Mess or Masterpiece?

[Jonathan]

Everybody is as they are--you, me, Ellen, Jonathan and others elsewhere on OL--and will remain going forward.

I know.

No one changes their view by virtual squiggles appearing on their monitor. Only the objective reality of life has the power to change a view. Only the consequences of our own actions can change our view.

An alternative to chopping is to be in an unoccupied space that can't be chopped.

Greg

You're using the language of victimology, Greg. That's a "feminized leftist" thing to do. Man up. Grow a thicker skin. Leave if you can't take what you dish out.

J

[Brant Gaede]

hahahaa

(channeling Jules)

[moralist]

hahahaa

(channeling Jules)

Notice how Jonathan tries to provoke a response, Brant.

This is because he's addicted to contention.

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

I suppose. The conversation, however, is losing its value for me.

--Brant

maybe I need a life or death thread; this is too penny ante; I do enjoy the chopping Jonathan does so well (chop! chop!)

[moralist]

I suppose. The conversation, however, is losing its value for me.

--Brant

maybe I need a life or death thread; this is too penny ante; I do enjoy the chopping Jonathan does so well (chop! chop!)

Yeah, when there's nothing to resolve...

...there's always entertainment.

Greg

[Ellen Stuttle]

Jonathan,

Re your post #69, I'm interested to see your self-description of your output. To me, a high percentage of what you post looks dopey...

That would make sense. Given your inability lately to pay attention to the big picture due to your petty electron chasing [...].

I can't find a "big picture" in your postings, Jonathan - beyond the prevailing outrage at Rand and multiple Objectivists.

Every now and then, when I have a couple hours to spare - which I seldom have these days - I read through batches of your posts trying to discern a "big picture" in them. I always fail. What I see is just as I described.

Ellen

[Jonathan]

Jonathan,

Re your post #69, I'm interested to see your self-description of your output. To me, a high percentage of what you post looks dopey...

That would make sense. Given your inability lately to pay attention to the big picture due to your petty electron chasing [...].

I can't find a "big picture" in your postings, Jonathan - beyond the prevailing outrage at Rand and multiple Objectivists.

Every now and then, when I have a couple hours to spare - which I seldom have these days - I read through batches of your posts trying to discern a "big picture" in them. I always fail. What I see is just as I described.

Ellen

Maybe you'd be able to start seeing a "big picture" if you were to start addressing substance and answering questions. Go back to my post #92 and answer the questions that I asked. I answered some of them myself. Do you disagree with the answers that I gave? If so, then precisely identify the specific standards that you think Kamhi uses in declaring how "meaningful" works of art are, if not her own personal, subjective responses, or lack thereof. Identify the alleged "objective" standards that she uses to rate works of art as "better" or "worse," if not her own personal, subjective responses, preferences and tastes. Demonstrate that her own limitations and inability to experience meaning and emotional depth in certain works of art are not the sole criteria that she uses to declare what is not art, and to assert that others are pretending to experience what they experience.

J

[Jonathan]

Speaking of addressing substance and answering questions, Ellen, in post #90, if you missed it, I addressed your question about the "pickled shark" issue, and asked for clarification of what you think you're asking. Since you brought up the topic, and therefore it's fire and brilliance rather than mere obscuring smoke which I conjured up, I hope this isn't going to be yet another "real issue" which you immediately abandon because your position, whatever it is, didn't have the devastating effect that you apparently assumed that it would.

J

[anthony]

The big picture is a comprehensive view of life, therefore, is of philosophy. And in a gentler manner than Rand's I see Kamhi ultimately concerned with exactly that. Art, not art, good art, indifferent art, bad art, the basic question - after what is art? - is of what value is art? By which "theory of value" can it be established? Intrinsic, subjective, 'universal' - or objective. Objectively, we know this pertains to the nature of man and existence (Not because it just IS of value, in itself and by itself. Or one feels like it giving it value, here but not there, as it so pleases one. Or that every man and woman alive must equally agree in its value).

What confuses, is that an objective individual may be seen to be subjective in his or her evaluation, rational and selfish: "This is good for me!"

[Brant Gaede]

The big picture is a comprehensive view of life, therefore, is of philosophy, and in a gentler manner than Rand's I see Kamhi ultimately concerned with exactly that. Art, not art, good art, indifferent art, bad art, the basic question - after what is art? - is of what value is art? By which "theory of value" can it be established? Intrinsic, subjective, 'universal' - or objective. Objectively, it pertains to the nature of man and existence (Not because it just IS of value, in itself and by itself. Or one feels like it giving it value, here but not there, as it pleases one. Or that every man and woman alive must equally agree in its value).

