Newbsie


Jonathan

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2 hours ago, Newberry said:

OMG, did Kant make those? Was it Kant? Did Kant do it? Is that what your special artist feelings tell you? That Kant did it? Fuckin' Kant!

Anyway, the point of the linked post seems to be that so much art has been created that it is all but impossible for an artist to create a work of art that doesn't pretty closely resemble one that has already been created by someone else. Sort of a South Park "Simpsons already did it" thing. And the Objectivish art world is evidence of that idea. It's quite common in O-land online galleries to see many different artists creating the same figures physically exploding and leaping and bounding about in back-bending contortions so as to overtly signal their Ideal Sense of Life®, that the art is officially Objectively™ pure, and that the artist is compliant with and O-bedient© to the tenets of Romantic Realism®.

J

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16 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

OMG, did Kant make those? Was it Kant? Did Kant do it? Is that what your special artist feelings tell you? That Kant did it? Fuckin' Kant!

Anyway, the point of the linked post seems to be that so much art has been created that it is all but impossible for an artist to create a work of art that doesn't pretty closely resemble one that has already been created by someone else. Sort of a South Park "Simpsons already did it" thing. And the Objectivish art world is evidence of that idea. It's quite common in O-land online galleries to see many different artists creating the same figures physically exploding and leaping and bounding about in back-bending contortions so as to overtly signal their Ideal Sense of Life®, that the art is officially Objectively™ pure, and that the artist is compliant with and O-bedient© to the tenets of Romantic Realism®.

J

The Nauman piece reminded me of how you communicate.  Didn't get the South Park thing, but I don't watch it. Agreed about a lot romantic figurative art, much of it is kitsch, not unlike your sweet still lifes. TRAC (google) is trying to spearhead their movement based on Nerdrum's definition of kitsch and sentimentality. And  Poets and Artists (google them) is doing an excellent job of promoting figurative art, some interesting concepts and works, some not so much. I would think your still lifes would fit well in Cordair but you probably burnt that bridge long ago. I am guessing you don't don't have much or any life drawing skills, which would help explain your disdain expressive figurative poses, the expressions are just part of human experience for centuries, not new to objectivists, Delacroix, Michelangelo, Rodin and etc.  You seem to insist that romanticism is a kind of robotic deduction without observation or personal experience, artists just show us who they are, some good some not. I think Larsen literally tried to show us what he thinks Rand's aesthetics is by illustrating a few scenes from Atlas Shrugged, but all I see is his work, and I think he is a good storyteller in his paintings. At least with discussions with me you seem to think romanticism is bad and postmodernism is good. 

 

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Jonathan's work doesn't fit in with Cordair. Not what I've seen of both. Interestingly neither does Frank O'Connor's. I believe the report that he wouldn't let his wife come with suggestions. Maxfield Parrish was a great painter Rand didn't like. Frank wasn't. Whatever his potential he started too late.

I looked through the Cordair portfolio once and found nothing I'd want to own. It was like looking at a collectivist secondhand esthetic stew pot in spite of the impressive display of technical skill. I do admit if I had actually seen those works in the gallery I might have changed my mind about some of them.

--Brant

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Just a few comments about Newberry’s article – a complete analysis would be far too long.

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a. What are people doing? Are they bent and awkward or upright and elegant?

 

The objectivist ideal is of course that they should be bent backwards, like these:

http://cordair.com/artists/jensen/works/ascending/index.html

http://romanticrealism.com/dellorco/images/imagination_th.jpg

http://romanticrealism.com/denys/images/icarus.jpg

Compare with the ugly bent forwards man in Vermeer’s painting:

https://tinyurl.com/yd8q8ksq

He also has a dangerous weapon in his hand, not a pretty picture!
 

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I have included two landscapes to show how we can detect value-judgments even in paintings without people.

In Rina’s painting, we have a view of a dirt road receding in perspective to a pinkish gray sky on the horizon. On the left there is a chain link fence which encloses some dark trees. On the right there are empty lots. Behind there are some telegraph and electricity poles. Notice the blurring of the images, we don’t have here the crystal-like clarity of either Vermeer or Kandinsky. Notice the colors, mostly variations on gray-browns that convey a luke-warm atmosphere. Even though it appears to be winter, the trees on the right don’t have leaves.

