Michelle Marder Kamhi's "Who Says That's Art?"

[Brant Gaede]

Esthetics is not nor could it ever be a science. Science deals only with hard, physical reality, not man-made reality. This escaped Rand--that "soft" science is not science at all (assuming she even thought of the differences between the soft and hard sciences).

--Brant

[Jonathan]

Barbara Branden liked Aristos, at least back in the day, but it never rang my bell.

--Brant

Aristos always has had interesting content, despite the overriding self-important posing, and the authoritarian "That's not art!" attitude.

When Kamhi and Torres limit themselves to discussing their areas of actual expertise -- the history of art and aesthetics -- they generally know what they're talking about, and quite often with great depth and very original insights. They run into big problems when they leave their areas of expertise, and start talking about artists' technical abilities, the technical limitations of various media, or the aesthetic sensitivities or cognitive abilities of others. They act as if they believe that their competence at the former (art history) magically makes them competent at the latter (technical judgments and receptivity). It doesn't. If you're going to pontificate on the subject of, say, photography, then having advanced technical knowledge of photography is required, and quoting the opinions of someone whom one has decided to trust as an expert because he shares one's predetermined opinion about the medium isn't a very good substitute for actual technical knowledge of the medium's possibilities versus limitations.

J

[anthony]

Conversely, some stranger could look disapproving, and we might not know it - so he's not "communicating".

I don't doubt that you would not know it. But what if a stranger were to give you and me a look of disapproval, and even though you didn't grasp it, I did? Is it your view that since you didn't get it, then I didn't either? Since he did not communicate to you, then there was no communication?

J

Nope. It turns out our "disapproving" stranger was having a bout of acid reflux when he happened to look your way. (No, he was thinking about the President). Hey, I made him, I can call the shots.

That's abstract art - anything to anybody, therefore primacy of consciousness.

If Objectivists then, are "autistic" in their insistence on objective reality, re-created reality, too, then what does it say for abstractionists?

I get it.

Mystics, endowed with special powers of insight.

[Brant Gaede]

Barbara Branden liked Aristos, at least back in the day, but it never rang my bell.

--Brant

Aristos always has had interesting content, despite the overriding self-important posing, and the authoritarian "That's not art!" attitude.

When Kamhi and Torres limit themselves to discussing their areas of actual expertise -- the history of art and aesthetics -- they generally know what they're talking about, and quite often with great depth and very original insights. They run into big problems when they leave their areas of expertise, and start talking about artists' technical abilities, the technical limitations of various media, or the aesthetic sensitivities or cognitive abilities of others. They act as if they believe that their competence at the former (art history) magically makes them competent at the latter (technical judgments and receptivity). It doesn't. If you're going to pontificate on the subject of, say, photography, then having advanced technical knowledge of photography is required, and quoting the opinions of someone whom one has decided to trust as an expert because he shares one's predetermined opinion about the medium isn't a very good substitute for actual technical knowledge of the medium's possibilities versus limitations.

J

I have to hasten to add that my lack of interest came not from reading much of it, except maybe an excerpted article or two, but from not desiring to read much of any Objectivist approach to esthetics, or any other for that matter, except Rand. Joan Blumenthal was interesting to me--what little she wrote.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

I get it.

Mystics, endowed with special powers of insight.

Oh, absolutely, Tony! Anyone who claims to experience or understand something that you don't must be a mystic who thinks that they are endowed with special powers. Your personal abilities and levels of receptivity and sensitivity must be the limit of what is possible. It's not possible that you might be deficient in any way compared to others. The only rational explanation is that others are pretending to see and grasp what you don't!

In an earlier post, I mentioned an Objectivish student artist who had a similar view of my having claimed to see perspective errors that she couldn't see in a painting. She thought that I was just making things up. She couldn't see the errors, and, since she was the standard and cognitive limit for all mankind, the errors did not exist!

J

[Jonathan]

I have to hasten to add that my lack of interest came not from reading much of it, except maybe an excerpted article or two, but from desiring to read much of any Objectivist approach to esthetics, or any other for that matter, except Rand. Joan Blumenthal was interesting to me--what little she wrote.

--Brant

One really good thing about K&T is that they don't have the standard Objectivish craving to vilify Kant, and therefore they don't pigheadedly misinterpret him on aesthetics. They seem to recognize the many similarities between Rand and Kant on the subject of aesthetics.

