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

[william.scherk]

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).

That's the first I've read about the CIA throwing resources behind the 'abstract art' movement. Any clues for the curious?

___________

-- scratch that query. I did an elementary search and discovered that my knowledge of the art world is even smaller than I thought.

Edited February 22, 2015 by william.scherk

[Ellen Stuttle]

Mondrian too.

[....] With this picture, and many in his well known style almost like it, Mondrian loses it altogether into his "spirituality".

But notice the paradox, Tony - and this is just what Kamhi talks about, as Michael describes in his post #800 - those sorts of paintings by Mondrian became popular for clothing and decorative design, a far cry from Mondrian's purifying spirituality goals.

The web site I quoted from (#797) about Mondrian mentions this irony, without apparent notice that it is an irony.

theartstory.org link

[bold emphasis added]

PIET MONDRIAN SYNOPSIS

[....]

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.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

I didn't know Tony was an esthete [...]

You didn't!!?? I'd say that he's made his familiarity with visual arts obvious over and over.

Ellen

[moralist]

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.

Judgments of beauty and ugliness can only be subjective because we are wholly subjective beings. It's a mistake to speak of those judgments as if they are causes, when in reality they are only effects driven by the moral values by which we each live our lives. And while our response of agreeing or disagreeing with those moral values can only be subjective...

...those moral values in themselves are utterly impersonally objective.

This explains why in many cases beauty to you is ugly to me... and visa versa.

Greg

[anthony]

I didn't know Tony was an esthete [...]

You didn't!!?? I'd say that he's made his familiarity with visual arts obvious over and over.

Ellen

Yes and no, Ellen. With fine art I'm really the dabbler, but one picks up stuff from artist friends and all sorts of sources. I'm with William, the more you find out...etc. However I did study aesthetics and technique informally, in books by or about many leading lights in photography like Ansell Adams, Weston, Ray and Eisenstaedt, also the excellent modern writings of an English photographer, Michael Freeman. Of course they all drew much from the fine art tradition.

[Brant Gaede]

I didn't know Tony was an esthete [...]

You didn't!!?? I'd say that he's made his familiarity with visual arts obvious over and over.

Ellen

I don't generally follow this thread on that level for I'm not an esthetician. While I have my visual likes and don't likes that doesn't contribute much to the discussion. I'm interested in dividing lines between philosophy and esthetics and art, but inside the discipline I'm outside. This doesn't mean I don't lose myself in the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the point of physical exhaustion or that I don't crave to visit Florence. Tony has been mostly writing in a high-fallutin' language I find difficult to plow through, so I thought he was up there somewhere in la la land. Regardless, I was looking for the philosophy and when I hit some philosophy hard to get my brain around I consider it academicese disease. The only thing Rand ever wrote I had difficulty with was ITOE as it was published, but I was off to Vietnam and read it okay when I got back. (Mom saved my Objectivists.) I tried to understand the gibberish of Robert Nozick's "On the Randian Argument" as published in The Personalist, but it was so bad I chucked it. I don't know if my philosophical standards are too high or too low, but real philosophy qua philosophy is so simple to me I have no use for most of the rest of it as it's stewing in its own juices guarded by impenetrable English. In my university the philosophy department would consist of two people: the philosopher and me. Everytime the philosopher gets too abstract I kick him in the ass.

--Brant

no problemo with political philosophy for the trash is so easy to see

[Newberry]

Judgments of beauty and ugliness can only be subjective because we are wholly subjective beings.

Greg

hmmmm, I bet their are millions of fans of glamor magazines, and others that would take issue with that! But I think you might have been baited. Beauty is a little like abstraction, it's an aspect of art. Zeroing in on only that one thing just doesn't work. Personally I tend to think of beauty as an elegant solution.

[anthony]

"Tony has been mostly writing in a high-fallutin' language I find difficult to plow through, so I thought he was up there somewhere in la la land".[brant]

Heh - And all the while I've been hearing about 'Aesthetics' being regarded as if it was somewhere up in la-la land, too. Funny how we are at cross-purposes.