 

I thought it wasn't unusual that in winter trees don’t have leaves.

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Are they dead? Note that the fence blocks us off from the relatively vital looking trees on the left. This is symbolic: the beauty of nature is off limits.

 

Perhaps they’re just conifers, that remain green in winter? I can’t judge from this very tiny image. Anyway, this symbolism is just your interpretation, it doesn’t have any general validity.

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Imagine that you are really in this place. Do you think that this road leads to happiness on earth? I think not. Everything in this painting leads to a murky despair.

When I see a road, I don’t think it must lead either to happiness on earth or to a murky despair. Sometimes a road is just a road.

Quote

"Is man, by nature, to be valued as good, or to be despised as evil?”

 

False dichotomy, just as meaningless as the benevolent vs. malevolent universe. One could say that some men are to be valued as good and some men are to be despised as evil (and many are something in between), but “man” as such isn’t anymore good or evil than “nature”, or “the universe”, that would be a primitive religious viewpoint.
 

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Because of the complexity of and controversy over metaphysical value-judgments in painting, I have used the most obvious examples I could find that would illustrate clearly how Rand’s statements  relate to paintings. This example of Rousseau’s landscape, though, is not obvious. The most prominent feature here is the road, it is placed front and center and it leads into a picturesque old-world village, which is a cluster of very neat cottages with thatched roofs that extend across the width of the canvas. Notice the elaborate detail that is showered on the vegetation and the trees and how light plays upon them. The blue sky is aglow. In the center of the road is a curious figure, very small, which I think is a young girl. Notice that she appears to be waiting and she is in the shadow of the tree.

The symbolism here is very interesting. Humanity is significant in the sense that it is in the center of the universe, but humanity is very small. And that small humanity is not bathed in light but finds itself passively standing in the shadow while nature and community are bathed in light. This painting does not convey that man is to be valued as good or bad but merely small and unenlightened.

 

Ah, those evil landscape painters. Often they don’t paint any humans in their landscapes, and when they put them in the picture, they’re almost always quite small. Time for a metaphysical judgment! Even worse are still life painters, they never paint humans, unless it’s a skull that is quite dead. What does that say about their psychoepistomology?!

 

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4 hours ago, Max said:

...unless it’s a skull that is quite dead. What does that say about their psychoepistomology?!

 

You must have missed Newbsie's recent new arbitrary addendum which magically exempts him and his skull painting from the condemnations that he delights in delivering upon others' souls. There's a secret time limit that he hadn't mentioned, a sort of backdoor or Easter egg that applies only to him and his work, and to a few others whom he has subjectively, arbitrarily decided, using nothing but his willfully ahistorical special artist feelings, to spare from his official rules of art and moral judgment. Newbsie spent not enough time on the skull painting to qualify as having a rotten soul!

How much time? What's the objectively valid cutoff, and why? The answer is, "Fuck you, I can see by the way that you communicate that you're a lesser entity than I am, perhaps a postmodernist who loves Kant."

J

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11 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

why? The answer is, "Fuck you, I can see by the way that you communicate that you're a lesser entity than I am...”

J

That’s it, isn’t it? Funny, I think you want to be loved and respected by me. And when it doesn’t work out that way you attack even more. It is kind of creepy. In real life I don’t associate with anyone like you. 

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3 hours ago, Newberry said:

That’s it, isn’t it? Funny, I think you want to be loved and respected by me. And when it doesn’t work out that way you attack even more. It is kind of creepy. In real life I don’t associate with anyone like you. 

No, you missed the point via using your special artist feelings again.

The point was that you preach a Randroid theory which focuses on establishing a means of condemning other artists, but yet you arbitrarily exempt yourself and your own work when it clearly and specifically requires condemnation according to the rules that you've preached, and then, when someone is critical of this inconsistency, you don't have an answer, but instead resort immediately to personally attacking and attempting to belittle the critic. You're doing it again in the above. You're assigning me psychological needs, asserting that you're above me, calling me names and smearing me, all in order to avoid dealing with how poorly you've thought through the garbage that you preach.