Whoa, Nellie! Whose "big picture"? Everybody has their own, if any. Do you know where you are going, running down this road? You will end up in the land of cultural fascism--the land of THE one and only "Big Picture," might as well be Big Brother. I know, I know. 1984 was 31 years ago. So Orwell got the date wrong. BFD. You have turned Objectivist Esthetics--actually there is no such thing--into a word salad of pretentiousness. If it's not from individualism, it ain't Objectivism.

--Brant

you'll never get there; the wheels are flying off your cart

[anthony]

You think philosophy and art are like oil and water, Brant?

"Everybody has their own [big picture]" is a contradiction in terms, I'd think. There is only one.

And reality is Fascist, in a manner of speaking.

[Brant Gaede]

You think philosophy and art are like oil and water, Brant?

"Everybody has their own [big picture]" is a contradiction in terms, I'd think. There is only one.

And reality is Fascist, in a manner of speaking.

Yes and no.

No. If there's only one is it yours or Rand's or Kamhi's?

No. Reality is passive in that humans act in the context of what it is. Fascism is humans fucking over other humans. Everything you write about Objectivism seems more "in a manner of speaking" than Objectivism, most especially no exception here.

I'm not talking reality. I'm talking about you and like you, but not politics, of course. The Objectivist philosophy logically extends from the very base into politics (freedom). The "Objectivist Esthetics" only goes into busybodyism, but gives the philosophy a bad name for anyone interested in freedom. In the kitchen the artists make art. No one has to like any of it but stay out of the fucking kitchen unless you want to make "art."

--Brant

if you want to talk reality, get real, we don't need Lysenkoism in esthetics

[anthony]

I have trouble understanding why art to many can be so intensely 'personal', while a philosophy can be treated as 'impersonal', detached or only 'theoretical'. Each provides an aspect and view - 'an opinion', simplistically - of existence, although a limited and partial one in the case of an artwork.

While I'd agree that one is not always the other (in every instance, or to the same degree), they both relate to reality.

Both involve and should matter to an individual.

How accurately and truthfully is the benchmark of how "good" is either view of life--and as secondary usefulness, art exposes to one one's own view and values, by whatever one appreciates or does not, in some art. It's a good premise-checker.

[anthony]

You think philosophy and art are like oil and water, Brant?

"Everybody has their own [big picture]" is a contradiction in terms, I'd think. There is only one.

And reality is Fascist, in a manner of speaking.

Yes and no.

No. If there's only one is it yours or Rand's or Kamhi's?

Both of them - you too, I assume - and I, aiming to identify and comprehend objective reality.

More "realities" would have to be subjective of course, and self-contradictory.

Why should art escape identification and comprehension?

[moralist]

You think philosophy and art are like oil and water, Brant?

"Everybody has their own [big picture]" is a contradiction in terms, I'd think. There is only one.

There is only one objective reality...

...and billions of subjective "big pictures"...

...each of which either agree or disagree with that one objective reality in a wide range.

And reality is Fascist, in a manner of speaking.

A brilliant observation, Tony.

And no one needs to take your word on it. For each individual can personally prove this fact for themselves.

So rise up you fools, and narcissistically rebel against the Fascist rule of objective reality and see what it gets you...

...a two by four upside your head!

Greg

[Jonathan]

I'm still trying to get my mind around the notion that the people who I call Objectivist Tooheys are not at all like Toohey, but Saatchi is.

So, let's review.

Ellsworth Toohey targeted an individual artist. He publicly attacked and smeared him. He tried to rally public opinion against Roark and his work, and he led authorities and the masses to believe that Roark was smugly incompetent, fraudulent, unconcerned with the tastes and opinions of ordinary citizens and of average viewers and such.

The Objectivist Tooheys target individual artists. They publicly attack and smear them. They try to rally public opinion against the art and artists whom they're personally enraged about, and they hope to lead authorities and the masses to believe that these artists are smugly incompetent, fraudulent, unconcerned with the tastes and opinions of ordinary citizens and average viewers and such. And they go even further: They attack and smear those who enjoy and patronize the art that they're enraged about. They accuse them of fraud, of lying, of being delusional, etc.

Does Saatchi target individual artists for destruction? I'm not aware of his having done so. Does he try to rally public opinion against specific individual artists and their works?

But yet somehow he is a Toohey and the frantic Objectivist aesthetic bullies are not?

J

[Brant Gaede]

You think philosophy and art are like oil and water, Brant?

"Everybody has their own [big picture]" is a contradiction in terms, I'd think. There is only one.

And reality is Fascist, in a manner of speaking.

Yes and no.

No. If there's only one is it yours or Rand's or Kamhi's?

Both of them - you too, I assume - and I, aiming to identify and comprehend objective reality.

More "realities" would have to be subjective of course, and self-contradictory.

Why should art escape identification and comprehension?

