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

[Roger Bissell]

Jonathan in post #692 asked me to clarify what I thought that my posting in #680 proved, if I was going to also say that I didn't know "if Rand via Peikoff was expanding her meaning of "re-create reality" to include abstract(er) art."

By "don't know if," I meant (which I said): "don't know for sure whether." I thought it would be clear from the context not only that "it's consistent with some of what she (earlier) wrote in "Art in Cognition," but also that I *strongly suspected* they were doing this, without acknowledging the change of course in their position, which is a recurring pattern in Rand's fine-tuning (?) of Objectivism.

I've given several examples previously. Here's another: in his 1976 lectures, Peikoff abandoned his previous characterizing of perception as objective (as opposed to intrinsic or subjective) - but it was not until 11 years later, in his lectures on "Objectivism: the State of the Art," that he fessed up to Rand's having admonished him for giving the impression in his 1970 lectures on history of philosophy that perception was objective. In my 2007 JARS essay on Rand's objective-subjective-intrinsic trichotomy, I critiqued this "improvement," which I consider to be more reprehensible than their covering up or downplaying it.

On the other hand, I realize that this might be just another example of Rand's being inconsistent from one essay or (monitored/mentored) Peikoff lecture to the next. That is the only reason why I hedged. If I had to put a subjective probability on it, I'd say the likelihood was at least 80% that she and Peikoff were collaborating on the big change of the meaning of "re-creation of reality," while understating (actually, not even pointing out to lecture goers) the magnitude and importance or the change. The other 20% allows that they may simply have thought it was a cool thing to add in the idea that art is creating a new (imaginary) world, not realizing it was an adjustment to her aesthetics views that would have major implications and that their students should be alerted to it.

REB

[Roger Bissell]

Jonathan in post #692 said: "In what way do you imagine that Rand and Kamhi have been too concrete-bound in identifying what Rand meant by "re-creation of reality"?"

I mean that when using the term "re-creation of reality," Rand pre-1976 (Peikoff aesthetics lecture, overseen by her) rarely talked about "the world created by" an artwork, and instead talked about the "entities" and "actions" and other distinct elements in an artwork. The shift was abruptly made, though not acknowledged as a shift, in 1976 (though presaged at least by some of what the Blumenthals said in their 1974 lectures - Ellen can correct me if I'm wrong on the dating of their comments about the world presented in a work of music, but I can supply quotes from the revised lectures which probably (?) carry forward the point from 1974).

This shift is - or should be - a game-changer. It should have redirected Objectivists to analyzing and evaluating abstract art, instead of dismissing it as "non-art."

Rand then (by 1976) decided that she had been too concrete-bound (focused on content of the artwork, rather than the imaginary world created by the artist, within which might be entities, melodies, colors, shapes, non-melodic combinations and successions of tones, etc.).

Of course she didn't admit the shortcomings or narrowness of her previous emphasis. But this was the new perspective on art as "re-creation of reality," and it is the one that stuck from that point on, being repeated numerous times by Peikoff in his lectures, as well as by the Blumenthals in their lectures on music.

Kamhi (and many others) have held onto the old interpretation of "re-creation from reality" as identifiable things and melodies. They can't entirely be blamed, because Rand didn't admit to the shift and didn't make a huge announcement of it. Yet, there it was, big as life, in the one lecture by Peikoff that he would have known the least about, and that Rand would probably have been most concerned to be sure that he "got it right." (So I would suppose, anyway.)

The evidence is there, and I've presented it several times in JARS, but Kamhi has chosen to dismiss it, refusing to see the world for the entities, as it were. This is what I mean by "concrete-bound," which Rand was on the issue until (no later than) 1976 - and which Kamhi continues to be to this day.

REB

[anthony]

Cunning argument. Let's see: Because you claim to understand abstract art, ergo, it follows you understand all artworks, abstract and realist.

No, that doesn't follow. Tony, you need to go out and buy yourself a book on logic.

I have not claimed to understand all artworks. In fact, I've specifically said many times on this thread that I get nothing from certain artworks and art forms. The difference between you and me is that I don't stupidly insist that my aesthetic responses are the limits of all mankind -- I don't need to believe that you are pretending when you report that you experience what I don't.

Whereas, Objectivist-types who can see little or no intelligibility in abstract art, ergo, do not and can never understand any art.

Did you not read and comprehend my last post?! Objectivish-types can't identify anything in realist paintings!

One doesn't exclude or preclude the other, y'know. Yours is an argument from mutual exclusivity, with no evidence to back up your claims.

You're imagining an argument that I haven't made. I DID NOT MAKE THE ARGUMENT THAT since Objectivish-types don't get anything out of abstract art, then they get nothing out of any art. Rather, the argument that I've actually made is that when I present them with realist paintings, they can't identify subjects, meanings, or depth of emotional expression in realist paintings.

J

What did you think I was meaning but "realist paintings"? You clearly indicated that 'we' are so "aesthetically incompetent" that we cannot even identify subject and meaning in the art we consider realist. So, therefore ...etc.

Go back and read your last paragraph.

You'd get better responses if you were more interested in the truth, than in trying to put down the Objectivist theory any way you can. I'm happy to give my opinions on artworks, and if this were not such a 'gotcha!' argument, perhaps so would others. I have already done so, in fact. You must know that seldom will anybody make a single thoughtful concession to you or express a criticism of Rand, when you aren't prepared to respond in kind.

Now who's becoming "shrill"? Your anger is justified, but not others'?

[Jonathan]

Jonathan in post #692 said: "In what way do you imagine that Rand and Kamhi have been too concrete-bound in identifying what Rand meant by "re-creation of reality"?"

I mean that when using the term "re-creation of reality," Rand pre-1976 (Peikoff aesthetics lecture, overseen by her) rarely talked about "the world created by" an artwork, and instead talked about the "entities" and "actions" and other distinct elements in an artwork. The shift was abruptly made, though not acknowledged as a shift, in 1976 (though presaged at least by some of what the Blumenthals said in their 1974 lectures - Ellen can correct me if I'm wrong on the dating of their comments about the world presented in a work of music, but I can supply quotes from the revised lectures which probably (?) carry forward the point from 1974).

This shift is - or should be - a game-changer. It should have redirected Objectivists to analyzing and evaluating abstract art, instead of dismissing it as "non-art."

Rand then (by 1976) decided that she had been too concrete-bound (focused on content of the artwork, rather than the imaginary world created by the artist, within which might be entities, melodies, colors, shapes, non-melodic combinations and successions of tones, etc.).

Of course she didn't admit the shortcomings or narrowness of her previous emphasis. But this was the new perspective on art as "re-creation of reality," and it is the one that stuck from that point on, being repeated numerous times by Peikoff in his lectures, as well as by the Blumenthals in their lectures on music.

Kamhi (and many others) have held onto the old interpretation of "re-creation from reality" as identifiable things and melodies. They can't entirely be blamed, because Rand didn't admit to the shift and didn't make a huge announcement of it. Yet, there it was, big as life, in the one lecture by Peikoff that he would have known the least about, and that Rand would probably have been most concerned to be sure that he "got it right." (So I would suppose, anyway.)

The evidence is there, and I've presented it several times in JARS, but Kamhi has chosen to dismiss it, refusing to see the world for the entities, as it were. This is what I mean by "concrete-bound," which Rand was on the issue until (no later than) 1976 - and which Kamhi continues to be to this day.

