aesthetically horrible. And it's actually quite simple logic to recognize that "Romanticist art" cannot be the essence of the Objectivist Esthetics if it allows works of Naturalism to be judged as great, and if it allows for works of Romanticism to be judged as bad.

J

[anthony]

It appears the Platonists of art insist that art has no connection to a rationally-selfish morality.

Are these "Platonists" real people, or do they exist only in your head?

No one has said that art has no connection to a rationally-selfish morality. The very simple point that you're not getting is that any connection that a work of art has to a rationally-selfish morality is not relevant to judging its aesthetic value. According to Objectivism, a work of art need not present a rationally-selfish view in order to be judged aesthetically great.

For an individual to selfishly seek an affirmation of man's existence, from art, is perceived as arrogance.

No one is calling you arrogant for "selfishly seeking affirmations of man's existence from art." Rather, you're being laughed at for distorting others' words (as you've done once again in the entire post that I'm responding to right now) and for being so clueless in showing how inept you are at understanding the simplest, clearest of statements. Everything gets quite twisted around in your head.

To claim to be able to assess the artwork one way or other - is perceived as arrogance.

Wrong. No one has said anything like that. I would suggest that you re-read what I've written, and try to pay closer attention to what is being said. The point is that you are claiming to know things about others without sufficient proof. You appear not to understand that you would need to verify or disprove your interpretations of art by finding out what the artist actually believed. It's a simple issue of logic.

I'd suggest that you focus extra attention on this statement:

"Art is like a transmitter, and viewers are like receivers. The Objectivist Esthetics instructs the receivers that they are to judge the quality of the transmitter and its transmissions. In doing so, it doesn't address the possibility that the receivers might malfunction or be limited in some way -- that all receivers might not have the equal ability to receive transmissions clearly. The Objectivist Esthetics only addresses the issue of the transmitter's functioning or malfunctioning, and how it is to be judged. But if we are to be truly objective about it, don't we have to test and judge the levels at which both the transmitter and the receivers are functioning? If a receiver doesn't receive a message -- or even if several receivers don't -- is it rational to conclude that the transmitter failed to transmit?"

Read it again, then see if you can come up with an objective means of judging the quality and capabilities of the receivers.

My solution is that we would need to know what is being transmitted, by some means other than the transmission, so that we can compare what was actually transmitted with what was received. It's like if we were to transmit via radio the phrase, "Hello, brother," and a person half-way around the globe listening to his radio receiver heard the phrase as, "Chellsho, Kshrushther," we would have to send him a written note explaining that the transmitted phrase was "Hello, brother" in order for him to judge whether or not he properly received, heard, and understood what was tranmitted. See? It would not be rational for the receiving person to assert that the message that he received was "Chellsho, Kshrushther," and that therefore that must have been the message that was intended and sent, and that therefore the sender was sending nonsense, and that he therefore liked nonsense and thought it was important enough to share in a broadcast.

Starting to get it yet?

If some uptight moron listens to a song like Cop Killer and misinterprets it to be advocating the initiation of force rather than making a fictional threat of retaliatory force, we wouldn't accept his analysis of the person who wrote the song, but instead we'd see if we could ask the song writer which of our interpretations represents what he had in mind in creating the song. See what I'm saying? See how easy it is for a self-important aesthetic ignoramus twit to come to a completely wrongheaded interpretation of a work of art? Ice T wasn't advocating that people go out and kill cops, just as Rand wasn't advocating that people go out and rape women, or blow up buildings over aesthetic disagreements. Claiming to know what Ice T believes and values based on listening to one song through a set of Objecti-Crazy-Phones is going to prove nothing but that the listener is a cult kook.

They aver that the rationalistic 'beauty' of art should not be compromised by applying one's individual consciousness to it - and if you do, you must fail because you are not "qualified" to do so.

No one has said any such thing. Once again, it's just your Objecti-goggles distorting your vision. On the issue of beauty, I've been challenging Objectivists to identify an objective standard of judging beauty, and to demonstrate the volitional application of that standard using logic and reason. They have yet to do so. You haven't done so.

Judgments of beauty are subjective. As such, they are the act of applying one's individual consciousness.

The only conceivable reason is that they refuse to believe the artist himself applied consciousness to its creation. (Or, that a person's consciousness must be 'perfect' to achieve comprehension.)

This indicates the fallacy that art is metaphysically 'given' (or epiphanistic) not man-made. That art has intrinsic value, and is superior to the conscious mind. That the elitist or collectivist authority will tell us all we need from art.

