Objectivist Esthetics, R.I.P.


Jonathan

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7 hours ago, Jonathan said:

That's what "subjective" means.

And, yeah, I know the Rand's followers don't like to accept the idea that their own subjectivity is subjective. They want t believe that they are purely objective, so they try to substitute the word "personal" for "subjective."

Wanna know why Objectivism is fading away, and having less and less cultural influence? The reason is this type of kooky denial of reality. "I'm an Objectivist, so therefore my tastes, emotional reactions, and psychologizings of others are 'personal but objective.'"

Clownshow. Grade school approach to philosophy.

You're the one who is confused. Obeying Rand destroyed your ability to be logical and rational.

Rand bluffed. She faked reality. And you prefer her fantasy to reality.  She declared that there were objective definitions and objective means of measuring/evaluating aesthetic phenomena, and then committed blatant contradictions to her definitions, practiced double standards, arbitrarily exempted certain art forms from her own rules, and said that delivering the actual objective means of aesthetic evaluation was "outside the scope" of the current discussion. She never delivered it. She ridiculed others for not delivering it (heh, and there's no evidence that she ever read their theories, and, in fact, the straw men that she angrily attacked strongly suggests that she had no idea what, say, Kant, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Frankenthaler, Rothko, Pollock, Warhol and many others thought or proposed philosophically), and she just arbitrarily declared that they were wrong and that she was brilliant and right and could really easily deliver the objective means, but she never did. It remains outside the scope of Objectivism. It's all bluff. It's unscholarly, messy, amateurish, self-contradictory, novice work.

J

My idea is that Rand needed more than one definition of art--one for each type of art. For me, however, art is an abstraction of reality (to get deeper into reality?)

--Brant

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On 10/21/2017 at 8:24 PM, Ellen Stuttle said:

 

Repeat, Rand's strictures on technical evaluation presuppose that a work has been classified as art.

Then let's take one step back. Let's unpresuppose. What was the process for classifying the work as art?

What objective means was used to determine that the creator of the work created it according to his metaphysical value judgments, versus that he created it for a different reason or purpose?

J

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10 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

My idea is that Rand needed more than one definition of art--one for each type of art. For me, however, art is an abstraction of reality (to get deeper into reality?)

--Brant

Yes, she needed more than one, and each conflicted with the other. I think the reality is that she had a theory of literature based on her own preferences and methods, and then inappropriately tried to stretch it to cover the entire field of art for all people.

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55 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

Then let's take one step back. Let's unpresuppose. What was the process for classifying the work as art?

What objective means was used to determine that the creator of the work created it according to his metaphysical value judgments, versus that he created it for a different reason or purpose?

J

I inferred your (Rand's) "metaphysical value judgements" were at any point in time immutable even if chaotic (a bag of chaos). Through an act of will, of course, you could go from bad to good. (I don't think there are any Rand quotes on this). Thus an artist could create an art work for any purpose supposedly at any point in time as an expression of free will, but that work would be inevitably reflective of his ingrained value judgements at that time. Or, the inside you reflects the outside you and vice versa. To which I have to say, "Needs work."

--Brant

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

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Rand and esthetics seems to be part and parcel of her propensity to go ad hominem ("I know where that is coming from"), for her stock in trade was her moralism. That's why students of Objectivism were afraid of her back in the 1960s. That was made worse because she obviously wasn't getting . . . .

Branden was worse than Rand. When I saw this in the summer of 1968 he was in retrospect under tremendous pressure. (I did hear [one or more] stories to the contrary about his more private interactions.) He went from night to day upon moving to California. The only thing I liked about him prior to the break of '68 was his brain power. It wasn't helpful back then that he was naturally impatient. When he worked with his clients in the 1970s none of this obtained. He was 100 percent there for you. (110 percent if you were a woman.) I guess this was all reflective of his MVJs.

--Brant

I prefer positive over negative, productive over not productive, good over bad, integrity over lack of, honesty over dishonesty--but none of these seem to be about art or the artist as seen through his art

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There was also a bit of circular reasoning/unfalsifiability that Rand brought to the Objectivist Esthetics -- claims of knowing what the artist had done or meant, whether he knew it or not. It's got quite a postmodernist deconstructionist flavor to it.