REB

Thank you for explaining further, but I still don't see how you've come to the notion that Rand and Peikoff's shift to "the imaginary world" makes their notion of "re-creation of reality" any less "concrete-bound." There was nothing in the quotes that you provided which suggested that they were accepting a more abstract meaning of the term. There was nothing to suggest that there was any sort of conflict at all between Rand's original meaning of "re-create" and her and Peikoff's later refinement of it. I think we have to assume that the later version maintains and incorporates the earlier version, since there was no specified rejection of the earlier version, or even a hint of a rejection of it. In other words, we have to assume that the "imaginary world" would still be made up of nothing more and nothing less than specific "entities" and "actions."

So I don't think it's fair to say that Kamhi, or anyone else, is "refusing to see the world for the entities," but that there is, as of yet, no reason to believe that "the imaginary world" was not still required to be made up of entities and actions, rather than mere abstract attributes.

J

[Jonathan]

Cunning argument. Let's see: Because you claim to understand abstract art, ergo, it follows you understand all artworks, abstract and realist.

No, that doesn't follow. Tony, you need to go out and buy yourself a book on logic.

I have not claimed to understand all artworks. In fact, I've specifically said many times on this thread that I get nothing from certain artworks and art forms. The difference between you and me is that I don't stupidly insist that my aesthetic responses are the limits of all mankind -- I don't need to believe that you are pretending when you report that you experience what I don't.

Whereas, Objectivist-types who can see little or no intelligibility in abstract art, ergo, do not and can never understand any art.

Did you not read and comprehend my last post?! Objectivish-types can't identify anything in realist paintings!

One doesn't exclude or preclude the other, y'know. Yours is an argument from mutual exclusivity, with no evidence to back up your claims.

You're imagining an argument that I haven't made. I DID NOT MAKE THE ARGUMENT THAT since Objectivish-types don't get anything out of abstract art, then they get nothing out of any art. Rather, the argument that I've actually made is that when I present them with realist paintings, they can't identify subjects, meanings, or depth of emotional expression in realist paintings.

J

What did you think I was meaning but "realist paintings"? You clearly indicated that 'we' are so "aesthetically incompetent" that we cannot even identify subject and meaning in the art we consider realist. So, therefore ...etc.

Go back and read your last paragraph.

You'd get better responses if you were more interested in the truth, than in trying to put down the Objectivist theory any way you can. I'm happy to give my opinions on artworks, and if this were not such a 'gotcha!' argument, perhaps so would others. I have already done so, in fact. You must know that seldom will anybody make a single thoughtful concession to you or express a criticism of Rand, when you aren't prepared to respond in kind.

Now who's becoming "shrill"? Your anger is justified, but not others'?

You've become incoherent again.

J

[william.scherk]

I don't recall if she said simply that abstract art wasn't art.

This is the nearest I have seen.

"Color as such...is not an entity, but an *attribute* of enities, and cannot exist by itself.

This fact is ignored by the men who make pretentious attempts to create "a new art" in the form of "color symphonies" which consist in projecting moving blobs of color on a screen. This produces nothing in a viewer's consciousness, but the boredom of being underemployed. It could conceivably produce an appropriate *decorative* effect..." [Art and Cognition p.76]

Again, the unanswered question: Which viewer's consciousness?

How did Ayn Rand become the universal "the viewer," and why am I and millions of others excluded from being representative of "the viewer"?

I've known people whose consciousnesses experienced the "boredom of being underemployed" when reading Atlas Shrugged. Should they be the universal standard of judgment, and representative of "the reader"?

A good question. Why would 'Atlas' readers experience "the boredom of being unemployed"? You didn't, I take it, nor anyone else here.

Does the fault lie with what the novel shows, and how it was showed - or with the reader? For certain, everyone's mind was engaged in the reading, whatever the reader's proclivities or view of life. If any reader claims "boredom", I'd immediately suspect their honesty: realistically they were not bored at all, and understand the book all too well (and cannot accept it).

In other words, Tony's personal lack of depth of response is the universal standard!

You must have put up many many pictures in your time, and I can't remember you making an in-depth assessment of one.

(And I don't mean the obvious stuff, perspective, colors, etc - or the aesthetics and history, alone).

Teasers, in order to provoke and mock unconventional and non-mainstream (or naive, as yet unformed) opinions by Objectivists?

Maybe Jonathan could dial back provocation, or dial down accusatory overtones in exchanges with Tony, and wield points of disagreement or misunderstanding with fewer thrusts to the person. I think Tony could supervise his emotional foreboding, feel less vulnerable to gotcha or abuse or entrapment.

If these two worthy fellows had been handed the responsibility to produce a document on Art and Man arrived at by agreement, I don't think it would be easy, yet the task would re-orient discussion partners not to cleavages, but to overlap, to understanding, reasonable accommodation of viewpoint, ultimate mutual gain. There is a puzzle here inside the disagreement that might be solved in a cooperative spirit, in that perfect world of rational ladies and gentlemen whose interests are not in conflct.

It's hard to pin down the central disputes between Tony and Jonathan. They are about a kind of informed and intellectual 'art cognition' and yet about a sternly moral cognition. They catch at systematic evaluation and consequent intellectual synthesis. They concern ideals and exaltation; deeply-felt emotion and cold intellectual calculation; intensely personal evaluations and universal norms transcendant. Educated and naive. Logical, precise, impersonal -- inchoate, relative, instinctive, sensitive.

In the other current art thread I took a cue to paste some images of artworks. I don't really get a direct cue here, but will post some anyhow. I hope that they might stimulate some reaction; if not a structured esthetic tirade or cool sweet mocking, then an estimation of value, even a summary judgement, a finding refined by the lens of an Objectivish sensibility.

The last time I posted images (and video exploration) of micro-etchings, the properties of which I found to straddle the line of representational/abstract art. Here I will post some best-selling contemporary Chinese painters, and an example of an Iranian-Canadian artist's "nothing" sculptures.

By way of introduction, from Artnet:

While the United States remains the largest market for the sale of fine art by value, the Chinese market has continued to hold its own at the number two position. Even with declining sales over the past two years, the sheer volume of China's market has kept it firmly in place.

Chinese artists have become a force to be reckoned with worldwide as well, yielding a tremendous $4.3 billion in sales for 2014.

Who are the top 10 most expensive living Chinese artists at auction? artnet News was keen to find out. With the help of artnet's Analytics team and Fine Art and Design Price Database, we perused auction results from 2005 to 2014 and have selected the top 10 artists by lot.

Zeng Fanzhi, The Last Supper (2001) sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong on October 5, 2013, for $23,269,070.

Cai Guo-Quiang, (one of sixteen drawings in the set -- click image for the rest) Drawing for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (2002) sold at Christie's Hong Kong on November 25, 2007, for $9,545,957.

Liu Xiaodong, Disobeying the Rules (1996) sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong on Sunday, October 5, 2014, for $8,530,818.

Jin Shangyi, Tajik Bride (1983) sold at China Guardian Auctions Co., Ltd. on November 16, 2013, for $13,967,306.

The Iranian-Canadian's name is Parviz Tanavoli. From the AP article that caught my eye:

Tanavoli, 77, also has an extensive body of paintings, poems and books on everything from locks and rugs to tombstones. Despite his age, he remains a prolific artist.