I don't think that I'll ever get through to you, Tony. It's like talking to a zombie. You misinterpret almost everything that you read and then your mind goes spinning off making idiotic judgments based on those misinterpretations, compounding errors on top of errors. You exhibit some the most cluttered and confused thinking that I've ever seen. You're lost in your own distortions.

Have you ever heard the saying, "Measure twice, cut once"? It's good advice. You would do good to start following it. Currently, you make a half-assed wild guess, and then rush right into the cutting, and then you blame the two-by-four for not conforming to the imagined infallible reality of you half-assed wild guess.

(I am dead keen to see a rebuttal by any intellectual expert of Rand's fundamental theory of art: but only by someone who understands it - which means a grasp of Objectivist metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Sniping tactics and ad hominems not recognizing the full context and hierarchy of her art theory just don't cut it.)

I'd be dead keen on hearing you address the content of this thread that you've evaded, such as the fact that Objectivism holds that a work of Romantic art can be judged to be bad and that a work of Naturalism can be judged to be great.

You don't seem to be able to grasp the very simple distinction between aesthetic judgments and any other type of philosophical judgment. Regardless of the fact that art can be interpreted as expressing ethical positions, or metaphysical views, or senses of life, or what have you, none of those things are aesthetic judgments, and none of your preferences in ethics, metaphysics, sense of life, etc., is relevant to making an aesthetic judgment, no matter how rational your preferences are. According to Objectivism, an objective aesthetic appraisal is one in which you judge how well the artist presented his views, not how well he presented a rational view of man. He can present a very anti-man, existence-hating vision, and his art can still quality as being aesthetically great according to Objectivism. Works of Naturalism can be rated as being aesthetically great. Works of Romanticism can be rated as being aesthetically horrible. And it's actually quite simple logic to recognize that "Romanticist art" cannot be the essence of the Objectivist Esthetics if it allows works of Naturalism to be judged as great, and if it allows for works of Romanticism to be judged as bad.

J

I sincerely don't relish disabusing you of this general notion you have, J.

Sorry, but in her study of art, Rand did of course study and explain the aesthetics. (The what and the how).

She lauded (as you've said) any great art that was honestly expressed and finely rendered; included were Naturalists - certainly- since that art has formed the bulk ever created.

However, she continued from the aesthetics (which is self-evidently the commonality of all art).

She went on to ask (in effect) "why, art?" what purpose, art? And then, distilled the essence of why man needs art, beyond beauty, plots, thematics, characterization, or that thing we call 'meaning'.

"The distinguishing characteristic of this top rank [of authors she names] (apart from their purely literary genius) is their full commitment to the premise of volition in ~ both of its fundamental areas~ :

in regard to consciousness and to existence, and

in regard to man's character and his actions in the physical world.

Maintaining a perfect integration of these two aspects, unmatched in the brilliant ingenuity of their plot structures, these writers are enormously concerned with man's soul (i.e. his consciousness). They are ~moralists~ in the most profound sense of the word; their concern is not merely with values, but specifically with ~moral~ values and with the power of moral values in shaping human character."

['What is Romanticism?']

Do you see it yet, Jonathan? Aesthetics was simply Rand's path to the supremely important stuff (as she saw it), Romanticism.

Which is why she could and did compliment great aesthetics by Naturalists - and hold that the same quality should be present in Romanticism ("...unmatched in the brilliant ingenuity of their plot structures...").

No doubt there will be great Naturalism and poor Romanticism...aesthetically.

Aesthetics was the means to Rand's end, not the end in itself.

Romanticism is the objective and essence of Objectivist aesthetics.

Told you you wouldn't like it: sorry. Here is why - mainly -we have been at cross-purposes all the way.

[Ellen Stuttle]

"What I was actually imagining, and literally feeling a shudder at the prospect, when that analogy popped into my head, was Objectivists analyzing Rebecca. "

That's just vile. Wash you mind out with soap..

Most Platonist. (Anyway - strawman. At several hierarchical levels, 'Rebecca' has many qualities, the kind of qualities for which Rand showed appreciation, and a well-read Objectivist would admire. du Maurier was a superb writer.)

Yep. Shudder.

I think the sin Rand commited was to at all apply analysis to art in the first place.

The "sin" Rand committed - and note, you're the one who used the word "sin," I'm merely echoing your usage - was to confuse her own particular history with and way of responding to art, plus her own method of writing, with the universal nature of the phenomenon.