J

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On 1/29/2019 at 11:48 AM, Newberry said:

Lots of snickering and sneering going on here, and perhaps rightfully so, but how can we know if no one has applied either Rand's or Newbsie's theories and methods of making "objective" judgments and of "detecting metaphysical value judgments"? What do the works contain? What do they mean, based on the evidence contained in the works? Do they contain enough visual information to possibly communicate meaning? Look more closely. Observe for more than a fraction of a second. Set aside your feelings of disliking the medium used. If you think that there is a meaning conveyed but that you dislike it, set that aside as Rand required. Don't invent your own new rules. Now, what are the results when consistently apply the rules that have been preached by Rand and Newbsie?

J

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27 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

No, you missed the point via using your special artist feelings again.

The point was that you preach a Randroid theory which focuses on establishing a means of condemning other artists, but yet you arbitrarily exempt yourself and your own work when it clearly and specifically requires condemnation according to the rules that you've preached, and then, when someone is critical of this inconsistency, you don't have an answer, but instead resort immediately to personally attacking and attempting to belittle the critic. You're doing it again in the above. You're assigning me psychological needs, asserting that you're above me, calling me names and smearing me, all in order to avoid dealing with how poorly you've thought through the garbage that you preach.

J

 

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Incidentally, I don't feel rejected nor should anyone on OL.

Sometimes things are just not a good fit.

For example, I once tried to study ballet.

It didn't work out.

Nor could it have in a million years... I almost got a hernia forcing pliés...

:) 

The worm in the apple rhetorical style of snubbing doesn't work well on OL anymore (except for banter).

And I kinda like it that way.

btw - I like Michael Newberry. Or, at least, I don't dislike him.

(Oops... Let me pull that damn worm out... I like him, I like him, all right? :) )

Michael

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8 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

By Michael Newberry's request, his group status on OL has been changed to Cancelled.

Aww, so now he's flounced! 

If you've ever wondered what it would have looked like had Peikoff engaged in public debates, here you have it. 

Why so invested in demonizing Kant?  How about picking on Rousseau for a change?

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2 hours ago, 9thdoctor said:

Aww, so now he's flounced! 

If you've ever wondered what it would have looked like had Peikoff engaged in public debates, here you have it. 

Why so invested in demonizing Kant?  How about picking on Rousseau for a change?

You're just saying the above because you crave Newbsie's lovin'. You want to cuddle him because he's a real-life ideal man, and when it doesn’t work out that way you attack even more.

J

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8 hours ago, Jonathan said:

You're just saying the above because you crave Newbsie's lovin'. You want to cuddle him because he's a real-life ideal man, and when it doesn’t work out that way you attack even more.

J

Your mind-reading skills are clearly Jedi level.  If only you'd distill your know-how into a correspondence course.

No wonder I haven't been able to get this tune out of my head.  Only I've found myself substituting "Newbsie" for "Baby". 

 

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22 hours ago, 9thdoctor said:

Aww, so now he's flounced! 

If you've ever wondered what it would have looked like had Peikoff engaged in public debates, here you have it. 

Why so invested in demonizing Kant?  How about picking on Rousseau for a change?

I don't think he flounced. That requires a parting comment dressed in an aura of superiority. No, I think he realized he couldn't digest OL. That is, everytime he posted the replies gave him indigestion. So he made it impossible for him to post. I have the same problem with cookies so I only buy them one at a time.

His last three posts were only quoting others with no reply from him. He finally understood on a gut level.

--Brant

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37 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

That requires a parting comment dressed in an aura of superiority.

Brant,

He did that off line. :)

And, as is present in many of his online comments, it was with a worm in the apple. Several, in fact, one after the other. I suppose some people do that to seem reasonable.

(btw - Worm in the apple means a compliment--the apple--right before a put down--the worm.)

I'm not saying the following is Michael's case (I haven't thought deeply enough about it), but these days on OL--from what I see in posts in general--this format is interpreted as snobbish falseness and insincerity.