We will agree that philosophy comes in as soon as anyone asks the first question: What is it?

Then comes, How do I know? and then, Is it good for man's life? (Identification, cognition, moral evaluation).

Art lends itself very well to these processes - at the very least as an exercise in perception; further, as an internal premise-and-emotion-checker - and at its best whenever one finds the artwork is personally encouraging or uplifting .

(Maybe often it is just plain beautiful and you don't need more).

[anthony]

Duplicate

[moralist]

hmmmm, I bet their are millions of fans of glamor magazines, and others that would take issue with that!

They're just as welcome to their subjective opinions as I am.

There's a lot of truth in: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Human beauty and ugliness are the effects of moral values or the lack of them. How people live their lives is what determines their subjective opinions of what they regard as being beautiful and ugly.

Whenever a person subjectively perceives beauty, it is because something inside of them is in harmony with what is outside of them. And in a like manner, subjectively perceiving ugliness is when there is disharmony between inside and outside. Now whether a person perceives beauty as beauty or ugliness as beauty all depends on the beauty or ugliness within them. This explains how an immoral person who is ugly inside will subjectively perceive ugliness as beauty, because there is harmony between inner ugliness and outer ugliness.

Glamour isn't beauty. It's outer compensation for inner ugliness. While a female can be glamorous, only a woman can be beautiful. Moral character is what distinguishes a beautiful woman from a glamorous female.

Greg

[Newberry]

There's a lot of truth in: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Human beauty and ugliness are the effects of moral values or the lack of them. How people live their lives is what determines their subjective opinions of what they regard as being beautiful and ugly.

Whenever a person subjectively perceives beauty, it is because something inside of them is in harmony with what is outside of them. And in a like manner, subjectively perceiving ugliness is when there is disharmony between inside and outside. Now whether a person perceives beauty as beauty or ugliness as beauty all depends on the beauty or ugliness within them. This explains how an immoral person who is ugly inside will subjectively perceive ugliness as beauty, because there is harmony between inner ugliness and outer ugliness.

Greg

You actually name the phenomenon very well. And your context is in real life, with real people but the visual problem is how do you show a beautiful souled person? Or an ugly one? Re-creating what you describe above in visual terms, an artist has his hands tied - he only has visual stuff to work with. It's a waste of time to try to communicate a beautifully souled person that is physically ugly, or an ugly spirit in a beautiful shell. Beauty and ugliness in art aren't nearly as subjective as they are in reality.

Both links are drawings by da Vinci contrasting beauty and ugliness.

[anthony]

I like the image of a "hands tied" artist! But it is a metaphor, I realise. From the start, I hardly have to say, the artist has total choice and control of what he paints and how he paints it, so the decision of what subject to paint (along with stylization) is largely definitive of the final picture. For him to choose ugliness (in a subject's features or activities) must be then a deliberate act and the viewer is right to (metaphorically)question why ugliness should ever be significant, and assess the picture accordingly..

(Of course, sometimes the artist has been commissioned-- other times, an artist employs a considerate/sympathetic approach to a less than beautiful face, trying to display other qualities he sees).

[Selene]

I have always liked the manner in which Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land deals with beauty...

La Belle Heaulmière

Others have noticed this section of the book.

The French sculptor, Auguste Rodin (you probably know his most famous sculpture of The Thinker), however, had sculpted his version of a caryatid.

Heinlein beautifully deciphers the meaning of Rodin’s Fallen Caryatid through the eyes of Jubal Harshaw, the wise-but-cynical, “father-figure” character of the book:

This poor little caryatid has fallen under the load. She’s a good girl—look at her face. Serious, unhappy at her failure, not blaming anyone, not even the gods…and still trying to shoulder her load, after she’s crumpled under it.