Coinciding with the Davis Museum show is the 50th anniversary of Tanavoli's heech art form. He began experimenting with the concept in 1965, and it turned out to be the foundation of his career.

"Using nothingness as a symbol, everywhere makes it easier to understand, and it strips away the meaning, seeing it over and over," said Rosamond Herling, 18, a Wellesley College student who attended the Tanavoli opening.

"But the word itself, it means nothing. I like that."

Twisted Heech (click image above for more works by Tanavoli. His sculpture The Wall took in almost three million dollars at auction, apparently a record for a contemporary Middle East artist)

Edited February 17, 2015 by william.scherk

[Roger Bissell]

Jonathan in post #692 said: "Um, the only possible explanation that I can come up with is that you somehow have your own special, personal meaning of the word "abstract," and that you don't understand what "mimetic/imitative" means. Are you somehow under the impression that "abstract" equals "imaginary" or "fictional"? As in, if something in an artwork doesn't exist in reality, like, say, a dragon, or a unicorn, or John Galt, then it is "abstract"? And therefore you think that any painting of a dragon, no matter how realistically rendered, is an example of "abstract art"?"

I do understand what "mimetic/imitative" means, but I just accept a different meaning of it than the one that Kamhi (for instance) accepts. Like "recreation of reality," "mimesis" and "imitation" have been understood in both the more concrete-bound way (e.g., Kamhi), and in the way I and others refer to as "world-making." I'll say more about that in a moment. But first...

By "abstract art," I just mean, for instance, painting that doesn't present recognizable objects, or music that doesn't present recognizable melodies. I use the term in contrast to "representational" art, which *does* present things recognizable as objects or melodies.

The shapes, colors, rhythms, tones, etc. that are constituents or elements of entities or melodies are abstracted away from what they are part of in "representational" art and music, and they are selectively combined and presented as the "what" of the artwork. Nonetheless, even without entities and their actions, once you enter the artist's created world of the abstract painting or (for instance) random music, you are "in" a "there," in which whatever you're viewing or hearing is there for you to experience as the furniture of that imaginary world.

So, no, to me, "abstract" doesn't mean "imaginary" or "fictional" any more than "representational" does. *Any* work of art that is not an actual portrait presents an imaginary or fictional world. Even (I say this non-condescendingly) a work of abstract painting or music (e.g., serial or chance music) can, as Langer says, "create a single, self-contained, perceptual space, that seems to confront us as naturally as the scene before our eyes when we open them on the actual world" (Feeling and Form, p. 86). Creating this perceptual space, she said, "is only the making of the universe in which the symbolic form exists" (F&F, p. 79). She completely rejected the term "re-creation" as what art is about, but what she described art as doing is exactly how Rand and Peikoff describe it in the revised, 1976 Objectivist concept of art.

And "abstract" to me doesn't mean "unrealistic." I don't think "The scream" is abstract, but it's very unrealistic, as are Cubist paintings, which are not abstract either. They present things, just as we *don't* see them. Paintings of dragons present things *that* we don't see, but those can be "realistic," too, unless it's a version of "The Scream" with the dragon as the screamer. :-)

As for "mimesis" and "imitation," I'd like to bring to your attention a 1992 book entitled Mimesis, written in German by Gunter Gebauer and Christophe Wulf, translated by Don Reneau, and published in 1995 by University of California Press. Rather than get all discursive about their ideas, I'll just toss out a few of the more pregnant quote and let readers see for themselves that the notion touted by Kamhi (and many others) that mimesis is all about presenting images of (i.e., are similar to) people and other objects is a very narrow one, and that the alternate, world-creating meaning of mimesis goes back a long way.

"...mimesis characterizes the act of producing a symbolic world..." (p. 3)

The authors cite Nelson Goodman's 1978 book Ways of Worldmaking, saying that "For him, the critical thing is to investigate the various ways in which worlds are produced; mimetic processes and procedures are also part of this. Artworks reorganize and remodel the world" (p. 17). They also quote himas saying: "Worldmaking as we know it always starts from worlds already in hand; the making is a remaking" (Goodman, p. 6).

"The central meaning of mimesis for art, literature, and music is already apparent in Plato's works. He attributed to it the capacity of producing a world of appearances" (p. 25).

"According to Aristotle, mimesis embraces not solely the re-creation of existing objects but also changes that were introduced in the process of re-creation - embellishment, improvement, and the generalization of individual qualities...Mimesis creates fictional worlds in which there exists no nonmediated reference to reality" (p. 26).

Similarly in regard to "imitation," the authors cite a 1788-written/1968-published work by Karl Philipp Moritz (1756-1793), the English translation of its title being "On the Formative Imitation of Beauty." They write: "For Moritz, "imitation" is primarily a productive capacity, a nearly autonomous act of worldmaking as an achievement of the subject...Why, then, does Moritz continue to speak of "imitation"? Because he calls for the imitation, not of objects or actions, but of the process of creation...To the capacity for imitation, Moritz ascribes the 'formative power'...The artwork is not understood as solely as a reference to a prior world but acquires the character of a world of its own" (162).

These quotes aren't intended to prove which view of "mimesis" or "imitation" or "re-creation of reality" is correct, just that there are rival perspectives, and that one is more concrete-bound (or focused on the nature of the content, if you will) and the other broader (focused primarily on the nature of the "container"). The narrower view has pitfalls similar to an astronaut landing on a planet where there are no recognizable life-forms or even geological forms, and says, "Well, this isn't a planet, because there are no entities here." Whereas I would say, "Wow, sucks to be this planet." And a nihilist might say, "Gee, what a cool planet. There's nothing here!"

REB

[Brant Gaede]

I don't recall if she said simply that abstract art wasn't art.

This is the nearest I have seen.

"Color as such...is not an entity, but an *attribute* of enities, and cannot exist by itself.

This fact is ignored by the men who make pretentious attempts to create "a new art" in the form of "color symphonies" which consist in projecting moving blobs of color on a screen. This produces nothing in a viewer's consciousness, but the boredom of being underemployed. It could conceivably produce an appropriate *decorative* effect..." [Art and Cognition p.76]

Again, the unanswered question: Which viewer's consciousness?

How did Ayn Rand become the universal "the viewer," and why am I and millions of others excluded from being representative of "the viewer"?

I've known people whose consciousnesses experienced the "boredom of being underemployed" when reading Atlas Shrugged. Should they be the universal standard of judgment, and representative of "the reader"?

A good question. Why would 'Atlas' readers experience "the boredom of being unemployed"? You didn't, I take it, nor anyone else here.

Does the fault lie with what the novel shows, and how it was showed - or with the reader? For certain, everyone's mind was engaged in the reading, whatever the reader's proclivities or view of life. If any reader claims "boredom", I'd immediately suspect their honesty: realistically they were not bored at all, and understand the book all too well (and cannot accept it).

In other words, Tony's personal lack of depth of response is the universal standard!

You must have put up many many pictures in your time, and I can't remember you making an in-depth assessment of one.

(And I don't mean the obvious stuff, perspective, colors, etc - or the aesthetics and history, alone).

Teasers, in order to provoke and mock unconventional and non-mainstream (or naive, as yet unformed) opinions by Objectivists?

Maybe Jonathan could dial back provocation, or dial down accusatory overtones in exchanges with Tony, and wield points of disagreement or misunderstanding with fewer thrusts to the person. I think Tony could supervise his emotional foreboding, feel less vulnerable to gotcha or abuse or entrapment.