Ellen

[anthony]

"What I was actually imagining, and literally feeling a shudder at the prospect, when that analogy popped into my head, was Objectivists analyzing Rebecca. "

That's just vile. Wash you mind out with soap..

Most Platonist. (Anyway - strawman. At several hierarchical levels, 'Rebecca' has many qualities, the kind of qualities for which Rand showed appreciation, and a well-read Objectivist would admire. du Maurier was a superb writer.)

Yep. Shudder.

I think the sin Rand commited was to at all apply analysis to art in the first place.

The "sin" Rand committed - and note, you're the one who used the word "sin," I'm merely echoing your usage - was to confuse her own particular history with and way of responding to art, plus her own method of writing, with the universal nature of the phenomenon.

Ellen

By "universal nature of the phenomenon" do you mean what has been deemed about art, collectively?

Platonically?

I, and it appears quite a few others, respond to art as she did - and pre-dating her - but we sure will be in the minority.

But the numbers do not make right, either way.

As far as art appreciation goes, it is a silly strawman that anyone can assert an Objectivist is incapable of liking or understanding any art which is not explicitly Romanticist. That's an accusation of authoritarianism, not recognised in Objectivism.

(Notwithstanding Rand's own extemporaneous edicts on the matter- there, I don't care in the least what she said and did.)

[Ellen Stuttle]

J,

Regarding whether Rand was thinking of beauty as perceptual in that Q&A answer, I was alerted, via its being quoted in Stephen Boydstun's "Beauty, Goodness, Life" sequence of posts, to a statement of Rand's I'd forgotten.

This is toward the end of "Art and Cognition," in the context of her discussion of "the decorative arts." I don't have the re-issue of The Romantic Manifesto, which includes that essay, so I can't give you a page number to that source. I'm quoting from the article as it appeared in the June 1971 Objectivist, where this is on pp 4-5.

Visual harmony is a sensory experience and is determined primarily by physiological causes. There is a crucial difference between the perception of musical sounds and the perception of colors: the integration of musical sounds produces a new cognitive experience which is sensory-conceptual, I.e., the awareness of a melody; the integration of colors does not, it conveys nothing beyond the awareness of pleasant or unpleasant relationships.

Ellen

First of all, do we know that Rand held the same view of the status of the beauty of colors and that of the beauty of the human face or other entities?

All we have which I'm aware of so far is the off-the-top answer in 1976 and the above quote.

In the former, she says:

[The bracketed insert is the editor's.]

Beauty is a sense of harmony. Whether it's an image, a human face, a body, or a sunset, take the object which you call beautiful, as a unit [and ask yourself]: what parts is it made up of, what are its constituent elements, and are they all harmonious? If they are, the result is beautiful. If there are contradictions and clashes, the result is marred or positively ugly.

For instance, the simplest example would be the human face. [....]

In the latter, although she goes on to talk specifically of colors, she starts with "Visual harmony [my emphasis] is a sensory experience and is determined primarily by physiological means."

I add these statements together as indicating that she thought of all visual beauty responses as on an automatic level, not a volitional level. She isn't here to ask, and the clues are slim.

She obviously didn't think that colors were integratable into conceptual meaning, but I would have to assume that she didn't feel the same about all forms of beauty since physical beauty and ugliness had conceptual meaning to her (cold sores and other blemishes in a painting were an attack on all values; even her own fictional characters had physical features which reflected their inner states, etc.).

I don't follow you. Her saying that putting a cold sore on the face of a beautiful woman in a painting is an attack on values doesn't entail that she thought there was any volition needed to see the face in the painting as that of a beautiful woman.

At one of the Ford Hall Forums I attended, someone asked her a question which I think included the word "physiognomy," something about her being a master at depicting featural results of inner being, and she said she wasn't aware of her having such a skill. I don't think she was making a causal claim in the way she depicted her characters but instead just doing something esthetically pleasing to her in having the good people (mostly) be physically attractive and the bad people (mostly) not. In real life, she does seem to have been highly prone to "reading in" psychological characteristics on the basis of appearance. Possibly everyone does that to an extent, but she seems to have been an extreme in doing it.

Second, Rand's personal inability to integrate colors on the same level that she thought that she could integrate musical sounds into a new cognitive experience isn't proof that the integration of colors is not possible to anyone and therefore merely a sensory experience.

Of course not. Nor is that the issue I was raising, but only how Rand thought of "beauty."