But she’s more than just good art denouncing bad art; she’s a symbol for every woman who ever shouldered a load too heavy. But not alone women—this symbol means every man and woman who ever sweated out life in uncomplaining fortitude until they crumpled under their loads. It’s courage…and victory.

Victory in defeat, there is none higher. She didn’t give up…she’s still trying to lift that stone after it has crushed her…she’s all the unsung heroes who couldn’t make it but never quit.
~ Robert A. Heinlein,
Stranger in a Strange Land

A commenter explained that:

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

Sure, Shmoop loves literature, but come on, we're cultured people—we have an appreciation for fine arts, too. So let's take a look at the many sculptures in Strange in a Strange Land and see what we can come up with.

Rodin's "Caryatid Who Has Fallen under Her Stone" shows a woman twisted under the weight of a heavy stone. Hmmm, someone burdened by a heavy weight? Doesn't Mike take it upon himself to serve and enlighten humanity? We'd call that a heavy weight.

Continued...

"La Belle Heaulmière" shows what at first appears to be the destructive power of aging, but as the oh-so-wise Jubal points out to Ben, an artist can see the different stages of life within the frozen state of the statue. Who in the book goes through various stages of life. Mike, maybe? His transformation from naïve youth to troubled adult is pretty striking if you ask us.

Finally, there is the "Little Mermaid." Jubal wants to buy the statue and place it as a memorial to Mike, because like the statue, Mike too gave up a way of life to become human.

Concluding that:

But not so fast. There is usually more than one way to interpret a symbol, right? So what if we link the Rodin statues symbolically to Jubal as well. Jubal shrugged off the burden of Caryatid, or to put it in his own words, "Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases Jubal Harshaw" (10.95). And he also knows the pains of growing old like the "La Belle Heaulmière." Just a thought.

A...

[moralist]

You actually name the phenomenon very well. And your context is in real life, with real people

Yes.

Actual direct real world personal experience. This is as close to objective reality that a subjective human can get. That's where the rubber meets the road.

but the visual problem is how do you show a beautiful souled person? Or an ugly one? Re-creating what you describe above in visual terms, an artist has his hands tied - he only has visual stuff to work with.

Ah, that is ALL up to the skills and moral values of the artist, whether he wants to communicate the beauty of truth or the ugliness of lies...

...just as it is ALL up to the moral values of the observer whether or not they will perceive the truth of beauty as beauty or the lie of ugliness as beauty.

Can you see the double edged nature of this principle?

Every truth cuts both ways.

It's a waste of time to try to communicate a beautifully souled person that is physically ugly, or an ugly spirit in a beautiful shell. Beauty and ugliness in art isn't nearly as subjective as it is in reality.

That is a genuine challenge to a principled artist...

...to aspire to create a physical expression of the inner beauty of moral character.

Greg

[Jonathan]

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

Mondian's mystical energy essence "fit's in" in exactly the same way that any other mystical approach does: it really doesn't. It's just a mystic's attempt to explain something in reality. Since he was a mystic rather than a scientist or other rational thinker, he attempted to explain real effects in the mindset of mysticism, and therefore ended up getting a lot of things wrong, and only some things right. Kandinsky was tainted by some of the same sort of thing, but was actually quite rational when getting down to the business of analyzing and explaining the effects of color and shape. In fact, Kandinsky was much more rational, coherent and successful -- much more objective -- at explaining the effects of color than Rand was at explaining the effects of music.

Mondrian wasn't the only person in history whose mysticism distorted his attempts at understanding the causes of aesthetic effects. Many people, including realist/representational artists, musicians, architects, etc., have spoken very similarly to Mondrian about the effects of their art forms, and the belief that gods and other magical, mystical forces were the ultimate cause of them.