If these two worthy fellows had been handed the responsibility to produce a document on Art and Man arrived at by agreement, I don't think it would be easy, yet the task would re-orient discussion partners not to cleavages, but to overlap, to understanding, reasonable accommodation of viewpoint, ultimate mutual gain. There is a puzzle here inside the disagreement that might be solved in a cooperative spirit, in that perfect world of rational ladies and gentlemen whose interests are not in conflct.

It's hard to pin down the central disputes between Tony and Jonathan. They are about a kind of informed and intellectual 'art cognition' and yet about a sternly moral cognition. They catch at systematic evaluation and consequent intellectual synthesis. They concern ideals and exaltation; deeply-felt emotion and cold intellectual calculation; intensely personal evaluations and universal norms transcendant. Educated and naive. Logical, precise, impersonal -- inchoate, relative, instinctive, sensitive.

In the other current art thread I took a cue to paste some images of artworks. I don't really get a direct cue here, but will post some anyhow. I hope that they might stimulate some reaction; if not a structured esthetic tirade or cool sweet mocking, then an estimation of value, even a summary judgement, a finding refined by the lens of an Objectivish sensibility.

The last time I posted images (and video exploration) of micro-etchings, the properties of which I found to straddle the line of representational/abstract art. Here I will post some best-selling contemporary Chinese painters, and an example of an Iranian-Canadian artist's "nothing" sculptures.

By way of introduction, from Artnet:

While the United States remains the largest market for the sale of fine art by value, the Chinese market has continued to hold its own at the number two position. Even with declining sales over the past two years, the sheer volume of China's market has kept it firmly in place.

Chinese artists have become a force to be reckoned with worldwide as well, yielding a tremendous $4.3 billion in sales for 2014.

Who are the top 10 most expensive living Chinese artists at auction? artnet News was keen to find out. With the help of artnet's Analytics team and Fine Art and Design Price Database, we perused auction results from 2005 to 2014 and have selected the top 10 artists by lot.

Zeng Fanzhi, The Last Supper (2001) sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong on October 5, 2013, for $23,269,070.

Cai Guo-Quiang, (one of sixteen drawings in the set) Drawing for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (2002) sold at Christie's Hong Kong on November 25, 2007, for $9,545,957.

Liu Xiaodong, Disobeying the Rules (1996) sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong on Sunday, October 5, 2014, for $8,530,818.

Jin Shangyi, Tajik Bride (1983) sold at China Guardian Auctions Co., Ltd. on November 16, 2013, for $13,967,306.

The Iranian-Canadian's name is Parviz Tanavoli. From the AP article that caught my eye:

Tanavoli, 77, also has an extensive body of paintings, poems and books on everything from locks and rugs to tombstones. Despite his age, he remains a prolific artist.

Coinciding with the Davis Museum show is the 50th anniversary of Tanavoli's heech art form. He began experimenting with the concept in 1965, and it turned out to be the foundation of his career.

"Using nothingness as a symbol, everywhere makes it easier to understand, and it strips away the meaning, seeing it over and over," said Rosamond Herling, 18, a Wellesley College student who attended the Tanavoli opening.

"But the word itself, it means nothing. I like that."

Twisted Heech (click image above for more works by Tanavoli. His sculpture The Wall took in almost three million dollars at auction, apparently a record for a contemporary Middle East artist)

Amazing what people will pay for a name. If they were really buying the art they could go find and patronize many struggling artists and get comparable or even much better work for a fraction of these prices. These art pieces are not impressive qua art, but that they cost so much. Gail Wynand never went by price. His collection was private. He wasn't trying to impress anybody. When it came to art he was not a second-hander. It was his power seeking that did him in.

--Brant

[anthony]

You've become incoherent again.

J

Ha.

If you can make coherence out of abstract art, you can work anything out.

What's "meaning" in a painting, anyway? Rather, the artist indicates what's ~important~ to him (or else, why bother to paint it?).

The viewer responds: I don't see - you haven't shown clearly - why this is at all important; or: I can see its importance to you, but don't appreciate your view of life; or: I acknowledge, wholly appreciate and share the importance of your vision.

I don't think art concerns "meaning", directly, though it can be meaningful.

[Jonathan]

By "abstract art," I just mean, for instance, painting that doesn't present recognizable objects, or music that doesn't present recognizable melodies. I use the term in contrast to "representational" art, which *does* present things recognizable as objects or melodies.

Why are you still stubbornly employing the category mistake of not classifying music as abstract, but of trying to force it into the category of realism/representationalism? Did you think that no one would notice the obvious double standard?

If "abstract" means, visually, that a painting doesn't present visual likeness of recognizable objects, then the aural parallel of "abstract" would mean that a work of music doesn't present aural likenesses of recognizable objects. If a "recognizable melody" makes a piece of music non-abstract, then a "recognizable visual pattern or composition" would make a painting non-abstract. It's really an obvious attempt at deception, Roger. I don't know if you're trying to fool others, or just yourself, but it's a very clumsy attempt to force an abstract art form into the category of realism/representationalism. I mean, seriously, you're an intelligent man, and the type of mistake/charade that you're indulging in here is SO transparent and lame, and it completely undercuts any chance of your being taken seriously. This is a reputation-destroyer.

J

[Roger Bissell]

Jonathan in #729 said:

I still don't see how you've come to the notion that Rand and Peikoff's shift to "the imaginary world" makes their notion of "re-creation of reality" any less "concrete-bound." There was nothing in the quotes that you provided which suggested that they were accepting a more abstract meaning of the term. There was nothing to suggest that there was any sort of conflict at all between Rand's original meaning of "re-create" and her and Peikoff's later refinement of it. I think we have to assume that the later version maintains and incorporates the earlier version, since there was no specified rejection of the earlier version, or even a hint of a rejection of it. In other words, we have to assume that the "imaginary world" would still be made up of nothing more and nothing less than specific "entities" and "actions." So I don't think it's fair to say that Kamhi, or anyone else, is "refusing to see the world for the entities," but that there is, as of yet, no reason to believe that "the imaginary world" was not still required to be made up of entities and actions, rather than mere abstract attributes.

Perhaps I should have said Kamhi was refusing to see the world for the absence of entities. (See the end of my previous post.)

I think Rand also (inadvertently?) signaled her willingness to accept non-entity-presenting art and non-melody-presenting music as art in 1971 in "Art and Cognition." She drew a sharp distinction between "jumbled" and "random" music vs. noise, which was excluded from the category of "music."

Rand had a harder time giving us a clear distinction between art she intensely disliked and non-art. At times, it appears that she wanted to kick a lot of the things from the former category into the latter - much like altruists want to kick egoism out of the category of "morality" (and vice versa, for some clueless Objectivists). (She wrote about this fallacy, the Fallacy of the Frozen Abstraction, in her essay "Collectivized Ethics." It is a virulent, widespread syndrome, affecting numerous Objectivists, including Rand herself. Read what she says about "man" in "The Age of Envy," for instance.)

Also, I am certain that Rand et al greatly preferred representational art to abstract art, just as they preferred tonal, melodic music to atonal, "random" or "jumbled" music. No doubt about that. I just think we have ample evidence to realize that they had overstated (or overimplied) their case against modern art, and needed to redo the conceptual framework. By doing this, they did not in any way undercut their ability to attack art they didn't like as evil art, without also having to categorize it as non-art or "anti-art" (noise, smears, etc.). Nor did it require them to approve of art that doesn't present coherent entities (including melodies). It just took the focus off of representing objects and put it on the making of an imaginary world, a world that was either good or evil or who-the-hell-cares-I'm-bored.