J

[Brant Gaede]

Speaking more generally, Barbara Branden once subscribed to Petr Beckmann's Access to Energy, but she did not renew after a year, so Petr told me. We are really talking about two different states of interest. Science fiction bored Barbara, not me, as a genre. I once plowed through three-quarters of The Brothers Karamazov--including what I think of as the greatest speech in world literature, that of the Grand Inquisitor, only to finally be stopped by boredom with the characters. I did not finish it. (For shame, for real.) I read two or three Hugo novels but not the one with Notre Dame as a character and not The Man Who Laughs. In regard to the last, I'd read it if I could find the one with the Rand intro so I'd think I was reading a decent translation, but I've never found it. I have his almost complete works right behind my head as I type this, including his poetry--"Who is France's greatest poet?" "Victor Hugo, alas"--and am thinking of throwing it away--just changed my mind on that--as I suspect it's a cheap translation from over 100 years ago and I need the shelf space. Anyway, Barbara was a literary esthete and I prefer the more practical (masculine?) if not brutal plane of esthetic existence. I'm pretty sure we'd overlap, however, outside of Rand, with the movie To Kill a Mockingbird. I don't know if she ever expressed any opinion on that movie, she certainly didn't to me, but that is a great and literary movie. On the other hand, I more naturally go with such as Apollo 13. I bet she liked that too, though again I don't know, but there's no seeming literature--that is an overlay if not suffusion of artificiality.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

I'm pretty sure we'd overlap, however, outside of Rand, with the movie To Kill a Mockingbird. I don't know if she ever expressed any opinion on that movie, she certainly didn't to me, but that is a great and literary movie. On the other hand, I more naturally go with such as Apollo 13. I bet she liked that too, though again I don't know, but there's no seeming literature--that is an overlay if not suffusion of artificiality.

I seem to remember that she did love To Kill a Mockingbird. Also, Rocky, despite saying that she hated boxing.