Plus there is the difficulty of not knowing for certain if an artist or theorist is speaking literally or metaphorically, or a combination of both. When it comes to spiritual essences and energies and outer vibrations matching inner ones, etc. (kind of sounds like our Moralist Greg, doesn't it?), I think that Kandinsky and Frank Lloyd Wright were more metaphorical than literal, where Mondrian was probably the opposite. I guess that in O-land it boils down to eliminating the prejudicial hatreds and irrational passions, perhaps by asking if the same doubt that is directed at Kandinsky and Mondrian would also be applied with equal passion to Wright. When Wright wrote of the spiritual effects of the abstract shapes of architecture, would anyone here try to use his quotes as a reason to deny the reality of the aesthetic effects that architecture has on people other than Kamhi and Torres?

J

[Jonathan]

I sympathize with the movement, those artists went out on a limb to find that abstraction disintegrated beneath them.

Abstraction did not disintegrate beneath them. It was a very successful movement.

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...

Don't forget music! Eliminating important elements is exactly what music does!

...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.

What does "replace fine art" mean? Who has ever said anything about abstract art "replacing" fine art?!?!?!

J

[Jonathan]

Mondrian too.

[....] With this picture, and many in his well known style almost like it, Mondrian loses it altogether into his "spirituality".

But notice the paradox, Tony - and this is just what Kamhi talks about, as Michael describes in his post #800 - those sorts of paintings by Mondrian became popular for clothing and decorative design, a far cry from Mondrian's purifying spirituality goals.

The web site I quoted from (#797) about Mondrian mentions this irony, without apparent notice that it is an irony.

theartstory.org link

[bold emphasis added]

PIET MONDRIAN SYNOPSIS

[....]

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.

Ellen

It's a "paradox"? Heh. Is it then also a paradox that realist/representational artists' works have also become popular for clothing and decorative design? Monet's water lilies printed on dresses and curtains and beach towels are a "paradox" because they're a far cry from Monet's spiritual goals, and people's using his work for decoration reveals that realism/representationalism is a failed enterprise? Or better yet, Kamhi's darling Gauguin was a failure of a fine artist because his work remains influential in design and familiar in popular culture as decorative elements?

Really bad argument. It's yet another example of Kamhi not thinking things through very carefully, and of arbitrarily and selectively applying certain standards and judgments to abstract art which she would recognize as illogical and foolish if she were to take the time to apply them to realist/representational art.

J

[Jonathan]

I didn't know Tony was an esthete [...]

You didn't!!?? I'd say that he's made his familiarity with visual arts obvious over and over.

Ellen

I'd say that he's revealed himself to be quite unaware and unobservant. Just like the rest of you, other than Billy.

J

[Brant Gaede]

Commerce and money rear their ugly anti-spiritual heads, however weakly. Historically and contemporaneously a common complaint. Poor Mondrian.

--Brant

[PDS]

I didn't know Tony was an esthete [...]

You didn't!!?? I'd say that he's made his familiarity with visual arts obvious over and over.

Ellen

I'd say that he's revealed himself to be quite unaware and unobservant. Just like the rest of you, other than Billy.

J

Hey!*

*The truth hurts.

[Brant Gaede]

I didn't know Tony was an esthete [...]

You didn't!!?? I'd say that he's made his familiarity with visual arts obvious over and over.

Ellen

I'd say that he's revealed himself to be quite unaware and unobservant. Just like the rest of you, other than Billy.

J

Oh, I don't think it was a good test. If we all had been looking for that image on his computer after I pretended to "see" Casper and fiddled with a computer knob or two like he did it would have revealed itself. That said, if the test had been better I admit I'd likely have flunked it too. I suspect Tony would have passed.

--Brant (master of solipsism [using "truth"])

I'm afraid you failed, J, heh, heh, heh

[Newberry]

...the artist has total choice and control of what he paints and how he paints it, so the decision of what subject to paint (along with stylization) is largely definitive of the final picture. For him to choose ugliness (in a subject's features or activities) must be then a deliberate act....