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Wow, this always amazes me. If a writer were to write spitefully in a novel about a race of people, or he attacks man's mind and his freedom to act, you'd have no problem calling him a hateful bigot or aiding totalitarianism or an anti-intellectual. You'd have direct understanding of what he writes and hold him, the author to his word.

When, identically, a picture in which the artist goes to the extra trouble of ravaging a man's features, or depicting life as mean, petty, full of horror, dirty and hopeless in any fashion? You guys say it was his right to do so and who knew his purpose, and who can "moralize"?

Is it necessary to point out, the visual artist has an infinite number of possibilities of subjects - and manners of stylizing them, at his fingertips. Which he chooses, is - well - his choice. What comes out at the end - his choice. That end informed at every point by his conscious opinions("...according to [his] metaphysical value-judgements".) and subconscious, pre-formed feelings about his subject. A painting can as easily be of a laughing, handsome islander on a bright beach, full of life and intelligence, or a million other things - or it can show, deliberately, a deformed face, insanity and crudeness. Are those to be treated the same?

Does one take a visual artist at his final word, or does one make excuses for him? Is he and his mind and hand responsible, or did a "vision" just come over him which he had to obey? Visual art is made to be immediately seen, and one's inferences drawn directly from what one sees. Because that's the nature of the medium. What you see is what you get, and nothing outside of it matters a bean. One takes art literally as presented and with direct understanding of the artist's intention. One thing stood out for me was how seriously Rand viewed art and literature and their crucial effects on the mind. It confirmed what I'd believed. What I see now is visual art being taken quite lightly. And in their own ways, why is the word any more powerful than the image?

Both artists and writers have something important 'to say', or should have, and one must take them exactly at their word and image; only, don't forget the processes of creating, and viewers absorbing their works, are entirely distinct actions of (volitional) consciousness..

 

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30 minutes ago, anthony said:

Wow, this always amazes me. If a writer were to write spitefully in a novel about a race of people, or he attacks man's mind and his freedom to act, you'd have no problem calling him a hateful bigot or aiding totalitarianism or an anti-intellectual. You'd have direct understanding of what he writes and hold him, the author to his word.

When, identically, a picture in which the artist goes to the extra trouble of ravaging a man's features, or depicting life as mean, petty, full of horror, dirty and hopeless in any fashion? You say it was his right to do so and who knew his purpose, and who can "moralize"?

Is it necessary to point out, the visual artist has an infinite number of possibilities of subjects - and manners of stylizing them, at his fingertips. Which he chooses, is - well - his choice. What comes out at the end - his choice. That informed always by his conscious opinions or subconscious feelings of the subject. A painting can as easily be of a laughing, handsome islander on a bright beach, full of life and intelligence, or a million other things - or it can show, deliberately, a deformed face, insanity and crudeness. Are those to be treated the same?

Does one take a visual artist at his final word, or does one make excuses for him? Is he and his mind and hand responsible, or did a "vision" just come over him which he had to obey? Visual art is made to be immediately seen, and one's inferences drawn directly from what one sees. Because that's the nature of the medium. What you see is what you get, and nothing outside of it matters a bean. One takes art literally as presented and with direct understanding of the artist's intention. One thing stood out for me was how seriously Rand viewed art and literature and their crucial effects on the mind. It confirmed what I'd believed. What I see now is visual art being taken quite lightly. Why is the word any more powerful than the image?

Both artists and writers have something important 'to say', or should have, and one must take them exactly at their word and image; only, don't forget the processes of creating, and viewers absorbing their works, are entirely distinct actions of (volitional) consciousness..

 

Apply the above to We The Living. Horrors. Death. Tragic ending. The "heroine" was fated to die on the frozen tundra of life. The author had a vicious sense of life! Terrible metaphysical value judgments. Existence hater! Death worshiper! Volition denier!

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"And when the practitioners of modern art declare that they don’t know what they are doing or what makes them do it, we should take their word for it and give them no further consideration." –AR

Which practitioners declared that? Were they real people, or just imaginary straw men in Rand's head?

J

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26 minutes ago, anthony said:

One takes art literally as presented and with direct understanding of the artist's intention.

ben-howe-art-weave-exhibition.jpg

 

 

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You've a taste for the macabre, William. A walk on the dark side. Don't get me wrong, I'm not so delicate as to be disturbed by a suggestion of departed souls, and I early fooled around making similar gloomily spectral images (double exposure photos in b+w). I find this one a bit cheesily over dramatic. You must know Nietzsche's caution about he who fights monsters: if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. Ha.