Anyway, taking Rand at her word, and detecting no apparent contradiction on that point, she views modern abstract art and music composed by aleatoric and serial principles as definitely being music, and thus art. So, in terms of her definiton of "art," if modern music re-creates reality in some fashion, it must be on a level higher than that of coherent sequences of notes and progressions of harmonies and rhythmic patterns, since modern music doesn't have such "musical entities."

The only place to go is to the idea that any musical work using periodic vibrations (musical tones) to construct a perceivable realm must (somehow) convey a view of the nature of the world, even without melody/harmony/rhythm to anchor it. More generally, art uses various material media to construct such a perceivable realm portraying the world in some fashion, despite the absence of entities &c.

I agree that Rand did not say anything helpful about abstract art that would indicate she, even grudgingly, considered it art and not "non-art." But that is not surprising. Once she became perplexed about something she had taken a strong stand on before, she would quietly, behind the scenes make the change, but say nothing about it that would call attention to her changing her view.

(Another example that just came to mind: she and her colleages were *very* agitated and outraged by the student protests and campus violence during the 1960s, calling for a crackdown by the school authorities and police. But once Kent State happened, and those kids were shot and killed by the National Guard, what did we hear from the Objectivists? <crickets chirping> Nothing was ever again said about the issue. Blanket silence from Rand et al.)

But when you already have a definition that practically shouts "OF REALITY," and perhaps a student or two who raised the question about "the world in the artwork," which other writers had spoken about, it is not a stretch to think that Rand et al realized they needed to broaden the interpretation of her definition of "art" to mean the creation of an imaginary world that embodies basic values in some way. Again, I'd say the likelihood is way better than even that this is what lay behind the mysterious Rand-monitored broadening by Peikoff in 1976 of her concept of "art." It fits the pattern seen time and again of how Rand altered aspects of her philosophy.

The boy has cried wolf too many times to not be highly suspicious that this was another such occasion. If it actually wasn't yet another inconsiderately furtive, shame-based policy change, and Rand and Peikoff were (in 1976) instead just throwing more icing on the cake without realizing how/whether it stuck on properly, that's even less admirable from an intellectual, philosophical standpoint.

Nonetheless, the implications of Rand's comments on modern music in 1971 and the Rand-supervised comments by Peikoff in 1976 - whether or not they realized it - are that abstract art, sans objects and actions, is art. So, whoever still isn't on board with that needs to get over it. There's tons of art and music criticism to do!

REB

[Jonathan]

It just took the focus off of representing objects and put it on the making of an imaginary world, a world that was either good or evil or who-the-hell-cares-I'm-bored.

That's false, unless you're talking about statements by Rand or Peikoff that you haven't posted here. In the quotes that you posted earlier, there is nothing that takes the focus off of representing objects. Rand and Peikoff's stressing the importance of artists building an "imaginary world" doesn't imply in any way that the "imaginary world" must not consist only of recognizable objects.

Nonetheless, the implications of Rand's comments on modern music in 1971 and the Rand-supervised comments by Peikoff in 1976 - whether or not they realized it - are that abstract art, sans objects and actions, is art.

That is not the implication. Perhaps you've actually confused yourself into believing the obvious falsehood that you've been trying to sell, which is that traditional tonal music is not abstract, and, coming from that mixed up perspective, you no longer know which way is up.

J

[Brant Gaede]

It just took the focus off of representing objects and put it on the making of an imaginary world, a world that was either good or evil or who-the-hell-cares-I'm-bored.

That's false, unless you're talking about statements by Rand or Peikoff that you haven't posted here. In the quotes that you posted earlier, there is nothing that takes the focus off of representing objects. Rand and Peikoff's stressing the importance of artists building an "imaginary world" doesn't imply in any way that the "imaginary world" must not consist only of recognizable objects.

Nonetheless, the implications of Rand's comments on modern music in 1971 and the Rand-supervised comments by Peikoff in 1976 - whether or not they realized it - are that abstract art, sans objects and actions, is art.

That is not the implication. Perhaps you've actually confused yourself into believing the obvious falsehood that you've been trying to sell, which is that traditional tonal music is not abstract, and, coming from that mixed up perspective, you no longer know which way is up.

J

Maybe abstract art gets de-abstracted in the brain--especially music.

--Brant

[Roger Bissell]

In #732, I wrote:

By "abstract art," I just mean, for instance, painting that doesn't present recognizable objects, or music that doesn't present recognizable melodies. I use the term in contrast to "representational" art, which *does* present things recognizable as objects or melodies.

In #735, Jonathan wrote :

Why are you still stubbornly employing the category mistake of not classifying music as abstract, but of trying to force it into the category of realism/representationalism? Did you think that no one would notice the obvious double standard? If "abstract" means, visually, that a painting doesn't present visual likeness of recognizable objects, then the aural parallel of "abstract" would mean that a work of music doesn't present aural likenesses of recognizable objects. If a "recognizable melody" makes a piece of music non-abstract, then a "recognizable visual pattern or composition" would make a painting non-abstract. It's really an obvious attempt at deception, Roger. I don't know if you're trying to fool others, or just yourself, but it's a very clumsy attempt to force an abstract art form into the category of realism/representationalism. I mean, seriously, you're an intelligent man, and the type of mistake/charade that you're indulging in here is SO transparent and lame, and it completely undercuts any chance of your being taken seriously. This is a reputation-destroyer.

(On the off-chance that Jonathan is joshing with his over-the-top accusations and assertions, here's some in return:) Yikes! Boo-hoo for me, I guess. There goes my world-famous reputation and my elevated position in the Objectivist movement and the world of music. Both groups must surely be on the verge of pillorying and ridiculing me, and generally making my life a living hell - for thinking of melodic music as representational, while non-melodic music is not. Unless I quickly recant my stubborn category mistake, now everyone will know that, intelligent and male though I may be, I also hold the lame, transparent, deceptive (and self-deceptive), clumsy - nay, unjust, double-standardy - view that melodic music is essentially like non-abstract art, while non-melodic music is essentially like abstract art.

Seriously, what makes tonal melodic music non-abstract is not its presentation of aural likenesses of recognizable objects - such as the clarinet sounding like a cuckoo or the timpani trying to sound like rolling thunder - but the aural presentation of something *like* a recognizable object, something that behaves similarly to the way a recognizable object behaves. That is what tonal melodic music does, and what atonal, non-melodic music (and especially, serial and aleatoric music) does *not* do. It would be a serious injustic *not* to make a sharp distinction between these two types of music, and to point out the essential similarity of tonal melodic music to literary drama - and thus to representational art.

Music is a temporal art, like drama and novels, and the music-literary analogy has been known and discussed for well over a century by aestheticians, music theorists, and art/music critics too numerous to mention. (I cite some of them in my 2003 JARS essay "Art as Microcosm." If that didn't destroy my reputation, I don't believe a post on this thread will do so.) Discussions of the musical-literary analogy *begin* by setting aside the trivial cases of imitations of cuckoo and thunder, and they look at the *essential* point, which is on the *metaphoric* level. They focus on what melodic themes can and cannot "resemble" in their temporal presentation and development.