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

Dutton and Darwin on the Origins of Music

"As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least use to man in reference to his daily habits of life, they must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed."

~~~ Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

The link goes to a turtlereader.com page. The site provides the complete text of Darwin's The Descent of Man. Click here for links to all 151 webpages of the text.

---

I bought Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution.

In Chapter 9, "The Contingency of Aesthetic Values," Dutton presents a Darwin-based theory of the origins of music.

The excerpt I've posted below, although long, is worth reading in full, since it quotes some of the passage on music from The Descent of Man and summarizes how Darwin approached the issue of music.

Note that Darwin, like Rand, thought that music reaches emotions directly.

For an emphatic objection to parts of Darwin's and Dutton's views see "The Children of the Night, What Music They Make: Horror in Music," a post on Storming the Ivory Tower blogspot.

I have a more basic question regarding the posited "[uselessness of music] to man in reference to his daily habits of life," but I'll reserve comment for a separate post.

The Art Instinct

pp. 212-215

[bold emphasis, and one paragraph break, added]

[T]he ability to perceive [music's] medium - pitched sound - has almost no imaginable significance for survival in natural selection. The sounds of nature - wind in the trees, crack of lightning, breaking waves and rushing waters - are predominately variations on white noise. It is a feature of music cross-culturally, however, that it uses relatively pure, pitched tones. The only common natural source of pitched tones in human experience is birdsong, along with the howls and cries of a few mammals and reptiles. Many animal sounds are inaudible to the human ear, and, in any event, there is nothing in the potential adaptive advantages of knowing birdsongs and animal cries that can remotely explain the deep and pervasive hold of music on the human mind in almost every culture.

Charles Darwin himself counted the "capacity and love for singing or music" among "the most mysterious" features of the human race, and in The Descent of Man he devotes a substantial passage to the origins of music. The very uselessness of music in terms of natural selection, along with its flamboyance, forces Darwin to see it as a product of sexual selection, descended from mating and rivalry cries of our prehuman ancestors. In the course of presenting his case, Darwin also makes two observations that go beyond overt issues of sexual selection while still cutting to the heart of music as a potential art form. First, Darwin stresses the relation of music to emotion:

Music arouses in us various emotions, but not the more terrible ones of horror, fear, rage, etc. It awakens the gentler feelings of tenderness and love, which readily pass into devotion. In the Chinese annals it is said, "Music hath the power of making heaven descend upon earth." It likewise stirs up in us the sense of triumph and the glorious ardour for war. These powerful and mingled feelings may well give rise to the sense of sublimity.

Darwin would not deny, presumably, that a musical soundtrack could be appropriate for a horror movie; he is only claiming that the raw horror a dramatic story might incite could never be produced by music, any more than anger or fear could be produced by music. Music's natural ground is - as you would expect from an adaptation of sexual selection - romance. Indeed, he remarks, "Love is still the commonest theme of our songs."

A second connection Darwin describes is music's ancient tie to language, in particular to oratory - that is to say, language in public performance. He observes that "when vivid emotions are felt and expressed by the orator, or even in common speech, musical cadences and rhythm are instinctively used." The sensations and ideas "excited in us by music, or expressed by the cadences of oratory, appear from their vagueness, yet depth, like mental reversions to the emotions and thoughts of a long-past age." Darwin's speculations have for me a ring of truth:

All these facts with respect to music and impassioned speech become intelligible to a certain extent, if we may assume that musical tones and rhythm were used by our half-human ancestors, during the season of courtship, when animals of all kinds are excited not only by love, but by the strong passions of jealousy, rivalry, and triumph . . . We must suppose that the rhythms and cadences of oratory are derived from previously developed musical powers. We can thus understand how it is that music, dancing, song, and poetry are such very ancient arts. We may go even further than this, and, as remarked in a former chapter, believe that musical sounds afforded one of the bases for the development of language.

The impassioned orator, bard, or musician, when with his varied tones and cadences he excites the strongest emotions in his hearers, little suspects that he uses the same means by which his half-human ancestors long ago aroused each others ardent passions, during their courtship and rivalry.

This is genuinely plausible. Song - speech rhythmically expressed in pitched tones - is universal and obviously the simplest musical form. But there is an important feature instrumental music also shares with language, a feature that tends to go unnoticed. The language-recognition machinery of the human brain fundamentally distinguishes vowel sounds - pure, simple tones - from consonants, which are more complex, and combined with vowels create a gigantic realm of linguistic possibility. This enables us not only to distinguish human speech from other noises but to make countless subtle aural differentiations.