I completely agree with the spirit of your thoughts above. There is a huge technical problem, an artist may not have the tools to execute exactly what he wants. And the results can turn out ugly unintentionally. That could be a motive of postmodernists, if the foundations of a fine art education are not available, then an artist is incapable of creating beauty; a great part of that is technical mastery. Yet creating ugliness is open to anyone reagardless of skill.

[Jonathan]

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.

Kamhi's "narrowness" is accurate. She comes from a background of having studied visual art history, and is therefore going with the standard, established meaning of the term. If you and Roger, and others who have only a music background,expect that you're going to change the established meanings of the terms, I would first suggest that you should study visual art history rather than expect to change something about which you are ignorant. Secondly, I would ask why the semantics of word choices is SO important to you (while actually studying visual art history and understanding the reasons behind the choice of terms is not). And finally, what terms would you propose that people use to identify the differences between what is currently called representational art and abstract art?

Ellen, I hope that you've finally noticed, due to my having bolded, enlarged and reddened the text, that Lakoff and Johnson put abstract visual art in the same category as music and not in the same category as representational visual art. For the sake of argument, let's pretend that you'll get your way, the tail will wag the dog, and all art will be classified as "representational," and the word "abstract" in the arts will cease to exist. What word will you use then when talking about the difference between Vermeer's work and Kandinsky's?

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.

As I said earlier, Kamhi has not yet shown that ANY work of art qualifies as art by the criteria that she uses to reject abstract art and to declare that it is a failed enterprise. She hasn't even identified any consistent criteria or rational standards or methods for establishing how we might test whether or not anything qualifies as art. Her method is nothing but arbitrary assertions based on her own personal lack of aesthetic response, and her personal incredulity toward abstract visual art (including architecture), and her own bald assertions of depth of response to realist/representational visual art, along with her unproven and unsupported assumptions and assurances that the art that she likes has succeeded on its own in embodying and communicating deep meaning.

J

[Jonathan]

I didn't know Tony was an esthete [...]

You didn't!!?? I'd say that he's made his familiarity with visual arts obvious over and over.

Ellen

I'd say that he's revealed himself to be quite unaware and unobservant. Just like the rest of you, other than Billy.

J

Oh, I don't think it was a good test. If we all had been looking for that image on his computer after I pretended to "see" Casper and fiddled with a computer knob or two like he did it would have revealed itself. That said, if the test had been better I admit I'd likely have flunked it too. I suspect Tony would have passed.

--Brant (master of solipsism [using "truth"])

I'm afraid you failed, J, heh, heh, heh

Brant,

First of all, I don't need to fiddle with the knobs in order to see the image. In working with minute differences in hue, saturation and value every day, I can see what many people can't. It's an issue of practice and experience. Secondly, as I said in a recent post, there's more to be seen in the adjusted mage that Billy posted, and you don't need to fiddle with any knobs to see it. To me, it stands out like a sore thumb. I'm blown away that no one has seen it. Quite revealing!

And speaking of revealing, the interactive art/performance art aspect of my posting the image has been very successful in that you're all playing your roles exactly as predicted: When you fail to see or experience something -- including very obvious somethings -- you announce that I've failed in my presentation!

J

[Jonathan]

...the artist has total choice and control of what he paints and how he paints it, so the decision of what subject to paint (along with stylization) is largely definitive of the final picture. For him to choose ugliness (in a subject's features or activities) must be then a deliberate act....

I completely agree with the spirit of your thoughts above. There is a huge technical problem, an artist may not have the tools to execute exactly what he wants. And the results can turn out ugly unintentionally. That could be a motive of postmodernists, if the foundations of a fine art education are not available, then an artist is incapable of creating beauty; a great part of that is technical mastery. Yet creating ugliness is open to anyone reagardless of skill.

Another factor is that an artist doesn't necessarily agree with the two of you as to what is beautiful and what is ugly. When he chose to paint something which you subjectively think is ugly, but which he thinks is beautiful, it would be really stupid to ignore reality and claim that he was deliberately choosing to paint ugliness, or that he lacked the skill to paint beauty.

J