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5 hours ago, william.scherk said:

ben-howe-art-weave-exhibition.jpg

 

 

 

Billy,

Objectivish art usually has more bend to the bodies. A lot more. Like this:

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MV5BNjIxZWQzNWMtZWM4Ny00MGYyLWI5MzgtYmFl

 

As Rand used to say, "If the back ain't broken in an act of overly signaling Romantic Realism, then it's just folks-next-door naturalism."

J

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Objectivist Esthetics, R.I.P.? Really?

Aesthetics is the study of the nature of beauty. Ayn Rand's, The Romantic Manifesto deals with one tiny aspect of aesthetics, art.

The real question of aesthetics is, "what is beauty," why do some things in reality strike us as so beautiful they take our breath away? What is there about human nature that makes that kind of experience possible and what is its significance?

Those questions Rand never addresses. For Rand, beauty is taken for granted and she proceeds simply to assert what kinds of things are beautiful in art. Without addressing the question of the nature of beauty itself, discussing beauty in art is discussing a floating abstraction.

Beauty is like humor, an experience unique to human beings. The reason for humor and the aesthetic sense are related to the unique nature of human consciousness and the whole nature of human emotions.

I've read this entire thread and the question of what beauty actually is and why human beings have an aesthetic sense never comes up.

Objectivist aesthetics cannot die, there is no Objectivist aesthetics.

Randy

 

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2 minutes ago, regi said:

Objectivist Esthetics, R.I.P.? Really?

Aesthetics is the study of the nature of beauty. Ayn Rand's, <i>The Romantic Manifesto</i> deals with one tiny aspect of aesthetics, art.

The real question of aesthetics is, "what is beauty," why do some things in reality strike us as so beautiful they take our breath away? What is there about human nature that makes that kind of experience possible and what is its significance?

Those questions Rand never addresses. For Rand, beauty is taken for granted and she proceeds simply to assert what kinds of things are beautiful in art. Without addressing the question of the nature of beauty itself, discussing beauty in art is discussing a floating abstraction.

Beauty is like humor, an experience unique to human beings. The reason for humor and the aesthetic sense are related to the unique nature of human consciousness and the whole nature of human emotions.

I've read this entire thread and the question of what beauty actually is and why human beings have an aesthetic sense never comes up.

Objectivist aesthetics cannot die, there is no Objectivist aesthetics.

Randy

There is Ayn Rand esthetics.

Thanks for broadening the discussion, but his thread isn't about esthetics generally. I do have a great  love for natural beauty.

--Brant

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9 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

this thread isn't about esthetics generally.

I'm sorry, I didn't get the notice. The title of the thread, "Objectivist Esthetics, R.I.P," and the final words of the initial post, "It's NOT ART!!!!" led me to believe there was some relationship between aesthetics and art.

I'm quite aware the discussion has been mostly about art, and other things, but unless there is no connection between the nature of beauty and art, what does the discussion of art have to do with aesthetics at all?

You don't need to answer. The question is rhetorical, an expression of my bewilderment.

Randy

 


 

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14 hours ago, regi said:

Objectivist Esthetics, R.I.P.? Really?

Aesthetics is the study of the nature of beauty. Ayn Rand's, The Romantic Manifesto deals with one tiny aspect of aesthetics, art.

The real question of aesthetics is, "what is beauty," why do some things in reality strike us as so beautiful they take our breath away? What is there about human nature that makes that kind of experience possible and what is its significance?

Those questions Rand never addresses. For Rand, beauty is taken for granted and she proceeds simply to assert what kinds of things are beautiful in art. Without addressing the question of the nature of beauty itself, discussing beauty in art is discussing a floating abstraction.

Beauty is like humor, an experience unique to human beings. The reason for humor and the aesthetic sense are related to the unique nature of human consciousness and the whole nature of human emotions.

I've read this entire thread and the question of what beauty actually is and why human beings have an aesthetic sense never comes up.

Objectivist aesthetics cannot die, there is no Objectivist aesthetics.