Music exploits the ability to perceive such minute and subtle distinctions, not only with the singing voice but in instrumental music as well. Musical pitches are the equivalent of vowels - "supervowels," they have been called - that stand in systematic relation to each other: the fifth, the octave, diatonic tuning, and so forth. The attack of an instrumental note, the first tenth of a second or less, is picked up by the ear in the way that a consonant at the beginning of a word is acoustically perceived; it conditions how its vowel sound is heard: the acoustic differences between the spoken "play," "bay," "ray," "stray," "day," and "stay" are minute, happening in the first milliseconds of the words. Anyone who has played with digital editors or even magnetic tape may know that, in exactly the same way as removing the consonant, snipping off the attack of a note can make it impossible to distinguish whether it is being played by an oboe or a violin or a clarinet.

If you add rhythm to the quasi-speech of vocally or instrumentally produced pitched sounds, and load tonal harmony and melody onto that, you have music as we know it. [....]

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Jonathan,

Judging from your posts, you still aren't getting the differences between:

-- being intelligible and communicating;

-- non-verbal communication and discursive communication;

-- a gesture which might signify (and might, by the person at whom it's directed, be correctly interpreted as signifying) "I'm pissed with you" and a statement of the form "Humans shouldn't do that."

Your (apparent) non-understanding of these differences is producing more and more garble in your interpretations of quotes you cite from Kamhi's book and in your replies to me (and to Tony as well).

I think it's also botching any case you might have for abstract painting and sculpture classifying as "fine art." In order to have a supportable case, you need to drop statements of "meaning" of the type with which I'm taking issue in your comments about those two paintings.

(I think you also have to give up on your claim that to be consistent people have to either include abstract art in the "fine arts" - rather than "decorative arts" - category or discard music from that category. You make the same claim regarding dance and architecture, and with those, too, I think it's an unsupportable claim, although I'm not convinced that architecture belongs in the "fine arts" category. I'm primarily interested in the issue of music, so that's what I emphasize.)

Ellen

[william.scherk]

I outed the artist Greg Dunn on another thread, and so thought I should attach the name of the artist to the image below.

I'm convinced Dunn creates works of art according to Kamhi's criteria. Those who doubt its ability to create "the potential to interest and move others" or who are unmoved by the static representation, see the video below of a different work, a 'micro-etching.'

Tony will forgive me for waiting so long to drop the other shoe. I was trying of course to make a case for an abstraction-as-depiction, and trying to abide by Rand's rendition of art as 'recreation of reality.'

Beyond that, I think I would find visually stunning and absorbing the actual work depicted in the video.

Tony, if all is forgiven, care to give another opinion on Greg Dunn's work? Art, non-art, failed-art, crap ... ?

[quoting Kamhi] Like all art, works of visual art are made with special skill and care. They are not the product of mere whim or chance.

Visual art is representational. It consists of two- or three-dimensional images of actual or imagined persons, places, objects, or events.

Such representations are not necessarily realistic in style, but they are intelligible and emotionally meaningful within their cultural context. They embody, in recognizable forms, ideas and values that are not only of personal significance important to the individual who created them but also have the potential to interest and move others.

A true work of art is the product of more than just technical skill. It involves a distinctive sensibility, an intensity of vision that brings the subject to life in a compelling way.

Is the concept of 'intelligibility' unintelligible? Do you William, know exactly what you're seeing here -- in human-value terms?

[ART]

• is indeed made with special skill and care/not the product of mere whim or chance.
• is indeed representational, consisting of two-dimensional images of actual or imagined places and objects
• is quite intelligible and emotionally meaningful within its cultural context.
• has recognizable forms, ideas and values that are not only of personal significance important to the artist who created them but also has the potential to interest and move others.

[anthony]

William: Fascinating, aesthetic, ingenious and artful. However, the first question the genre and every image prompts is: What is it? Then, How was it done?

It needs explanation because it is not instantly familiar of life/existence, emotion-less and also it lacks context and scale.

For me, I feel it is a sort of 'second order' perception, necessitating cognition at an early stage (if that makes sense). In the best sense of the word, the product is 'artificial', of a similarity with the absorbing long exposure photo images of lights in parabolic motion, and many other scientific-cum-aesthetic works .

"Recognizable forms", Kamhi writes. Happy birthday, man.

[Jonathan]

Jonathan,

Judging from your posts, you still aren't getting the differences between:

-- being intelligible and communicating;

You're playing semantic games. Let's cut to the chase. Define your terms. Please define "intelligible" and "communication." Identify specifically WHAT Kamhi believes must be intelligible in art, and then explain why that requirement of what must be intelligible does not equal communication.

Define what you think Kamhi means when she says that art must "embody" things, and that they must be "comprehensible." To whom do you think she requires them to be "intelligible" and "comprehensible"?