The concrete, perceivable melodic themes are analogous to the characters in a story, and the harmonic-melodic development of those themes in the musical work are analogous to the plot-progression of the story. When these elements are present, music is representational and non-abstract. When they are absent, as in some modern music, music is abstract and non-representational. It's not a double standard to distinguish them in this way. It's the strict application of observation and comparison and logic.

Non-abstract, representational music - i.e., tonal melodic music - is more than just a recognizable aural pattern. If that were all it is, then yes, an abstract art work with a recognizable visual pattern such as a square or a parabolic curve etc. would also be non-abstract and representational.

There *is* abstract, non-representational music with recognizable aural patterns, such as three repeated notes, or a recurring perfect 5th interval, etc. And it is music, not "anti-music." But whatever it means, it does not present anything aurally analogous to one or more human characters engaging in actions unfolding in time in a developing progression of events, as in a novel. By contrast, this is what non-abstract, representational - tonal melodic - music, including a vast amount of 20th century popular and film music, does par excellence.

REB

[Roger Bissell]

In #737, Jonathan said:

Perhaps you've actually confused yourself into believing the obvious falsehood that you've been trying to sell, which is that traditional tonal music is not abstract, and, coming from that mixed up perspective, you no longer know which way is up.

So, now I'm a confused, disoriented liar and fraud? It sure didn't take long for you to turn our exchange into a toxic verbal dump. Nice. See you later.

REB

[Jonathan]

Seriously, what makes tonal melodic music non-abstract is not its presentation of aural likenesses of recognizable objects - such as the clarinet sounding like a cuckoo or the timpani trying to sound like rolling thunder - but the aural presentation of something *like* a recognizable object, something that behaves similarly to the way a recognizable object behaves.

As I've indicated, you've reached the point of denying reality, of rejecting the long-established meanings of words, and of inventing your own personal little meanings. "Representational" means a presentation of a direct, instantly identifiable likeness of something. It does not mean a presentation of an arrangement which is indirectly, vaguely somewhat similar to being kind of like some things. It IS a presentation of a recognizable object, NOT a "presentation of something *like* a recognizable object." You're playing silly word games, not doing philosophy or aesthetics. Your need to play silly word games should tell you something about your theory. (It needs some fixing.)

You're in a nose dive, and I'm just giving you the courtesy of trying to wave you off. But, if you're dedicated to making a fool of yourself, why not go all the way? Why not define, say, "animal" as something that is vaguely kind of *like* an animal in some way?

Music is a temporal art, like drama and novels, and the music-literary analogy has been known and discussed for well over a century by aestheticians, music theorists, and art/music critics too numerous to mention.

Yes, the analogy has been around for a long time, but it's a frickin' ANALOGY! You're reifying it, and practicing the fallacy of giving to music characteristcs of literature that it does not have. You are accepting non-essential similarities and superficial comparisons of the analogy as an excuse to willfully ignore the essential differences between literature and music.

The concrete, perceivable melodic themes are analogous to the characters in a story, and the harmonic-melodic development of those themes in the musical work are analogous to the plot-progression of the story. When these elements are present, music is representational and non-abstract.

You're giving me the strong impression that you've never been exposed to legitimate art education. It's as if you 're totally unaware of the historical meanings that you're arbitrarily trying to overturn. Have you ever taken any courses in the non-musical arts? Or are you completely self-taught/Rand-taught?

J

[Jonathan]

In the other current art thread I took a cue to paste some images of artworks. I don't really get a direct cue here, but will post some anyhow. I hope that they might stimulate some reaction; if not a structured esthetic tirade or cool sweet mocking, then an estimation of value, even a summary judgement, a finding refined by the lens of an Objectivish sensibility.

I like Cai Guo-Quiang's work. The effects of gunpowder as a medium are super cool to see in person. The serendipity of chance mistakes and unintended improvements that great artists (DaVinci, Rockwell, Turner, etc.) have always thanked God for is quite evident in gunpowder drawings, and, to me, has a lot of similarities to good improvisational jazz. As for Objectivish sensibilities, I'd think that his more realistic/representational gunpowder works would be something that Objectivish-types could enjoy, or at least not get into a snit over, especially if they were just shown the images and not told about the artist's methods or ideological beliefs. They're a lot like the traditional Chinese paintings and Japanese woodblock prints that I've seen many Objectivish-types classify as being not only worthy of technically qualifying as art, but of being praised as "objectively" good art.

J

[Mikee]

Speaking of art...look what's coming!

[ee cummings fan]

[Roger Bissell]

When I googled "representational music" just now, I got a lot of hits that are relevant to mainstream academic support of the view that tonal melodic music is representational in a sense analogous to literary drama or representational painting. The 5th hit was a review of Charles Nussbaum's 2007 book on the subject of musical representation. (He also has an article on "Musical Perception" in the 2013 Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception.) I think the overview of Nussbaum's views in this review gives a good in-depth presentation of the idea I have been advocating here. Nussbaum's reputation and sanity do not seem to have been questioned, which leads me to believe that he is now in imminent danger of a broadside from our own Jihad Jonathan. Here is a lengthy excerpt from the text of that review, and please note the underscored points, especially the next-to-last one which deals with the musical-literary drama analogy and refers to "musical virtual objects"...REB...P.S. The "internal representation" Nussbaum refers to is the psychological or cognitive mechanism through which we viewers or readers or listeners "identify with" the characters or "virtual objects" and vicariously go through the actions or "virtual actions" presented by the drama or music.

The Musical Representation: Meaning, Ontology, and Emotion

Published: March 06, 2009

Charles O. Nussbaum, The Musical Representation: Meaning, Ontology, and Emotion, MIT Press, 2007, 388pp., $38.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780262140966.

Reviewed by Jenefer Robinson, University of Cincinnati

Music is in many ways the most puzzling of the arts. (1) There is the puzzle of musical meaning. If we think of paradigms of great instrumental music such as the symphonies of Beethoven or Brahms, they appear to have no meanings in the way that language does, yet they strike most listeners as profoundly meaningful. It also seems to make sense to say that one has understood or failed to understand, say, the final movement of Brahms' 4th, so it seems that there is something in this movement that deserves to be understood. (2) There is the puzzle of musical metaphor. There is an ongoing debate about whether even the most basic properties of music literally belong to a musical piece or can only be described metaphorically. Music moves forward; it is goes up to a high note and down to a low note; it departs from the tonic and returns home to it. Yet music would seem to be nothing but a sequence of sounds. It doesn't literally move up and down, leave home or return. So why do we inevitably hear music as doing just that? (3) There is a puzzle about how music can arouse emotions. According to most emotion theorists, it is crucial to an emotion that it represents some intentional object: I am happy about the inauguration of Obama and angry about the war in Iraq. Emotions seem to involve appraisals of the world as good or as offensive or whatever. Yet it is also widely agreed that music cannot represent such objects of appraisal, so it would seem that music cannot arouse emotions, at least not in the usual way. But most music listeners claim that listening to great music is a profoundly emotionally moving experience. How can this be?

All three problems and many others about music are addressed and illuminated in Charles Nussbaum's extremely accomplished book. The answers he offers take him and us on a long ride through large parts of the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science (especially philosophy of evolutionary biology), the philosophy of language, psychology, anthropology and more. Although his topic is music -- or rather, as he is careful to emphasize, "Western tonal art music since 1650" (20) -- Nussbaum's book is fundamentally a book in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. It focuses on the internal representations which, on Nussbaum's view, make best sense of the musical experience of a comprehending listener. These internal representations provide the key to the musical experience and Nussbaum's answers to the three questions of musical meaning, musical metaphor and musical emotion that I just sketched.