If it is valid for Rand to assert that she integrated musical notes into a conceptual experience, it is just as valid for me or anyone else to assert that we are capable of doing the same thing with colors.

If. I don't buy her theory of musical apprehension. Or for that matter her theory of perception. So your subsequent remarks are addressed to people who do, not to me.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Tony,

Du Maurier is thoroughly Romanticist, even by Rand's meaning of that term.

I don't think your questions are worth bothering about, since I don't think you're tracking.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen, I can't get your comment about Objs analyzing Rebecca out of my mind. It's been haunting me, and since justice is a value, you'll need to pay for that. I was dozing off yesterday, and I had a vision of Rand on the podium. "What can one say about a book so disgusting? The title character is beautiful and full of spirit. She bravely lives by her rules and no one else's. Yet she is portraid as evil for her virtues. The so-called heroine is a mousy non-entity who does'nt even have a name. The hero, of course, kills Rebecca, a woman so beautiful he must destroy her. Beauty and spirit scare him. The heroic in life is being depicted as vile. This is ultimate in an evil sense of life. This is the horror of today's literature."

You know what's even scarier than the above? How easily words can be used to twist something around.

I can't apologize, since I'm glad to have some company in imagining.

The non-naming of the narrator was a feat of writing, and I think it was a brilliant idea, providing as it does maximal scope for female wish fulfillment via projection. I've wondered if Ira Levin had read Rebecca and got an idea for his name-omitted stunt in A Kiss Before Dying.

I don't recall any mention of du Maurier by Rand, but I think she does say something about Wuthering Heights. I'll look. I think of Rebecca as in the same league as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

There's no listing for Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, or Brontë in the index of either the Journals or The Romantic Manifesto (first version of that, which is minus "Art and Cognition").

Flipping through her essay "What Is Romanticism?," I noticed this comment about "the fascinating villain or colorful rogue":

This phenomenon--the fascinating villain or colorful rogue, who steals the story and the drama from the anemic hero--is prevalent in the history of Romantic literature, serious or popular, from top to bottom. It is as if, under the dead crust of the altruist code officially adopted by mankind, an illicit, subterranean fire were boiling chaotically and erupting once in a while; forbidden to the hero,the fire of self-assertiveness burst forth from the apologetic ashes of a "villain."

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Here's something I came across the other day while engaged in my never-ending attempt to tame the proliferation of papers, journals, etc., in our house:

It's from an advertising circular for "21st Century Objectivist Conferences 1994-95." Bill Bucko's English translation of The Mysterious Valley was forthcoming in November 1964. A full-page ad by The Atlantean Press includes this:

[my bracketed insert; ellipsis in original]

In a 1962 interview published in Mademoiselle magazine, Ayn Rand said about childhood influences on her desire to become a writer, "The first thing that impressed me, very much--and I am not emotionally indifferent to this day--was an adventure story in a French children's magazine called 'The Mysterious Valley.' ... It had an enormous influence on me because it presented in complete form the sort of man I could admire. It was just an adventure--British officers in India--but written in a very heroic way. I mean heroic in my sense: not brutes but men of ingenuity and intelligence. No [other] work of literature has ever impressed me quite that much."

I wonder how entirely Rand's childhood remembrance would have held up upon re-reading the book as an adult. The featured British characters, Cyrus in the forefront, are "heroic" in a dashing Errol Flynn sort of way. They're also precipitate and rash. They'd have died multiple times over if not for the cool judgment and foresight of the French archaeologist it's their good luck to connect with. The author, though gently and kindly, has a slight tongue-in-cheek tone toward the British.

Reading The Mysterious Valley myself last fall, I thought several times of the contrast between the Ross and the Amundsen South Pole expeditions.

Ellen

[Reidy]

Wuthering Heights got a brief, unfavorable mention once in The Objectivist, by Erika Holzer or maybe Kay Nolte Smith. They were both memory-holed, so you won't find it in the official record.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Peter,

Thanks. I'll go look.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Wuthering Heights got a brief, unfavorable mention once in The Objectivist, by Erika Holzer or maybe Kay Nolte Smith. They were both memory-holed, so you won't find it in the official record.

The reference is in an article by Kay Nolte Smith titled "The Newly Silent Screen," June 1971 The Objectivist, pp. 7-9:

Hollywood is in search of its lost audience.

Having made a number of films featuring hippies and various "social protestors"--and having been "liberated" from the burdens of clothing its actors and of telling a coherent story--Hollywood studios found that they were losing money. [....]

