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

[william.scherk]

Did you see it before you contrasted it? Or are you pulling our legs?

I fixed my eyes on it and saw the vaguest outline of a figure ... then I fiddled with brightness and contrast, hoping to see Casper.

[Brant Gaede]

My face is a little broader.

Jonathan's lesson = zip + 25% of 11.

--Brant

not even a man behind the curtain

[Roger Bissell]

Jonathan in #769 - you asked a lot of questions about issues about which I'm quite interested and have some thoughts to share. Are you interested in my answers to them?

REB

[Selene]

I want to know what her other hand is busy with to put that sensuous smile on her face...

[Newberry]

Looks a lot like the painting "Elizabeth Throckmorton, by Nicolas De Largilliere:

Beautiful portrait. It feels very natural, I love the expression in her face: I see humor, intelligence, confidence, and calm resolve. Kind of cool, I see the "pyramid" composition, notably developed in the Renaissance - da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael developed and used it. Insane amount of beautiful time consuming details. Those folds rock - especially without photo reference, it has to be painted manually, but he probably had a dummy step in, and draped the folds over that, and could paint them more leisurely without the model being there. And I love the spacial depth, hand first, then chest, and head a little further back.

I grabbed Mona off google search for "pyramid composition renaissance."

And her splayed fingers reminded me of M's Moses. I didn't know of Largillere, I would guess in spent sometime in Italy studying these guys.

[Jonathan]

Jonathan in #769 - you asked a lot of questions about issues about which I'm quite interested and have some thoughts to share. Are you interested in my answers to them?

REB

Absolutely! The reason that I ask questions is because I want to hear answers. As I've mentioned a few times on this thread, I'm disappointed at how many of the questions that I've asked remain unanswered.

And there are even quite a lot of questions on previous threads that I've asked you that I'd still like answered. I've re-posted at least one of them on this current thread (if you're going to answer it, you might also address a similar example in the post that follows it -- 151). I'd also be interested in another issue that I've asked you about, but which has had a history of being extremely upsetting to you, which has been about establishing objective criteria by which to judge the fitness/competence of those who are judging art:

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

What I find interesting are three things:

1) The "receivers" who are the most passionate about asserting that the limited range of frequencies that they are capable of receiving are the only valid frequencies in existence, and that all other receivers are lying or "rationalizing" when they claim to receive information on other frequencies, tend to associate or congregate only with similarly limited receivers, and, when discussing transmission/reception theory, they actively limit themselves to "learning" only from teachers who share their limitations and their belief that there are no receivable frequencies outside of those that they personally receive.

2) These limited "receivers" tend to act as if their congregating is somehow proof that there are no receivable frequencies outside of those that they receive. They seem to feel that their gathering en masse somehow constitutes objective proof that no receiver has abilities beyond their own. When congregated, they like to laugh at other receivers who claim to receive more frequencies.

3) The "receivers" who are limited in range of frequencies often show themselves to be incapable of receiving transmissions even well within the limited range that they accept as valid. When tested in that range, they reveal that they haven't received the transmissions as clearly as those who can receive more frequencies. They miss obvious things that were transmitted. They imagine receiving things that weren't transmitted. They garble meanings. Yet they insist that they're accurately receiving the transmissions within that range, and that anyone who says otherwise is lying, delusional, rationalizing, etc.

You, Roger, are that type of receiver -- the type that believes that no receiver could possibly function at a higher level, and that it is insulting and disgusting for anyone to even suggest that you are anything but the perfect, ultimate, top-of-the-line receiver.

That same post also contains another important unanswered question:

The Objectivist notion of objective judgment is that it is the process of volitionally adhering to reality by following logic and reason using a clearly identified objective standard. If you're claiming that judgments of beauty are objective, could you please prove it by clearly identifying the objective standards that you use in judging beauty, and explain the process of employing logic and reason that you follow when making judgments of beauty.

J

[Jonathan]

Huh, a gimmick, and I supposed I was going to learn the gift of second sight.

As I wrote earlier, "The more that you know about visuals, imagery, and the manipulation of images, the more comprehensible and clear you should be able to see the image. It's worth the little effort that would be needed! It's got some good humor to it!"