(On a technical point, using Kamhi's definitions and criteria, nothing yet qualifies as art. Kamhi has not demonstrated that any single item of alleged art meets her criteria. She has baldly asserted or suggested that certain things do, but she hasn't actually provided any proof to back up her assertions or suggestions. She hasn't taken her criteria, point by point and step by step, and applied them to anything in reality. Objectivish-types often express their terror at their idea of "if anything can be art, then nothing is art." Well, currently, that's where we are with Kamhi. Nothing is art!)

-- non-verbal communication and discursive communication;

Once again you evaded my question. Do you not understand that nonverbal communication can be easily translated to verbal terms?

-- a gesture which might signify (and might, by the person at whom it's directed, be correctly interpreted as signifying) "I'm pissed with you" and a statement of the form "Humans shouldn't do that."

Do you not understand that a work of art is recognizable to people as a work of art, and that people generally understand that works of art usually contain something that is important in some way to the artist, and therefore when looking at a work of art, people understand that there is a context which involves the likelihood that what is presented in the art is probably in some way important to the artist?!!! With that in mind, do you really think that it's a big or impossible leap that an artist can nonverbally communicate that something is important to him, be it, say, heroic patriotism, sexuality, athletic health and bold masculinity, gentle nurturing motherhood, etc.?

One of the earlier questions that you evaded was my question about a painting portraying motherhood. Have you seriously never experienced successful nonverbal communication in a realistic painting of a mother tenderly caring for her child? Please, answer the question this time. Don't evade it again.

Your (apparent) non-understanding of these differences is producing more and more garble in your interpretations of quotes you cite from Kamhi's book and in your replies to me (and to Tony as well).

Hahahahaha! OMG, you crack me up! Um, you randomly and arbitrarily injected your own quirky meaning of the term "abstract art" into the discussion, based not on Kamhi's use of the term, or its long historical meaning in the arts, but based on your personal interpretation of some technical aspect of Rand's use of "abstraction" in the realm of epistemology, and then you accuse me of producing garble? Heh. Garble appears to be your goal in this discussion, Ellen.

I think it's also botching any case you might have for abstract painting and sculpture classifying as "fine art." In order to have a supportable case, you need to drop statements of "meaning" of the type with which I'm taking issue in your comments about those two paintings.

I think you're very confused about what this discussion is about. I haven't been making a case for abstract sculpture and painting qualifying as fine art. This discussion isn't about my views or theories of art, but about Kamhi's. It isn't about what I require in art, but what she does. The point of my sharing examples of identifying meaning in abstract paintings based on the content in the paintings was to comply with the requirements of Objectivism, as well as the requirements of Kamhi and other Objectivish-types. The point was to use the same methods that they do. The point was not to suggest that I personally think that such methods are required in order for something to qualify as art.

You've been doing a lot of misinterpreting in this discussion. Your very first post misidentified my position as being that of accusing Kamhi of rejecting art based on her tastes, which I corrected in post 10. In post 203 you misidentified my position as that of accusing Kamhi of claiming that anyone who finds any value whatsoever in abstract art has to be pretending. In post 209, you equated "intelligible vehicle of meaning or emotional expression" with communication, and then later decided that you wanted to believe that I was mistaken to equate the two. Heh. You're not focused. You're being very intellectually sloppy. You're not paying close attention and then you're projecting your garbled mindset onto me.

(I think you also have to give up on your claim that to be consistent people have to either include abstract art in the "fine arts" - rather than "decorative arts" - category or discard music from that category. You make the same claim regarding dance and architecture, and with those, too, I think it's an unsupportable claim, although I'm not convinced that architecture belongs in the "fine arts" category. I'm primarily interested in the issue of music, so that's what I emphasize.)

Heh. Which meaning of "abstract art" are you using this time? Are you still using you own inappropriate meaning that has nothing to do with the conversation, or are you using the one that I've been using because it is the one that Kamhi uses in her book? I don't give a rat's ass if you think that, by your personal irrelevant definition, music is not an abstract art form. When I've been saying that music is an abstract art form, I haven't been using your personal irrelevant meaning of the term. I've been using the historical meaning, just as Kamhi has.

[edited to add:] The issue here isn't what you think should qualify as art, but what qualifies as art by Kamhi's definitions and criteria.

So, again, please stop with the semantic games. In addition to defining what you think Kamhi means by "intelligible," "embody, and "comprehsible," please define what you think she means by "abstract art." Not what you mean, or what you want it to mean, but what Kamhi means.

J

[Jonathan]

"Recognizable forms", Kamhi writes.

Recognizable to whom?

J

[Brant Gaede]

"Recognizable forms", Kamhi writes.

Recognizable to whom?

J

Whomever?