(1) Music has meaning because it is representational, and it is representational in three ways. First, the musical surface is an "external representation:" it is a two-dimensional structure (of pitch and time) from which information can be derived. This information is accessed by means of an internal representation of the "hierarchical plan structure" of the piece. Nussbaum assumes that Lerdahl and Jackendoff's tree structures illustrating grouping and prolongation rules give an accurate picture of how a piece should be represented internally. So far Nussbaum sounds like a formalist. But he goes on to note that Lerdahl and Jackendoff's trees are organized in the same way as "motor control hierarchies" and "task level action plans" and that musical organization suggests "movements in virtual space" (82).

The internal representations employed in recovering the musical structure from the musical surface specify motor hierarchies and action plans, which in turn put the listener's body into off-line motor states that specify virtual movements through a virtual terrain or a scenario possessing certain features. (47)

On the basis of the "action plan" of a particular piece of music, listeners construct a third type of representation, a musical mental model that represents "the features of the layouts and scenarios in which these virtual movements occur" (82). Music is "an informationally structured set of tones" with virtual "affordances:" this passage is for virtual running, this for virtual pausing to reflect, this for leading, this for following.

Listening to music with understanding is imagining moving on a route through the virtual space and time of the music.

Nussbaum argues that a musical performance is a Millikanesque "pushmi-pullyu" representation: it both indicates the musical plan, "the hierarchical representations whose content is the organized musical surface" (99), and at the same time it prescribes the listener to 'implement' the plan by making it her own: "certain bodily sets must be adopted, and motor areas of the brain activated" (99). In other words, "the listener must act the music out" by playing or singing it as well as "[moving] through its virtual touch space in imagination and [simulating] the virtual entities contained in this space" (99). Nussbaum is himself a former professional musician and knows whereof he speaks, but anyone who has watched a flamboyant violin soloist or conductor can attest to the importance of bodily gestures to the performer or conductor interpreting the plan of the music.

(2) Nussbaum claims that the possibility of music's carrying what to most people would be 'extra-musical' meanings rests on the possibility of listeners' constructing musical mental models "that share structural attributes with models that are not musical" (italics in original). Borrowing from semantic field theory, he argues that the musical surface contains "field structure," for example, cyclical relations, kinship relations, and relations of affinity and contrast. According to Nussbaum, Lerdahl and Jackendoff tree structures model semantic field structures, so that, for example, one melody is a repeat of another in a different key, one phrase is subordinate to another in a longer phrase, one key has affinities for another, one melody contrasts with another, and so forth.

But the mental models constructed by the comprehending listener as she listens to a piece of music don't just map semantic field structures. They also model "scenarios, objects, and events in virtual musical space" (123) that can in turn model so-called "extra-musical content" (126). For example, a string quartet might exemplify a friendly conversation among four people. In Nussbaum's terms the musical "conversation" is a "scenario" in virtual musical space that "models conversational structure while emptying it of all propositional content" (125). Such a scenario is not merely heard, however; it is also enacted. A musical conversation is a "scenario" that "incorporates bodily sets and sequenced behaviors" (125) of the four "participants." Nussbaum makes the striking claim against the formalist that "all Western tonal art music since 1650, including so-called pure music, is program music," in the sense that it has "extramusical significance because the contents of the mental models it motivates are layouts and scenarios in which the listener acts off-line" (126).

Drawing on Lakoff and Johnson's theory of metaphor according to which abstract concepts are "metaphorically grounded" in "concepts of human kinesthetic and motor experience" (126), such as up/down, in/out, and so on, Nussbaum argues that when we say that music goes up and down, leaves home and returns, we are pointing to the way we enact the music's "action plan" in imagination as we listen. Moreover, "if the musical plan generates appropriate mental models and puts the listener's body into appropriate motor states off-line" (140), the musical mental models can then model abstract conceptual content, including even metaphysical conceptual content, although the modeling itself is necessarily gestural and non-conceptual. Hence music can function as a metaphor for even transcendental themes. In the final chapter Nussbaum explores some of the religious implications of our musical experience.

We seem to have come a long way from Lerdahl and Jackendoff. It seems to me unlikely that their tree diagrams, which parse the musical structure, can serve as the sole basis for the construction of mental models that enjoin the simulation of action plans in virtual space. The mental models that listeners construct as they listen are surely also due to more local aspects of the music, including dynamics and timbre.

(3) Finally, Nussbaum undertakes to explain not only how music can arouse emotions and emotional feelings, but also how the arousal of emotion is relevant to the emotional expressiveness of music. His account of emotion is indebted to the psychologist, Nico Frijda, who conceives of emotion 'from the inside' as "a valent perception or perceptual taking of a situation" as "relevant, urgent, and meaningful with respect to ways of dealing with it" (192), and 'from the outside' as "a bodily action tendency or change in action readiness that is generally … accompanied by arousal" (192). In Nussbaum's formulation: "An emotion … is a valent perception of an object, situation, or event relating to a core relational theme and accompanied by one or more modes of arousal as well as a change in action readiness" (199). In short, emotions are perceptions of Gibsonian affordances: the world as perceived demands an action plan. A perceived threat is for withdrawing or avoiding (in fear) or for approaching and confronting (in anger). Either way my body is in an aroused state, and my "emotional feelings" are the feelings of my bodily state, the autonomic arousal, the cowering or aggressive posture, the tense or flaccid muscle tone and so on. Unlike Jesse Prinz, who thinks that "an antecedent nonvalent perception" causes a bodily change which then "gives rise to an emotion" (193), for Nussbaum the emotion itself is a perception of the environment as emotionally charged.

Can music arouse emotions? Nussbaum argues that music sometimes arouses emotions in a straightforward way, such as the surprise evoked by Haydn's Surprise Symphony. More importantly, he thinks that "any and every successful performance" (209) can and should be experienced by the listener as an intimate "loving touch," that engenders the emotion of joy, not just pleasurable sensations, independently of whatever emotion or feeling (if any) is expressed by the piece.

Normally, however, the emotions apparently aroused by music do not have the music itself as their object. These are the cases that puzzle philosophers: how can music make me sad or nostalgic when there is nothing in particular for me to be sad or nostalgic about? Nussbaum agrees that there is not usually any "material object" of musical emotions, and there may not be an "intentional object" either, in which case music is arousing mere "emotional feelings" rather than emotions proper. However, Nussbaum has argued that when listening to music we construct mental models that attempt to model the "virtual musical terrain" (214) traversed by the music. As we negotiate this terrain, emotional feelings arise as we act in accordance with the "musical affordances, dealing with surprises, impediments, failures, and successes on the way" (214). Moreover, since all music is program music, a musical scenario may contain "musical virtual objects" (201) that are tracked by the listener in egocentric musical space. In such cases the emotions and emotional feelings we experience are analogous to the simulated "off-line" emotional reactions that we experience for characters and plot developments in a novel. Music of course does not have a syntax and semantics in the same way that language does and does not denote like predicates do. The content of music is nonconceptual: musical mental models are nonconceptual analogue representations of virtual layouts and scenarios in a virtual musical space in which the listener in imagination acts.