Several studios began to make a different kind of film. One of them, Love Story, was an enormous box-office success. Hollywood now believes that audiences want and should be given something romantic; there is said to be a new cinematic trend, called "the new romanticism."

Here are some examples of this trend.

Wuthering Heights, based on the novel by Emily Brontë, is the first in a series of new screen versions of the classics, offered by American International Pictures as part of its new policy: the studio will no longer make any films with a "Restricted" audience rating.

Set in the 1840s, in Yorkshire, the film depicts the love between Cathy and Heathcliff, a gypsy foundling who was raised by her family and treated as a menial servant. Cathy is a capricious creature whose motives are never made clear: despite her love for Heathcliff, she is attracted to a rich, cultured neighbor. Tormented by her behavior, and overhearing that she plans to marry the man, Heathcliff runs away. Cathy marries, but Heathcliff returns three years later; he has somehow become a person of wealth and is now intent on revenge, destroying innocent lives in the process. He ruins Cathy's brother, who had treated him badly; he marries Cathy's young sister-in-law, solely in order to hurt Cathy and her husband. Heathcliff and Cathy continue their love-hate relationship until she dies in childbirth. Mad with grief, he is killed by Cathy's brother. The lovers are then reunited in spirit; their ghosts meet happily on the moors.

This love seems intended to be taken as unconventional and passionate, merely because it is inexplicable, arbitrarily tragic and consists in the senseless torture of each other by two very unpleasant persons. The story embodies an adolescent kind of emotionalism, projected by means of rather crudely glamorized symbols (e.g., a Tortured, Violent Lover). It is the kind of story that has given Romantic novels a bad name.

Apart from the modern suggestion that Heathcliff is Cathy's illegitimate half-brother, which would make their relationship incestuous, the makers of the film have been quite faithful to the novel, following its meandering, undramatic structure. Their method, according to director Robert Fuest, was "more a matter of establishing and maintaining a mood, rather than telling a story."

A dark, rough mood is skillfully evoked by means of scenic and compositional elements, and the film has some visually stunning moments--for example, in an outdoor love scene, the close-up of a man's profile as he bends down slowly, through a few blades of brilliant grass, to reach the woman's lips. (Contrast this stylized projection of sensuality with dozens of current love scenes involving writhing bodies and acres of foliage.)

The action is presented, in effect, as a series of tableaux--which derive their animation, not from a rising tension in the story, but, moment-to-moment, from the actors' skill. (Particularly interesting is Timothy Dalton, a young man with an arresting face and presence, who plays Heathcliff with brooding intensity.)

The film's method is antithetical to drama. One's attention is sharply arrested at certain moments, but much of the time it is free to wander--and one finds oneself wishing that these talented people had chosen a good story to tell and were concerned with telling it. But they haven't and they aren't.

Incidental comment: I much dislike that "one feels, does, thinks, whatever" method which is used a lot in movie reviews.

Ellen

[ginny]

I don't recall any mention of du Maurier by Rand, but I think she does say something about Wuthering Heights. I'll look. I think of Rebecca as in the same league as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.

To me, those three have always been lumped together,and I re-read them frequently. While Rebecca is a favorite, I try to figure out the Brontes. These little parish mice sure could depict some hot-blooded men, but neither of their books ends with love conquering all. Heathcliff never found love until he died, and Mr. R.had to go blind before he found true love. I think they had a bit of their father's attitude about lust not being quite acceptable. Like, you'll end up paying for the sin. Not that it kept them from lusting, bless their hearts. They'd be fascinating women today.

[Ellen Stuttle]

I like Rebecca the best of the three, and Wuthering Heights the least. My image of Jane Eyre is much affected by the Orson Welles movie.

I think the charge of inexplicableness regarding motives is fair to level at Wuthering Heights, but I think it's also fair to level at aspects of Atlas Shrugged.

Ellen

[Jonathan]

I sincerely don't relish disabusing you of this general notion you have, J.

Sorry, but in her study of art, Rand did of course study and explain the aesthetics. (The what and the how).

She lauded (as you've said) any great art that was honestly expressed and finely rendered; included were Naturalists - certainly- since that art has formed the bulk ever created.

However, she continued from the aesthetics (which is self-evidently the commonality of all art).

She went on to ask (in effect) "why, art?" what purpose, art? And then, distilled the essence of why man needs art, beyond beauty, plots, thematics, characterization, or that thing we call 'meaning'.