There's still much more to be seen, in much greater detail.

Billy has only taken you to step 1. (It's amusing that you all needed to be dragged to the first small step by a non-Objectivish-type.)

Look at Billy as being Jodie Foster in Contact. He has shared with you the fact that he has discovered the "Whump, whump, whump" signal from space. I think that he has also realized that the pattern is prime numbers, but he hasn't shared that with you. I think he's waiting to see if you'll see it for yourselves, just as I am waiting to see. Keeping the Contact analogy going here, after recognizing the primes, the next step would be to realize that there's a television signal embedded in the whumps, and then that there's an even larger pile of information which ends up being blue prints, and then the final step would be building the device and traveling to the alien world and back.

I do think that it is precious that you are illustrating my main hypothesis of this thread. It's a wonderful little piece of interactive art/performance art! Quite a neat little "microcosm."

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

Roger,

Thank you VERY MUCH for post #744. I think the theory presented is super. Even has Gibson and emotional "affordances" in there. I'll get the Nussbaum book.

Regarding the "12 or so" sources Jonathan cited - closer to 7 - not all of them, only about half of them, supported J's view.

One which I found particularly interesting, and was going to quote from, I'll quote from now.

On his Google search, Jonathan picked up the sentence fragment:

"Whereas Scruton characterises music as an abstract art form because it is not representational in the way that painting is..."

The source from which that bit comes doesn't agree with Scruton, but instead takes an approach similar to Nussbaum's.

[bold emphasis added]

"Whereas Scruton characterises music"

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=%22Whereas+Scruton+characterises+music%22

pg. 56

The Musicology of Record Production

By Simon Zagorski-Thomas

https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1107075645

Simon Zagorski-Thomas - 2014 - ‎Preview - ‎More editions

Simon Zagorski-Thomas sets out a framework for the study of record production using current ideas from psychology and sociology.

The schema that associates particular forms of melodic movement with tension, release and flow, for example, does so because it is built on previous embodied experience. Those forms of melodic meaning can blend with rhythmic meaning (which has obvious metaphorical relationships with physical activity) and the perceived gestural energy that stems from the timbre. Whereas for Scruton this causality is an abstract and therefore ontologically different type of relationship, for Lakoff and Johnson the metaphorical meaning that stems from, for example, tonal relationships is just somehow more deeply buried than something more obvious such as how hard a piano key is being struck. It is not a different form of causality so much as one that is less accessible consciously.

This issue flows from a deeper ontological question regarding representation. Whereas Scruton characterises music as an abstract art form because it is not representational in the way that painting is, Lakoff and Johnson hold that abstract images and music only have meaning for us in so far as we can create metaphorical relationships between them and our previous experience, and that they are therefore representational. In fact, Lakoff and Johnson, Fauconnier and Turner, Eric Clarke and other scholars present a theory of perception and interpretation that challenges Scruton's idea of music as an abstract art form. According to them music is fundamentally representational, but the extent to which the representation is 'realistic' may vary considerably. Certain mappings between the characteristics of music or abstract art and our embodied experience occur at such an early stage in the interpretive process as to be subconscious or hard to dig down to in the substrate of consciousness.

Indeed, as this should make clear, I see music in general as being an abstract representational art form built on empathy and metaphorical relationships with our embodied experience. How melody, harmony and rhythm can be explained in these terms must wait for another book, but let us return to a discussion of how the process of record production can be seen in terms of creating sonic cartoons.

There is neurological evidence that 'a perceived beat is literally an imagined movement; it seems to involve the same neural facilities as motor activity, most notably motor-sequence planning. [....]

Ellen

[Jonathan]

The source from which that bit comes doesn't agree with Scruton, but instead takes an approach similar to Nussbaum's.