Now you're confusing esthetics with philosophy by mixing them up. Esthetics says, "this is." Philosophy says, "should be." The esthetican does not say if you want X do Y. The art teacher of artists does--or the artists. The art teacher is likely an artist too. At least it's hard to imagine otherwise. Frank O'Connor was not welcoming to his wife's artistic suggestions. You're on her side. I'm on Frank's side. And that goes for the whole culture we can call "art."

--Brant

if you don't like it, don't buy it

[Brant Gaede]

But yet somehow he is a Toohey and the frantic Objectivist aesthetic bullies are not?

J

Allow my edit: "frantic and fanatic."

--Brant

yer welcome

([Fascist] Caesar has spoken [so put it in the bank])

[anthony]

You think philosophy and art are like oil and water, Brant?

"Everybody has their own [big picture]" is a contradiction in terms, I'd think. There is only one.

And reality is Fascist, in a manner of speaking.

Yes and no.

No. If there's only one is it yours or Rand's or Kamhi's?

Both of them - you too, I assume - and I, aiming to identify and comprehend objective reality.

More "realities" would have to be subjective of course, and self-contradictory.

Why should art escape identification and comprehension?

Now you're confusing esthetics with philosophy by mixing them up. Esthetics says, "this is." Philosophy says, "should be." The esthetican does not say if you want X do Y. The art teacher of artists does--or the artists. The art teacher is likely an artist too. At least it's hard to imagine otherwise. Frank O'Connor was not welcoming to his wife's artistic suggestions. You're on her side. I'm on Frank's side. And that goes for the whole culture we can call "art."

--Brant

if you don't like it, don't buy it

Not quite true.

Art says "this is ... how I, the artist, perceive it".

Philosophy says "this IS ... and this is how one knows what it IS".

Every fact has a value, and art is a fact of reality as much as anything--more, considering it's made by man. That's where "should" and ethics enters. What should a person do with it, once he's evaluated it. Nothing?

I still don't understand what you mean by "esthetics". Art has content value as well as aesthetic, as you imply with the artist's "this is".

"If you don't like it, don't buy it", of course is true. But one has the right to criticise. Art is in the public domain, artists and their works are implicitly and explicitly held up as influential arbiters of taste and culture (therefore, morality). Let's not revere them as seers and prophets above the ordinary man's evaluation - if some are too delicate to take critical and moral reviews, tough. We all have to take the rough with the smooth.

[anthony]

So rise up you fools, and narcissistically rebel against the Fascist rule of objective reality and see what it gets you...

...a two by four upside your head!

Greg

In the sense of "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed"-- is reality "Fascist', Greg.

"Obey" (identify) it - and only then, learn how to use it for men's own purposes, survival and enjoyment.

We may ignore the identification of reality but it won't ignore you or me for long (that 2 by 4).

Art can be "used" similarly.

[moralist]

So rise up you fools, and narcissistically rebel against the Fascist rule of objective reality and see what it gets you...

...a two by four upside your head!

Greg

In the sense of "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed"-- is reality "Fascist', Greg.

"Obey" (identify) it - and only then, learn how to use it for men's own purposes, survival and enjoyment.

We may ignore the identification of reality but it won't ignore you or me for long (that 2 by 4).

Art can be "used" similarly.

I wasn't implying Nature, although physical laws certainly figure into the equation. I was referring to our chosen actions and the consequences they spin into motion, as well as what we become through our actions.

We can also choose to ignore the objective laws of moral reality... at our own peril.

Art can indeed be an excellent moral teacher.

People fighting against objective reality...

...not a chance!

Greg

[Ellen Stuttle]

Jonathan,

I've been reading through the posts which came up upon my searching your content for "Toohey." (The search also finds extensions such as "Tooheys," "Toohey's.")

What started my search wasn't your remarks about Toohey as compared to Saatchi. (About those, another time, but note that I wasn't the one who posited Toohey's method as a template for Saatchi's. Alan G. Carter was. I have no idea if Saatchi has ever so much as read The Foubtainhead. What I was pointing out with the excerpt is that Carter well understood Rand's depiction of what Toohey was doing.)

My route was round-about and began with your posts #20 and #24 on this thread:

Howard Roark was individualism. He was the message "Don't conform to the established authorities, ideas and traditional ways. Be yourself, think and create for yourself."

The Objectivist Esthetics is anti-individualism. Its message is "Conform to the new authority, Ayn Rand, and to her subjective aesthetic preferences, tastes and limitations. Follow Ayn, and think and create what she would like."

J

[....] I'm not really looking for Roarks so much as wondering why all of these Ellsworth Tooheys -- these bossy little control freaks who want to tell everyone what to think and do -- are attracted to Rand's art. Why are there so damned many of them?

J

I was reminded of an earlier thread in which you expressed puzzlement about what you see as disparity between Rand's fiction and her "later attitudes on the arts." So I reread the relevant part of the earlier discussion.