"The distinguishing characteristic of this top rank [of authors she names] (apart from their purely literary genius) is their full commitment to the premise of volition in ~ both of its fundamental areas~ :

in regard to consciousness and to existence, and

in regard to man's character and his actions in the physical world.

Maintaining a perfect integration of these two aspects, unmatched in the brilliant ingenuity of their plot structures, these writers are enormously concerned with man's soul (i.e. his consciousness). They are ~moralists~ in the most profound sense of the word; their concern is not merely with values, but specifically with ~moral~ values and with the power of moral values in shaping human character."

['What is Romanticism?']

Do you see it yet, Jonathan? Aesthetics was simply Rand's path to the supremely important stuff (as she saw it), Romanticism.

Which is why she could and did compliment great aesthetics by Naturalists - and hold that the same quality should be present in Romanticism ("...unmatched in the brilliant ingenuity of their plot structures...").

No doubt there will be great Naturalism and poor Romanticism...aesthetically.

Aesthetics was the means to Rand's end, not the end in itself.

Romanticism is the objective and essence of Objectivist aesthetics.

Told you you wouldn't like it: sorry. Here is why - mainly -we have been at cross-purposes all the way.

Tony, I think you're one of the most irrational people I've ever encountered online, if not the most. Sorry, but I'm no longer interested in trying to untangle the intellectual messes that you make of everything, or in trying to get you to recognize the simplest of your misinterpretations or contradictions. Absolutely nothing gets through to you. It's a waste of time. I should have learned my lesson from your scatterbrained participation on OO's Roark the Dynamiter thread.

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

I started reading the "Roark the Dynamiter" thread J linked to in the post above.

This seems a good place to make a point I've had in mind to make about Roark as supposed representative of Objectivist virtues: Rand hadn't begun formulating Objectivism, with its taking reason as the cardinal virtue, when she wrote The Fountainhead. She was taking independence as central at that time. The shift occurred in 1945 when she was planning a never-finished piece called "The Moral Basis of Individualism."

Tony says on the OO thread, in post #17:

The dynamiting was Rand's exposition of rational egoism, evidently.

[....]

The morality of the individual which does not recognise any other.

[....]

I think the second sentence does capture Roark's ethics - but this is not Objectivism's ethics of "rational egoism."

Ellen

[tmj]

So J

the question I have been asking in various threads and on various forums as to whether or not the artist's intentions, should they be known, are/or are not relevavent plays into to determining whether a specific work be recognized as art,yes?

[Jonathan]

In the latter, although she goes on to talk specifically of colors, she starts with "Visual harmony [my emphasis] is a sensory experience and is determined primarily by physiological means."

I add these statements together as indicating that she thought of all visual beauty responses as on an automatic level, not a volitional level. She isn't here to ask, and the clues are slim.

It sounds as if Rand was taking the position, probably unintentionally, that any single color, musical note or sound, or any other single entity which has no "constituent elements" which are harmonizable, cannot be beautiful by itself. With her off-the-top-of-her-head theory of "beauty" being "a sense of harmony," there logically must first be commensurable elements in that which is being observed so as to achieve "harmony" among them.

Therefore the moon image that you saw through a telescope, Ellen, would not qualify, nor would Rand's enjoyment of her favorite color in and of itself -- she could only call it beautiful when it was next to a proper selection of other specific colors, but then she would also have to call it ugly when it was next to different colors.

If I'm in a seamless, circular room in which nothing but the red color Pantone 186 is visible to me, wouldn't Rand's theory dictate that I would be wrong in calling the color "beautiful" since there would be no "constituent elements" to be harmonized?

Or perhaps might Rand attempt to argue that there is no such thing as incommensurate constituent elements? Since you felt a sense of beauty in looking at the moon, Ellen, perhaps Rand would argue that it was beautiful to you because its constituent element of circularity "harmonized" with its constituent element of ivory color, which also "harmonized" with its constituent element of its splattered-cratered texture? If so, I wonder which colors and textures don't "harmonize" with circles? If I think that Pantone 186 is beautiful, then perhaps she would say that it MUST be the case that its hue is somehow "harmonizing" with its saturation level and its value level?

In applying the concept of "harmony" to visual phenomena, I think the word necessarily becomes quite subjective and arbitrary in its potential meanings. Unlike comparing the pitch of one musical note with that of another, there are no objective grounds on which to objectively measure a shape or a proportion in comparison to a color or a texture.