This issue flows from a deeper ontological question regarding representation. Whereas Scruton characterises music as an abstract art form because it is not representational in the way that painting is, Lakoff and Johnson hold that abstract images and music only have meaning for us in so far as we can create metaphorical relationships between them and our previous experience, and that they are therefore representational. In fact, Lakoff and Johnson, Fauconnier and Turner, Eric Clarke and other scholars present a theory of perception and interpretation that challenges Scruton's idea of music as an abstract art form. According to them music is fundamentally representational, but the extent to which the representation is 'realistic' may vary considerably. Certain mappings between the characteristics of music or abstract art and our embodied experience occur at such an early stage in the interpretive process as to be subconscious or hard to dig down to in the substrate of consciousness.

Ellen

Hahahahaha!

In other words, "We just arbitrarily want to call it 'representational' even though it varies considerably enough from reality as to be 'abstract.' We arbitrarily want to eliminate the concept 'abstract,' and call all art 'representational,' including all works of visual art that are currently known by most people as being 'abstract.' We don't understand that the word 'abstract' means exactly what we're talking about when describing something that 'varies considerably' from reality and is 'hard to dig down to.'"

J

[Jonathan]

Regarding the "12 or so" sources Jonathan cited - closer to 7 - not all of them, only about half of them, supported J's view.

Btw, who are you quoting when using quotation marks around "12 or so"?

J

[Newberry]

After reading this stuff on representation in music I wonder if it is the right question. If you said you see the melody in a painting I would think that a nice poetic compliment. Rhythm can be explained in painting but it's anything but clear and objective. Harmony as well is not obvious. And those concepts even if we could objectify them are not the building blocks of painting. Rather form, light, shadow, composition, depth, line/edges are, and can be generally learned and taught.

A substantial part of creating a painting and I assume with other arts is using synesthesia, using other non visual senses and feelings in the process. But I don't know how to prove that process.

It's funny that we can feel what the different arts are art, but trying to group them under one definition is anything but obvious. Thinking out loud, maybe trying to group them under one definition is not helpful? Or perhaps something more generic like works of the human spirit, and that the different works/fields/arts contribute differently...so maybe what are the differences are more important then what are similar?

[Ellen Stuttle]

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).

Unfortunately, I don't have my notes from the 1974 music course (reminder, Allan did all the talking in "74). I inadvertently burned a bunch of Objectivism course notes. I'd gotten those mixed in with a pile of old manuscripts (from my editing work) which I was consigning to the fireplace.

Your descriptions sound to me as if Allan intensified the "tonal drama" and "microcosm" mentions in the re-taped music course, but I'm not sure. He did make references to those - gingerly, I thought. As I've said to you in previous discussions, I thought he was carefully walking the fence between his and Rand's musical tastes, and also on some substantive issues. He would glance every few sentences in her direction, as if assessing how his remarks were going over with her. (I was sitting in the row in front of her, so could notice the direction of his frequent glances to his left.)

Rand didn't really get the tonal-drama idea. She saw melody as the basis. Allan spoke of her non-comprehension in discussions I had with him after he'd broken with Rand. Also of arguments he and Joan had with Rand. The situation between the Blumenthals and Rand was becoming tense by 1976, latest.

Nonetheless, it sounds to me as if some things Allan and Joan, and maybe others, said must have penetrated sufficiently so that Rand indeed did, as you indicate, modify her views without explicit acknowledgement.

Regarding Kamhi's narrowness of interpreting "mimesis," I agree with you. I nevertheless find her book really informative about how the artworld got into the current state of confused affairs.

Regarding "abstract" art, I think that Kamhi classifies that (or at least some of it) as "failed art" (in her "fine arts" meaning of "art"), not as "non-art" - i.e., art that doesn't succeed as an intelligible vehicle for what its practitioners thought they were presenting.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Regarding the "12 or so" sources Jonathan cited - closer to 7 - not all of them, only about half of them, supported J's view.

Btw, who are you quoting when using quotation marks around "12 or so"?

J

Roger, in post #752.

Ellen

[anthony]

After reading this stuff on representation in music I wonder if it is the right question. If you said you see the melody in a painting I would think that a nice poetic compliment. Rhythm can be explained in painting but it's anything but clear and objective. Harmony as well is not obvious. And those concepts even if we could objectify them are not the building blocks of painting. Rather form, light, shadow, composition, depth, line/edges are, and can be generally learned and taught.