You wrote there:

[Reference to Rand on Parrish deleted.] To me, the issue is about how much Rand's later attitudes on the arts clash with the freethinking mindset behind Objectivism, or the "sense of life" or general vibe or whatever that is projected in Rand's art. I think her aesthetic ignorance/snobbery/authoritarianism/irrationality, which I also see as being common among her followers, has been a major factor in the creation of what I think that you once very aptly called "church school goody goodies." It's really creepy to me that Objectivism appears to attract a type of mindset that, when it comes to the arts, is closer to that of Toohey than that of Roark.

When I responded, I left out the last sentence - "It's really creepy to me that Objectivism appears to attract a type of mindset that, when it comes to the arts, is closer to that of Toohey than that of Roark." I remember thinking at the time that the comparison was mistaken in ways more complicated than I wanted to try to address.

In reading through search results for "Toohey" in your posts, I see many examples of a belief on your part that Objectivists and "Objectivish" ought to be praising, as coming from a Roark-like creative approach, art which instead they reject. I submit that they have the implications of Roark's characterization right, whereas you're overlooking a significant point about Roark's reality focus - although you have sometimes spoken of that focus.

Consider your post #20 on this thread, quoted above. I would substitute for the first sentence of your description of Rand's "message" via Roark's characterization: Apprehend reality directly, unmediated by others' opinions, and perform your work on the basis of your understanding of reality.

Roark wasn't concerned one way or the other with "the established authorities, ideas and traditional ways." He wasn't going against tradition in order to go against tradition; he wasn't creating new and different architectural designs in order to create something new and different. He was assessing architectural circumstances as problems to be solved by designing what he thought would be the best solution to the nature of the particular circumstance.

Further, your employing the injunction "Be yourself" seems to me an import from an approach to creativity radically different from Rand's. For instance, do you think that she'd have said of her creative process in writing her novels that what she was trying to do was to "be" - or "express" - herself? It was her intensely held view of life she was writing to dramatize, yes. But "Be yourself" sounds to me so undisciplined, so much like an injunction to splash your emotions on the page - or canvas, drawing board, etc. And so unlike Rand's - and Roark's - iron-taskmaster way of working.

Then there's the specific content or emotional thrust of the sort of "avant-garde" art which Toohey encouraged. It's often what Tony calls "nihilist," not in keeping with Rand's moral sensibilities. The moral dimension in art was very important to Rand and to her entire conception of the nature of and vital human need for art. Much more important than issues of strictly technical judgment.

In my opinion, a reader of The Fountainhead who understands what Rand was projecting via Roark - and via the contrast between Roark and the artists whom Toohey encouraged - would have no difficulty anticipating, without having read a word of the essays which later comprised The Romantic Manifesto, that Rand would be negative toward the work of Jackson Pollock, of Andy Warhol, and of other "abstract expressionist" or postmodernist painters, and that she'd have considered something like Damien Hirst's pickled shark beyond the pale (and not remotely a candidate for the classification "art"). Contra your viewpoint that there's a disparity between a person's admiring Roark as creator while censuring many of the "avant-garde" visual artists of the last century.

I think that even Kandinsky's work could be expected to come in for censure by Roark admirers, although Kandinsky did share certain characteristics with Roark. He was disciplined and dedicated. I think he was "first-handed" in Rand's sense. His artistic goal, however, to use a locution of which Rand was fond, was almost "diametrically opposed" to Roark's.

Kandinsky was attempting to set painting free from bondage to material nature. This is so far different from Roark's goal, I don't see the disparity you do in a person's admiring Roark but not Kandinsky.

Ellen

[anthony]

Thanks, Ellen, I had partially forgotten my impressions of Toohey whom you reprised well. Long time since reading TF. Toohey is the archetype of evil, of course. It takes a special type of man to fully understand excellence and the independent spirit that creates it, and also to know that both must be brought low, and how to accomplish this. Not merely by overt condemning of the good, but by elevating and lauding the mediocre or the junk, so that distinctions are lost and everything looks the same grey mass. Other standards, he knew, would drop to their lowest common denominator and control of a society would be all his. Instead, the rock of Roark stopped Toohey dead.

Sounds familiar - of politicos I've observed. Art has no political or moral bearing? Hmm..

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

As an aside, Ron Merrill (in The Ideas of Ayn Rand) said that Toohey was the only case where Rand created a fictional Satan.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

As an aside, Ron Merrill (in The Ideas of Ayn Rand) said that Toohey was the only case where Rand created a fictional Satan.

Michael

Toohey was based on a real person. Read about that in The Passion of Ayn Rand. Qua characterization no other Randian character begins to match up. His is "the impotence of evil" in action. Ironically, Ayn Rand's entire philosophy rests on the impotence of evil theme. Take that away and we'd never have heard of her. She might as well have stayed in Russia. To say her philosophy rests on reason is like saying one part rests on the previous part from metaphysics to politics, but that's only reducing it to schematics.

--Brant