This account of musical experience allows Nussbaum to advance a genuinely original theory of emotional expression in music. Nussbaum argues that a musical episode is "a representation with nonconceptual content, a pushmi-pullyu representation mandating construction of a model of a virtual feature domain" (237) through which the listener can move by negotiating virtual obstacles, etc. The listener in imagination implements the action plan of the music and this puts him into actual bodily states. These bodily states are typically inhibited, since the corresponding actions are merely simulated, but if they weren't they would be the bodily states that signal a certain state of mind: sad, belligerent, nostalgic, mischievous, or whatever. In other words, the expressive character of a musical episode is founded on the responses induced by enacting the musical action plan. Kendall Walton has argued that in listening to expressive music we imagine of the auditory sensations we experience that they are experiences of our very own sadness or mischievousness or whatever. Nussbaum's theory explains how this can be so...

[Jonathan]

When I googled "representational music" just now, I got a lot of hits that are relevant to mainstream academic support of the view that tonal melodic music is representational in a sense analogous to literary drama or representational painting.

Congratulations, you've found some people who have committed the same fallacy that you have! And now you're committing the fallacy of congregating fallacies, and of appealing to authority. If you were to assert that capitalism is slavery and that freedom is oppression, I'm sure you could just as easily find many academic authorities who would share those views. Doing so wouldn't make those views true.

...broadside from our own Jihad Jonathan.

Name calling? From the innocent little victim who never does anything mean but always gets picked on? I'm outraged that you'd dare to treat someone of my importance and stature so rudely! Don't you know who I am and how many papers I've written? I've had more than enough of your vicious personal attacks! This conversation is over! I will never discuss anything with you ever again! I'm going to go pout now and have my wife reassure me of how important I am.

Here is a lengthy excerpt from the text of that review, and please note the underscored points, especially the next-to-last one which deals with the musical-literary drama analogy and refers to "musical virtual objects"...REB...P.S. The "internal representation" Nussbaum refers to is the psychological or cognitive mechanism through which we viewers or readers or listeners "identify with" the characters or "virtual objects" and vicariously go through the actions or "virtual actions" presented by the drama or music.

Despite your illogical attempt to appeal to authority and to congregate fallaciousness in the hopes that several of the same fallacies added together would make something other than a pile of fallacies, your argument and your position remain unsound. And not only that but highly irrational.

This is the folly of your position:

1. Work of art A is a story about a seasoned fisherman at the end of his life who becomes lost at sea, faces harsh winter storms, deals with trying to repair his leaking, sinking vessel, improvises means of finding food and communicating after losing his fishing and radio gear, and ends up discovering new priorities and enthusiasm for living the rest of his life.

2. Work of art B, a piece of music, has something that could be said to kind of resemble entities. These sort-of-entities or whatever kind of either "converse" or take some sort of action or something, or they emote or somehow make us emote, or they're maybe kind of like vocal inflection or vague bodily states? So therefore artwork B is exactly like artwork A, and should be categorized as being the same thing.

3. Work of alleged "art" C, a painting, doesn't present images of objects, and it only has shapes, textures and colors. It has the color of the sun and of fire, but it would be an act of "rationalization" for anyone to claim that it therefore has the feeling of heat and energy. Give me a break! It has the lines of vertical rising, but someone would have to be insane to interpret the forms as "virtual entities" which are rising! Give my wife a break! It has rugged textures, but no one in their right mind could possibly interpret rugged textures as implying ruggedness! Give Assistant Professor Charles Nussbaum a break! And then adding all of those features together and coming up with the human attitude of energetic warmth, rugged confidence, and determined vertical action? Give my entire family, several random online sources, and most Objectivish-types a break! "Artwork" C is definitely not in the same category as A and B! Hell no!!! It's not specific enough! I can't believe it! You can't be serious!!! Give me a break!!!

4. Work of art D, a work of architecture, doesn't present images of objects, and it only has shapes, textures and colors. It has the color of the sun and of fire, and it therefore has the feeling of heat and energy. It has the lines of vertical rising, which has the effect of making the forms seem to be "virtual entities" which are rising. It has rugged textures, which -- need I even say it? -- gives it the character of ruggedness. All of these features combine to give the building the human attitude of energetic warmth, and the rugged confidence of determined vertical action! Artwork D is therefore obviously exactly like A and B, and nothing like icky "artwork" C.

J

[Brant Gaede]

We have all these different arts and everything human made seems to have an "art of." Very few art of this or that results in art. And there are seeming anomalies. The art of music may be the creation or the making. The art of painting may be the art in painting a house or on a canvas. There's the art of driving a car or even flying an airplane. There are martial arts. All these involve something human added special beyond mere human doing and making. It's the art of creation, even in "The Art of War." What is created may or may not be art, but it is this commonality, this specialness that ties all arting together with the differentiations in the completed particulars some of which we call "art" and some we do not. No matter how hard you try and no matter how well you succeed in finding commonality in the art products like literature, music, painting, etc., you will no more de-art anything than add an art to anything. Music will still be music and painting painting and literature literature. You can make something within a category better or worse if you are its maker and have it called "bad" or "good" or even "great"--but that's that.

A movie merely represents different arts within it--story, music (optional), visual--but is not in itself an art, but there is an art in movie-making.

Authority turf battles amongst aestheticians have nothing--zip, nada--to do with any art as such. It's background noise of no arting whatsoever. Sans that, an aesthetician can be of great help to artists and consumers of art through description and classification and even information on how something might be done better. That's the art of being one. (This assumes no whoring for fattened up convention--helping sell crap to rich fools.)

--Brant

[Selene]

A speech is a classical art...

[Jonathan]

Authority turf battles amongst aestheticians have nothing--zip, nada--to do with any art as such. It's background noise of no arting whatsoever. Sans that, an aesthetician can be of great help to artists and consumers of art through description and classification and even information on how something might be done better. That's the art of being one. (This assumes no whoring for fattened up convention--helping sell crap to rich fools.)

I think that authority poses are pretty funny, especially when someone thinks that his expertise in one area of interest or specialization makes him an expert or authority in related areas about which he has little or no knowledge.

I'm going to use a word now that is very upsetting to Roger, so be forewarned. There are certain musicologists -- people who are immersed (that's the upsetting word) in music but not in general art history or its established terms -- who, when describing the nature of music, its means, and the type of responses and mental activities that it stimulates, don't understand the established meanings of the terms that they're using, due to the fact that they've never been immersed in the arts which use those terms, and they therefore don't understand that there is already a term which fits what they're incorrectly describing as "representational." That term is "abstract."

Their use of "representational" to describe things which are actually "abstract," and their citing and quoting others like them as if they were authorities whose opinions should settle the issue for once and for all, doesn't succeed in making the abstract things representational, but only reveals that the "authorities" have wandered outside of their area of actual expertise and have exposed themselves as not understanding what they're talking about and not understanding the terms that they're using.

Perhaps they have negative feelings about the term "abstract," due to personally and subjectively not liking or responding to much of the abstract visual art that they've seen, and therefore they don't want their favorite art form to be labeled as such and associated with that art, despite the glaring reality that their own descriptions of what music is and how it works are exactly what "abstract" means?

J

[Brant Gaede]

A speech is a classical art...

A cross of gold!

[Brant Gaede]

Abstraction is cognition and art is a way into the brain via abstraction bypassing thinking?

--Brant