A substantial part of creating a painting and I assume with other arts is using synesthesia, using other non visual senses and feelings in the process. But I don't know how to prove that process.

It's funny that we can feel what the different arts are art, but trying to group them under one definition is anything but obvious. Thinking out loud, maybe trying to group them under one definition is not helpful? Or perhaps something more generic like works of the human spirit, and that the different works/fields/arts contribute differently...so maybe what are the differences are more important then what are similar?

This is a fresh and fruitful direction to take, Michael. I'm sure you are right.

"Representation" appears a false lead into artificial analogy, similes and metaphor.

Music is a much more direct contact in consciousness (while evoking and touching on other senses).

You remind me:-

"The nature of musical perception has not been discovered because the key to the secret of music is *physiological*--it lies in the nature of the process by which man perceives sounds--and the answer would require the joint effort of a physiologist, a psychologist, and a philosopher (an esthetician)."

[Art and Cognition]

To which group today, we'd add a neuroscientist.

[Brant Gaede]

An "esthetician" is not a philosopher.

--Brant

[Roger Bissell]

So, Brant - you're saying that an ANaesthetician *is* a philosopher? ;-)

[Brant Gaede]

Too cute for OL, Roger, but no, of course not.

--Branto

[anthony]

An "esthetician" is not a philosopher.

--Brant

I don't see such a firm distinction. A philosopher of esthetics is valid.

[Brant Gaede]

An "esthetician" is not a philosopher.

--Brant

I don't see such a firm distinction. A philosopher of esthetics is valid.

Philosophy is all about control, mostly self control and discipline. Political philosophy is about control of rights' violators. A philosopher of esthetics only seeks to rationally control that discipline--that is, estheticians (not artists)--so does a philosopher of science or law or breaking rocks, all by existential reference. A discipline is unto itself. A philosophy is unto human action generally and is necessary because of free will. If you want artists to do say one thing and not another then you can suggest a philosophy of art--at least a philosophy of music, a philosophy of painting, etc., for we don't know enough yet what ties all the arts into "art." If you do this, it's best if you are an artist yourself. Artist or esthetician, make a choice, for it's not right for the esthetician to proscribe or prescribe, to say what should be only what is except as it's contained within the discipline of esthetics. When it comes to what artists should do do what I do: nothing. It's none of my business. All I can do is put up a wish list. For instance: more naked young women, please. Or men. Give me an heroic pose, please. I'll even pay you for it. Or the skyline of New York City. A dynamic landscape. Etc.

--Brant

[anthony]

Worst of all, really the only sin, is to proscribe where philosophy, i.e. man's mind, can't go. To allow this, is only vacating the field to mysticism and skepticism, and eventually sabotages mind and morality. With art, and its abiding influence on people's minds, more essential than anywhere else.

I think there are two untenable positions: a. that everything about visual art is understandable through philosophy - and b. that nothing in art is knowable by - or of purpose to - philosophy, which should stay away. But not to push the limits of one's mind and venture further into what is knowable and identifiable is a simple surrender. You wouldn't argue this with science, Brant, so why here?

Art could be seen (but not always) as ideas in action; and every idea has an identity, a previous cause and a potential consequence. Also, the artist himself may hardly recognize why he's creating something. As I've said, the world reveals its own condition by its recent and present state of art. So to leave it up to the art authorities, the aestheticians and the artists to foist their ideas on us, without reply or criticism? I don't think so.

No more than meekly leaving it to politicians to do the same.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Jonathan, re your post #784, a reminder:

[....]

In the source material of the quotes Jonathan listed (#401), the usage is various and often ambiguous. A few of the sources, in calling music "abstract," mean music's formal similarity with mathematics. Some partly mean that but partly mean "non-representational" (as if music could be "representational"), and a few entirely mean "non-representational."

Murky.

One of the sources, although it uses the "representational"/"non-representational" differentiation, summarizes a theory of music in relation to emotion and other life-dynamic processes which is along the lines of Roger's views and maybe even more along those of a suggestion I made in a letter to Rand years ago (1967). (Rand never saw the letter. Like most letters sent to her, it didn't get past the office staff's screening.)