Randy

 

Good points, but the field of aesthetics covers more than beauty. Generally it is thought of as dealing with beauty, art, and judgments of taste and sentiment. As you mention, Rand didn't dig into beauty, but just bluffed. She did cover art, and gave some vauable insights into her view of literature, but she made a contradictory mess of other art forms. She brushed on judgments of taste and sentiment, but didn't treat the topic seriously/scholarly, and tried to make it conform to predetermined conclusions. Lots of psychologizing there.

In short, there was an Objectivist Esthetics, but it was malformed at birth, and died due to its guardians refusing to allow it surgeries to correct its life threatening deformities.

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38 minutes ago, regi said:

I'm sorry, I didn't get the notice. The title of the thread, "Objectivist Esthetics, R.I.P," and the final words of the initial post, "It's NOT ART!!!!" led me to believe there was some relationship between aesthetics and art.

I'm quite aware the discussion has been mostly about art, and other things, but unless there is no connection between the nature of beauty and art, what does the discussion of art have to do with aesthetics at all?

You don't need to answer. The question is rhetorical, an expression of my bewilderment.

Randy

That's between you and Jonathan.

I guess he'll be along.

As for me there is no Objectivist esthetics because there is no way to logically mix esthetics into a philosophical system called Objectivism.

Esthetics simply describe what is qua art or qua the broader subject. Beauty, of course, is subjective.

Rand put all she could into her philosophy and over-burdened it to the max. So I distinguish between Objectivism on the one hand and the philosophy of Ayn Rand on the other.

For clarity I no longer describe myself as an Objectivist. That way I don't have to say what kind of Objectivst I'm not.

Everybody has a unique philosophy; it's the operating software of the human mind. A philosophy can be universalized if it sticks to simple, basic operative principles.

Objectivism properly rendered consists of four basic logically integrated principles, one for reality, one for appertaining reality, ethics and politics. The link is the individualism of the autonomous thinking mind. Off the ethics and politics--built on--is human social existence.

--Brant

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Right, "beauty" has to be pinned down in one's understanding in case it becomes a floating abstraction, eventually spinning off into mysticism.

I'm surprised that anyone should be surprised that Rand placed reality and reason, the man-made and consciousness, hierarchically above beauty. 

Rand I think turned the whole of art on its head. While every other philosopher saw beauty in art as explicit and the content of the art, implicit, (the necessary but less significant vehicle which carries the beauty) she presumed on the beauty which artists have always delivered (in some way) while turning most if not all her attention on *content* - and Why and What and Who for, is art? It would grossly misrepresent her writing to state that beauty had little importance, however. In fact she has touched on it in several places.

The first thing to query is "natural beauty". Does this have "purposiveness" to man? Does it exist, iow, FOR our delight? In there is one of the lingering vestiges of supernaturalism and Creationism for secularists, I've noticed. Natural beauty just is, without need of man's approval. Evidently.

Secondly, one has to make the distinction between natural beauty and man made beauty, the crucial difference between the metaphysically given and man made which most philosophers confused and mingled.  Fooled by the fact that an artist takes his cue from nature and appears to 'copy' from it, not seeing that he does it to his own ends, as a prime mover and creator. They eliminate to some extent "man's consciousness" from the process, instead making of the artist a natural conduit of nature, one who "channels" natural beauty. Such denial of consciousness (or quasi-mysticism)would be anathema to Rand, of course.

And is beauty an end in itself? A good artist can take the mundane and with skill and visualization make it beautiful, with light and color and composition, etc. etc. (He adds value).He can also take as his subject a beautiful existent, say a pretty girl, and (deliberately -or ineptly) render her drab and unbeautiful, subtracting value. And so on, for any existent, according to his view of existence. I'm often repeating the point that the artist has ultimate power and control, leaving nothing to accident. I make the allegory that "beauty" is the colorful, scented flower which attracts the vision and attention of a bee, while what is most important is the flower's "content", the pollen which it takes away with it. Since a consciousness is active, seeking the challenges from reality, one's gaze is pulled towards striking, dynamic or harmonious arrangements of objects, and this designed beauty is the means to the end, "content". The two components of style and substance are inseparable with any art form.