Whatever it is and regardless of why someone leads with it (and insists on continuing it in a non-humorous manner), I find it an inferior rhetorical structure because it does not convince anyone of anything. It doesn't even rally supporters like a good old fashioned "fuck you" in the face of an opponent does. Substance-wise, it is literally an ad hominem technique goosed up to look like an argument, so I don't like it on logical grounds.

It's great for banter, though. And in fiction, it's wonderful. Especially in comedy--as a mannerism of pompous characters who later get their comeuppance.

:) 

(Where the hell is Daniel Barnes when you need him? I feel like laughing... :) )

If I were in a catty mood, I would go with an old quip and say that, in terms of verbal persuasion, Michael is a pretty good painter. But I'm not in a catty mood, so I won't say it.

Meow... (oops...)

:) 

Michael

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Check it out! Newbsie is tilting at his wind mills in a new way, fighting his imaginary version of postmodernism (based on his special artist feelings) by engaging in the postmodernist tactic of wearing a shirt that says "NO MO PO MO" (and selling the same?).

He says that he's negating and nulllifying postmodernism.

Heh. How long has he been focused on doing so? Personally, I've been witnessing him doing it online for coming up on 18 years.

J

------

 

Michael Newberry

Just published now my 2-min read No Mo Po Mo 
““No Mo Po Mo” puts into words something I’ve sensed since I was a kid. Negation is an awkward approach to doing things as you might never get around to doing anything. But I found that it works like the comment by Sherlock Holmes, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Nixing all the things you don’t want to do and don’t want to become leaves some doable things, if not some great possibilities.” Read more ...
https://medium.com/@mtnewberry/no-mo-po-mo-7507827c4d88

Image may contain: 1 person, smiling, eyeglasses and closeup
 
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4 hours ago, Jonathan said:

Check it out! Newbsie is tilting at his wind mills in a new way, fighting his imaginary version of postmodernism (based on his special artist feelings) by engaging in the postmodernist tactic of wearing a shirt that says "NO MO PO MO" (and selling the same?).

He says that he's negating and nulllifying postmodernism.

Hell yeah!  Can I order that as a bumper sticker?!?!

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Either an artist (postmodern, or not) strongly desires to have an influence on a large number of people through his works, or he doesn't. Either he believes each work he painstakingly produces is "important", or it is not. He can't have them both ways. Except, because of a ready audience and market which highly regard postmodern art, he can in fact get away with his contradictions. "I didn't mean it, my work is a joke, please don't take me seriously - but yes, I mean it, I am a serious artist - because *they* believe me". I think the basic criteria of pomo is when an artwork 1). can't begin to be identified by a rational (visually sane) viewer and/or 2). shows low to non-value in the art itself, holding to self-ridicule and ultimately ridiculing any human endeavor. Saying overall, if you can't see what it is, it's your disability and you must learn a ~different~ reality; and if you can't giggle at the art you take your life too importantly.

The first task of an artist isn't moralism, and shouldn't be - that usually results in weak and prescriptive art, when tried -  he achieves plenty, more than enough, when he's true and honest to his personal vision, whichever it may be. However, the effects (and he must recognise, also) don't stop with just completion and people's viewing of his work, they cumulatively knock-on into other art, general media, movies, popular music, intellectualism, the way people see themselves and existence, think, value, emote and behave, and finally, into politics and mass political beliefs. Who could think it surprising that the pomo phenomenon coincides with and preceded this period, maybe the most sensationalist, cynical, anti-reason and anti-individualist? "You asked for it..."

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16 hours ago, 9thdoctor said:

Hell yeah!  Can I order that as a bumper sticker?!?!

I don't know. Perhaps. On Facebook, someone asked Uncle Newbsie where one might order a shirt, and Newbsie replied by posting a link to some person's LinkedIn profile. I don't think that that random dude is selling shirts, but that Newbs probably wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to what he was doing. He was probably distracted by having his special artist feelings while posting.

NO MO PO MO!

KANT CAN'T!

YAY AND HOORAY FOR THE NEWBSIAN "NEO-SUBLIME"!

J

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