I mean those looking for that which is so recognizable.

Does the general idea of what is art get it ass-backwards wrong? Does the human nature of receiving and experiencing art--processing it--give us a more universal understanding of what it is? That would be the subjective experience combined with the objective nature of that person. Art is more than what is seen, felt, heard--and thought of as in reading. It is magnifying reality, distorting it one way or another, so we can experience it differently and more powerfully through mental process.

To digress, now, why can we not call architecture as much art as a novel? Fine art? Is a novel "fine art"? By such I mean the experiencing of both architecture and literature. If you particularize their parts the "art" sometimes disappears. Where's the art in Galt's speech? As art it only exists in its larger context. (The speech of the Grand Inquisitor can stand alone.) The didacticness of "Atlas Shrugged" doesn't make the novel any less a work of art (otherwise known as "literature"). Not unless it could have been done better. Good luck with that.

There is only one roof, I suggest, that covers all which we may call "art"--the human consumer's human nature. (And lets in photography, for sure.)

--Brant

[Jonathan]

"Recognizable forms", Kamhi writes.

Recognizable to whom?J

Whomever?

Nope. Kamhi's criterion of a "recognizable form" is that it must be recognizable to Kamhi, and if if is not, then it is not recognizable to anyone. Anyone who claims to recognize what Kamhi does not is "pretending" to see what is not there, and they are doing so for the purpose of impressing the arts establishment elites.

J

[Jonathan]

Ellen, please demonstrate, point by point and step by step, a piece of music complying with Kamhi's criteria of art. Objectively show how it meets each of her requirements.

J

[william.scherk]

Thanks, Tony, for the brief remarks about Brainbow Hippocampus by Dunn. If I read you correctly, you find it sensually delightful, of positive value -- at once aesthetic, ingenious and artful. (you weren't quite so impressed with the earlier-posted image).

You say that there is a 'first question' prompted in your mind by Brainbow -- "What is it?" (what does this image represent, what is the 'reality' depicted in the recreation?)

As with the first posted image, if given no outside considerations like title, artist, or other information about the putative artwork, we are left to our own perceptions, pattern detection, searches of memory space ... we may try to 'recognize' elements conceptually ('that really looks like a neuron' ... 'this depicts neurons' ... 'this is a network of neurons'). We may draw a blank.

If we are stymied in answering our first question, and the work offers no immediately intelligible answers to 'what is it' questions, what comes next? Do we return to our search and pattern-seeking, or do we turn away? Do we seek more information before moving on? Are we done?

Tony, it looks like you next would inquire, stymied or not by incomprehensible forms, about the making, the construction, the how. You would get closer to the work, try to understand its technique. With no outside considerations, you might then remark 'it is hard metal, gold I think. With my magnifying glass, I see minute patterns of etching.'

Now a viewer not instantly familiar with neurons, axons, dendrites -- or with cellular and network-level imagery of this necessary, vital element of life/existence -- this viewer's experience of Brainbow Hippocampus could end right there. Some stringy blobs, some interesting holographic light and depth effects, some borderline esthetics in the interplay of the entities inscribed. The viewer might not feel any pleasure at recognition, he might feel no particular emotion at all so far, and be ready to move on.

Perhaps, though, one last attempt to decipher the unintelligible theme in the work. A final try at integrating the concepts rendered out of the image. Viewer says, 'Okay, neurons in a particular pattern of some unknown-to-me part of a brain. What else? A microscopic scale? Okay, so I am looking into a brain. When I move the light against the etching, I seem to see a movement, a dance in time and depth. Is this the play of thought in the brain? Is this an artistic attempt to suggest cognitive operations embedded in neuron networks?'

That viewer might safely move on now.

Back to the viewer at hand. Tony, you say you "feel it is a sort of 'second order' perception, necessitating cognition at an early stage (if that makes sense)." The It refers back to the operation of the questions What and How.

I think you are in the neighborhood of something important. The 'second order' perception of forms may precede the first questions, and this is an individual perception -- Brant may see biological forms, I may have seen obvious recreations of nerve cells, you may see only trees. Integrating the conceptually-grasped icons into a personally-meaningful gestalt -- this is dependent on precedent cognitions.

Finally, Tony, you add a few further glosses to your assessment. You say that the microetching** is 'artificial' in the best sense of the word. This means, I think, that it is the product of human ingenuity. No part of it would exist except for the will to achieve it in Dunn. In Kamhi's terms, this is the skill and care that an artwork must witness.

We are then left to tussle over the last criteria. Is the work "emotionally meaningful within its cultural context"? Does it intelligibly represent something of Dunn's ideas and values, concepts of personal significance to him? Does it have the potential to interest and move others?

My position is that yes, Dunn's work shown here fully conforms to Kamhi's criteria for art. .

And I think, Tony, you agree. Which is a very nice birthday present.

Here's Dunn's "What and Where" -- click the image for the video "Demonstration of Scratch Holography"

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[ART]