This leads to "[a]esthetics", which has ambiguous meanings within Objectivism, I think. Certainly, reading from Rand, "art" is the dominant concept, subsuming (the study of)aesthetics - therefore imo the theory should be renamed Objectivist Art Theory. Aesthetics bears upon physiology and neurology and then can take its proper place in the comprehensive field of a study of all beauty - how we see it and why it has value - by scientific methods. It would involve the theory of color, color harmony, form and line; physiology and neuroscience, cultural and periodic variations of standards of beauty; closely linked to the man-discovered/invented techniques and conventions of representing beauty - in all its forms: Art, design, illustration, craft, decoration, and so on. I guess all that would take a collaboration between scientists, art experts, and objective philosophers.

 

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2 hours ago, Jonathan said:

Good points, but the field of aesthetics covers more than beauty.

Yes, certainly.

 

2 hours ago, Jonathan said:

In short, there was an Objectivist Esthetics, but it was malformed at birth, and died due to its guardians refusing to allow it surgeries to correct its life threatening deformities.

Have to love your rhetoric, and agree with all you said.

Still, there is a reason human beings have an aesthetic sense which I think ought to be identified.

Randy

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Of course one can see the temptations of abstract art to its early practitioners. After all, if beauty and emotion are all that matters, let us distill pure beauty (random colors and lines, etc.) and detach beauty from any distinguishable form, (attributes without entities)and hey presto, produce a work of perfect art... without having to think. Mmm.

And we wonder why reality and identity and truth are up for grabs today and why collective emotions rule.

"The physical sciences are still ruled by remnants of a rational epistemology ... but the humanities have been virtually abandoned to the primitive epistemology of mysticism". TRM 1971

The general view I know, is that art is a pure and Platonic stand-above, existing in a vacuum untouched by and untouching upon, any other human activity.

What's art got to do with rational thought? What has it to do with man's values? What has it to do with individualist ethics? What's it got to do with politics?

Well, steal a look at falling standards of art from the mid-20th century on, and look at the chaotic condition of the world and "humanities" and disappearing freedom we see before us today. But don't draw any hasty correlations fellas! Maybe that is all coincidence and chance. ;O

 

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2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

That's between you and Jonathan.

He already made a very cogent and interesting comment.

 

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Beauty, of course, is subjective.

That is true of all conscious experience. Human beings have an aesthetic sense, however, whatever any individual's experience of beauty is, but why should there be a sense of beauty at all? Like humor, what any individual will find funny will be different, but why is anything funny at all, why is there a sense of humor.

Beauty and humor are certainly not intrinsic attributes of the things we find beautiful or funny, they are a way we evaluate what we perceive and think. It is the nature of that evaluation I am interested, why we have it and what its function is. I do not believe the senses of beauty and humor are just happy accidents.

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

As for me there is no Objectivist esthetics because there is no way to logically mix esthetics into a philosophical system called Objectivism.

I agree. But I do think there is a philosophical foundation for aesthetics as it relates to human consciousness and emotions.

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

For clarity I no longer describe myself as an Objectivist.

I have never identified my self with Objectivism, or any other -ism, but have studied Rand's phylosophy, as I have many others and like how she clarified some things and admire her for her accomplishments. I agree, "Everybody has a unique philosophy," and I think they must. However much one learns from others, their own views must ultimately come, as you said, from their own, "autonomous thinking mind."

Randy

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The appreciation of beauty had moral connotations to the Sublimists (esp. Kant). One is good - because one feels for beauty. Kant made the statement that no criminal could possibly love beauty, or words to that effect. Sentimental and untrue. He was known for formulating a connection from beauty to his ethics, and we know how that turned out.  

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Here's a fun old thread from OO in which I destroyed Dr. Comrade Sonia PhD's transparent attempt to make judgments of beauty "objective" by substituting the concept of "health" for "beauty."

And it also deals with a previous attempt by Rand sheep to make their subjective tastes "personal" rather than "subjective." The SOLO flock tried the same thing years back. It's a very common thing among the sheep. They often even go so far as to meddle with Rand's own statements, and Quoate™ her as saying things that she didn't. For example, her statement that until a conceptual vocabulary in music is discovered and defined, there is no objectively valid criterion of aesthetic judgment possible in the field of music, and therefore our musical tastes must be "treated as a subjective matter," is often changed to "treated as a personal matter." Heh. They're very upset about the idea of having any subjective thoughts.

http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?/topic/23645-hsiehs-own-goal-on-the-subject-of-beauty-and-objectivity/&tab=comments#comment-295273

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