Anyway, thanks, Ellen, for the info suggesting that Rand probably viewed judgments of beauty as being on an automatic level. I'll have to do some more thinking on the subject.

If it is valid for Rand to assert that she integrated musical notes into a conceptual experience, it is just as valid for me or anyone else to assert that we are capable of doing the same thing with colors.

If. I don't buy her theory of musical apprehension. Or for that matter her theory of perception. So your subsequent remarks are addressed to people who do, not to me.

Are you saying that you don't integrate musical notes into a conceptual experience?

J

[anthony]

Oh ye of little good faith! Contrary to all evidence, and when you sense your position slipping away, it's still so important to try to 'win' the argument, that you stoop to any ad hominem?

I had introduced concepts - remember those? - for the precise reason of 'untangling the mess'.

In effect, Objectivists constantly state:

Slate the philosophy to your heart's content - but get it right first - and then we can debate it, on even terms.

You have got your central premise wrong: "Romanticism is not the essence of Objectivist esthetics".

Most errors you have made followed from that basic fallacy.

If you don't see the meaning in Rand's own writing for yourself, have you at least asked yourself how Peikoff could have really got something so crucial, so wrong? i.e. He's been wrong before (on lesser principles) so he must be wrong on this?

Wrong.

Can it be that you have been bogged down in the details and secondary sources so long, you've lost sight of the big picture?

I suggest a new read of The Manifesto, but applying induction.

Focus on the principles, see the grand design, and ignore the details for now.

You have shown and stated misinterpretation for volition, just for one.

But think boldly. Think in concepts. This thread has often been an attempt to make original and strong ideas puny and irrelevant.

Your "Objecti-Goggles" device is quite amusing though. I'll add a few more that have occured to me.

Skepti-Blinkers

Intrinsi-Specs

Subjecti-Shades

Mysti-Myopics

Objecti-Scopes(!)

[Jonathan]

So J

the question I have been asking in various threads and on various forums as to whether or not the artist's intentions, should they be known, are/or are not relevavent plays into to determining whether a specific work be recognized as art,yes?

By Rand's theory, yes, I would think that discovering the artist's intentions (after one has viewed his art while not knowing his intentions) would be vital to its qualifying as art or not, as well as to judging its aesthetic merit. And, as I've mentioned in my "transmitter/receiver" posts, we would have to have some means outside of the art of confirming the receivers' judgments. Therefore a truly Objectivist theory of aesthetic judgment would included judging the artist, the art, and the viewer/listener/reader.

The artist would create and display his work. Objectivists would then experience it without being allowed access to "outside considerations." They would then identify what they thought was the artwork's meaning, and what views of existence the artist had conveyed through the art. At that point, the artist would be interviewed and asked what his intentions were in creating the art. What did he intend as its meaning, if anything? During its creation, why did he choose certain things within the art as conveying the meaning that he intended? What view of existence was he trying to communicate?

Then we would have to build an analysis of the history of people's judgments of art. We'd have to find a means of testing which viewers were aesthetic dunces and which were brilliant. We'd have to establish an objective system of not judging the artist to have failed just because some dimwits were incapable of understanding his art, but, at the same time, we'd have to establish the system so that a snooty artist could not just come along and assert that everyone is a dimwit for not understanding his art.

J

[Jonathan]

tmj,

On the issue of artists' intentions, you may be interested in this post of mine from a couple of years ago in which I discussed the relevance of discovering artistic intention in solving the problem of wanting to make "objective" aesthetic judgments while facing the problem of open-endedness in requiring both identification of the meaning of a work of art and evaluation of the means of achieving it (a problem which apparently never occurred to Rand):

Now, do you want to have a grown-up conversation without the stupid shit? If so, I'd be up for hearing how you'd apply a literary concept like Rand's theory of aesthetic judgment or the intentional fallacy to non-literature.

What would that entail in regard to the visual arts?

Your view of aesthetic judgment, as stated above, appears to involve asking "What is this thing? What does it do? How does it work?" Is that all there is to it, or do you agree with Rand that one also has to specifically identify meaning and determine how well the art conveys it?

Here's the problem that I would have with doing so:

As you mentioned above, elements of an artwork can be interpreted differently than what an artist intends. That's somewhat true of literature, but the problem can be immensely magnified with the non-literary arts.

The visual arts are much less specific than literature -- they're not temporal; they're a brief glimpse at a moment in time -- and are therefore much more open to interpretation, which brings a problem of open-endedness to requiring both identification of the meaning of a work of art and evaluation of the means of achieving it.