• is made with special skill and care/not the product of mere whim or chance.
• is representational, consisting of two-dimensional images of actual or imagined places and objects
• is intelligible and emotionally meaningful within its cultural context.
• has recognizable forms, ideas and values that are not only of personal significance important to the artist who created them but also has the potential to interest and move others.

** [MICROETCHINGS]

Microetchings are handmade lithographs that manipulate light on a microscopic scale to control the reflectivity of metallic surfaces in precise ways. These techniques were invented by Dr. Greg Dunn and his colleague Dr. Brian Edwards in order to change the way in which the viewer experiences a painting. Please note that these microetchings are designed to evolve based on the moving perspective of the viewer and are impossible to capture in still images.

Edited January 24, 2015 by william.scherk

[anthony]

"Recognizable forms", Kamhi writes.

Recognizable to whom?

J

It's time to re-title this thread:-

What is Reality? Is Man's Mind and Senses Equipped to Comprehend It?

Without suggestion, explanation, or Revelation.

What is Art? Is a Man able to represent Reality in Word and Image?

Is a Mind competent to grasp what has been represented?

[Jonathan]

It's time to re-title this thread:-

What is Reality? Is Man's Mind and Senses Equipped to Comprehend It?

I've mentioned a couple times now the example of the Objectivish student-artist whose mind wasn't able to comprehend very obvious perspective errors in an otherwise realistic painting. She was completely certain that I was just making things up in claiming to see the errors. Tony, does that mean that "Man's Mind and Senses" are not equipped to comprehend the perspective errors? Aren't you proposing that the dumbest, least observant minds should be representative of Man's Mind?

Without suggestion, explanation, or Revelation.

Tony, when you claim to experience emotional depth and meaning in a work of art which Kamhi gets no emotional depth or meaning out of, and which she therefore asserts is not art to anyone, why are you pretending to experience emotional depth and meaning in it? Why are you practicing Mystical Revelation?

When there's a disagreement between you and Kamhi about an item's qualifying as art, how would we decide which of you is properly using Man's Mind and adhering to Reality? You both seem to believe that whichever of you is the least capable of experiencing depth and meaning should be the official representative of what Man's Mind is capable of.

What is Art? Is a Man able to represent Reality in Word and Image?

Is a Mind competent to grasp what has been represented?

Both you and Kamhi haven't shown that you are able grasp anything that has been represented in any work of alleged art. By your criteria, nothing has been demonstrated yet to qualify as art.

You've heard of best ball golf tournaments, haven't you? Well, I think that you Objectivish aesthetics preachers, authorities and official representatives of Man's Mind practice the opposite concept -- a sort of worst ball method. Whoever is the least aware, the least sensitive, the least aesthetically competent, the least geometrically observant, etc., is the ultimate representative of Man's Mind and Mankind's Limitations.

J

[Jonathan]

Here's a great example of the irrationality, arbitrariness, and double standards of Kamhi and Torres's mindset:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB125426448028050665

Note in the comments section that Torres declares all of these miniature sculptures to be "not art."

Why? Because they're miniature? If so, where and when did scale become one of their criteria? Or is it because Torres just personally has a bug up his bossy ass, and dislikes the tiny sculptures for some irrational reason? Perhaps he enjoys saying "Not art" so much that he'll say it about anything?

They really do seem to get a huge thrill out of getting in people's faces and saying "That's not art." It appears to be the irrational thrill of destruction, and of trying to bring everyone down to their level. They seem to be primarily motivated by being angry that others are getting depth and meaning out of things which do nothing for them, and that seems to make them want to lash out at others and try to destroy their enjoyment of art.

There's no other explanation for their selective application of their own stated criteria. There's no other reason for suddenly randomly making sculptural scale a determining factor of what's not art.

J

[Brant Gaede]

There's no other rational elanation for their selective application of their own stated criteria. There's no other reason for suddenly randomly making sculptural scale a determining factor of what's not art.

J

Let's not lose this new word. A definition--anyone!

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

There's no other rational elanation for their selective application of their own stated criteria. There's no other reason for suddenly randomly making sculptural scale a determining factor of what's not art.

J

Let's not lose this new word. A definition--anyone!

--Brant

elanation = explanation. Mistype.

[Brant Gaede]

Gee. Are you sure?

--Brant

deflated--toss me

[Jonathan]

Here's a great example of the irrationality, arbitrariness, and double standards of Kamhi and Torres's mindset:http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB125426448028050665

Note in the comments section that Torres declares all of these miniature sculptures to be "not art."

In her book, Kamhi does a lot of pretending to speak for and represent the views of "ordinary citizens" and "the public," but I think that the comment by Brandon Calandra in the comments section at the above link is what is actually representative of what "ordinary citizens" and "the public" think of Kamhi and (Louis) Torres' theories and attitudes: "louis=d-bag." Heh. Indeed.

J