I was going to quote the material in the next day or two after the above post, but didn't have time.

I'm not endorsing the author's use of "representational." What interests me in the passage is the hint of a theory of music's psychodynamics. Nussbaum - see Roger's post #744 - sounds like he's worked out a comparable theory in much more detail, and with much more neurophysiological background.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Jonathan, some further puzzlement on the art history meaning of "abstract":

I realized back in December that you were using the term differently than I'd thought you were:

I'd always thought that what you meant was stripping away the surface details and just leaving the outline, as it were - like an "abstract" of an essay.

When Rand speaks of art forming an "abstraction," she means a generalized form - the essence - without the details of the particulars. That's the way she means it when she talks of music as presenting "an abstraction of man's emotions."

Where I got my idea of what you - and art historians - meant was from a post Dragonfly made years ago showing a series of paintings by Mondrian:

An interesting example of increasing abstraction in the work of an artist is a series of paintings of trees by Mondriaan, where you can see the transition from a recognizable tree to an increasingly abstract geometric pattern:

The Red Tree - 1908

The Grey Tree - 1911

Apple Tree - 1912

You call Kandinsky "the "father' of abstract art" (post #755).

But how does Mondrian's view of revealing spiritual "essence" fit in?

theartstory.org link

"I wish to approach truth as closely as is possible, and therefore I abstract everything until I arrive at the fundamental quality of objects."

PIET MONDRIAN SYNOPSIS

Piet Mondrian [...] radically simplified the elements of his paintings to reflect what he saw as the spiritual order underlying the visible world, [...]. In his best known paintings from the 1920s, Mondrian reduced his shapes to lines and rectangles and his palette to fundamental basics pushing past references to the outside world toward pure abstraction. His use of asymmetrical balance and a simplified pictorial vocabulary were crucial in the development of modern art, and his iconic abstract works remain influential in design and familiar in popular culture to this day.

PIET MONDRIAN KEY IDEAS

A theorist and writer, Mondrian believed that art reflected the underlying spirituality of nature. He simplified the subjects of his paintings down to the most basic elements, in order to reveal the essence of the mystical energy in the balance of forces that governed nature and the universe.

Ellen

[anthony]

Mondrian too.

Those pictures Ellen posted aren't anything like Mondrian's later period, I think they're rather more representational - quite minimalist, or reductionist. I see they are from his Cubist period, but not "abstract", I don't believe. That second, The Grey Tree, I like--it captures 'tree-ness', even if it's not realistic. With this picture, and many in his well known style almost like it, Mondrian loses it altogether into his "spirituality".

[Brant Gaede]

All four look "abstract" to me, with the first the least abstract and Tony's has to be abstract because there's nothing else it could be.

--Brant

I didn't know Tony was an esthete (I'm surely not)

[Newberry]

Mondrian too.

Those pictures Ellen posted aren't anything like Mondrian's later period, I think they're rather more representational - quite minimalist, or reductionist. I see they are from his Cubist period, but not "abstract", I don't believe. That second, The Grey Tree, I like--it captures 'tree-ness', even if it's not realistic. With this picture, and many in his well known style almost like it, Mondrian loses it altogether into his "spirituality".

Tony, I agree.

In Kahmi's book she deals with the spiritual objectives of the abstract artists, their need for the paintings not to be considered decoration, the idea of erasing the individual unique qualities of the artist, quotes collectors, even Greenberg later in is life, and she concludes that the abstract experiment failed in it's objectives. And the CIA didn't help by throwing their resources behind the movement (fucking morons).

I sympathize with the movement, those artists went out on a limb to find that abstraction disintegrated beneath them. Fine art has a nature; eliminating ("essentializing") important elements and investing all of one's focus on one or two aspects of it leads to things like decoration, illustration, illusion, and if the artist is serious enough it can lead them to reject their vision, canvas, and medium. I enjoy illustration, design, decoration-I love patterned titles that you find in Arabia, and I love the way Jasper Johns paints, but they don't replace fine art. Ha, a naked emperor with shoes.

(I don't have a quote function from my kindle, so no quotes from Kahmi).