Here's an example of what I mean. Let's say that an artist wants to paint his vision of mankind as heroic, but he's just a bit lacking in skill, which makes his figures look a little distorted, or maybe even contorted, which makes some people interpret them as sick or tormented. These viewers interpret the artwork to mean that sickness and torment is man's nature or fate. Since they think that the art conveys that vision very effectively, they conclude that it's great art.

The problem is that it's not great art. If they don't know the artist's intentions, they have no objective standard by which to decide if he failed or succeeded in his task. Once they feel that they've identified any meaning based on the content of the art, only a positive evaluation is possible: to them, the art successfully conveys what they've decided it means.

How would one apply Rand's method of aesthetic evaluation to a painting like The Death of Socrates, without relying on any outside considerations and without seeking information about the artist's intentions? What would the painting mean to someone who didn't know anything about it or why it was created?

It's an image of a man sitting on a bed being handed a cup while while those around him appear to be expressing grief. There are manacles on and under the bed. What's in the cup? Perhaps wine? Is the man a raging alcoholic who has been chained to the bed by his loved ones as a form of intervention? Now that he's been denied booze a few weeks, they feel they're ready to test his resolve by offering him a cup of wine? They're disappointed because the man is excited about being given a drink, and assuring them that he's certain that he can limit himself to just one cup?

So, to borrow "Roger's" terms, a painting either means that "life is possible" or "life is difficult or impossible." Therefore, is the alcoholic in the painting heroic for believing in his ability to exercise his volition over his addiction and drink only one cup, or is he doomed to the fate of deterministically caving in to his weakness? I'm going with the former. "Life is possible!"

The above would qualify as an objective esthetic judgment which follows Rand's criteria to the letter, wouldn't it? It's exactly the type of silliness that I've seen Rand and many of her followers engage in.

A specific example of such silliness on Rand's part is her judgment of Vermeer. Her avoidance of outside considerations and artist's intentions -- such as what type of society Vermeer lived in, what type of clothing or customs were common in his time, which technologies, world events and beliefs influenced him -- led her to come to the "objective" but ridiculous opinion that Vermeer was naturalistically painting the folks next door. Her avoidance of knowledge led her to impose her own context on Vermeer, which made her incapable of recognizing the romantic and allegorical nature of his art.

Is that the goal of the Objectivist Esthetics: to make "objective" but ridiculous aesthetic judgments due to willful ignorance?

And here are some more relevant comments from a post on the same thread:

Rand apparently didn't consider the fact that if one is to judge how well an artist has accomplished his task, one would have to have knowledge of what the artist intended to accomplish. The same would be true of judging anything objectively. If one wanted to objectively judge, say, a NASA mission, it wouldn't be enough to marvel at the technology, power, motion and structural features displayed. One would have to read the mission plan to discover if the events that were witnessed had achieved the goal.

Here's Rand's statement [on "objective aesthetic judgments"] rewritten so that it's about objective evaluations of tasks in general, and not just aesthetic ones:

"In essence, an objective evaluation requires that one identify the person's task, the purpose 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 achieved it — i.e., taking his purpose as criterion, evaluate the purely technical elements of the work, the technical mastery (or lack of it) with which he accomplished (or failed to accomplish) his task..."

With that as our method of objective evaluation, please objectively evaluate the following:

A worker installs pipes on the ceiling of a chemical factory and then turns on a faucet, and the pipes spray water from what appear to us to be random seams.

Following Rand's method, identify the plumber's task and the purpose of his work. How well did he perform the task? Were the pipes supposed to spray water, or did he fail to connect all of them properly?

I think that last self-quote of mine is particularly illustrative. We wouldn't attempt to claim to "objectively" evaluate the plumber's work without knowing what he was intending, so why would anyone try to claim that they were being objective in evaluating artists' tasks without knowing their intentions, or worse, while willfully refusing to learn of them?

J

[tmj]

ok cool, so art can be judged, but only if a work is presented as art, yes?

[Ellen Stuttle]

Tony, [...] It's a waste of time. I should have learned my lesson from your scatterbrained participation on OO's Roark the Dynamiter thread.

J

At latest by #53 (the post I'm up to in reading the thread). I think by #47 would have been sufficient.

I'm surprised at how polite and straight-to-the-point you're being on the thread so far. Do they keep you on a tight leash over there?

Ellen