Objectivist Esthetics, R.I.P.

[BaalChatzaf]

4 hours ago, Jonathan said:

 

Sorry, but your anecdotal opinions and beliefs aren't enough.

J

Gerschwin intended the music to be a cartoon of Paris traffic.  That music accompanies a traffic scene in Paris.  I will take the composers word for it. 

[Brant Gaede]

I'd take his word for it too, but then I'd like you be outside the discussion loop.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

11 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Classical music is much more abstract.  The Gerschin music was deliberately concrete to match the scene in the performance.  I suspect classical music is much more attuned to "mood" than to scenes which can be visualized.  However  the are portions of Beethoven's Eroica  which clearly "picture"  battle scenes. After all the symphony was inspired by and a response to Napoleon's  doings. 

But you're injecting outside information of a certain sort. It's like a perpetual motion machine the inventor has to keep tweaking.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

8 hours ago, anthony said:

Yes, it was J I was addressing. That's a good question about meditation vis a vis the desirability of (lets say) "soothing" imagery. A juxtaposition or blend of colours can have an effect which will be efficacious and relaxing. (As I see it, one's mind can take a break every so often from all the "focusing"). At times, simply 'looking' at natural things (without analysing anything) is similar although better, I believe. But do such mood images have to be called "art"? There's quite a few alternative names. Especially considering that there are countless realist paintings which can 'soothe' too, cleverly employing the same colours, lines, et al - the stylistic technique ... plus content. Content and beauty/technical beauty are co-existents, but the subject is the base.

Yes for sure. Consciousness precedes art - as with anything man-made - creating or viewing. Art is not a metaphysical given.

And ~how~ one thinks ( how one regards reality and uses reason), is exposed in art debates even more than 'normal' topics (e.g. politics) so that's why such contrasting philosophies are coming out of the woodwork here.

I agree art qua esthetics is not pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, but that's what Rand does.

--Brant

you too

[BaalChatzaf]

15 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

But you're injecting outside information of a certain sort. It's like a perpetual motion machine the inventor has to keep tweaking.

--Brant

We learn to talk by associating our blabber to things outside us.  And yes, it is a process that has to be tweaked and modified.  Nothing happens for us unless we get out and push.

[Brant Gaede]

8 hours ago, anthony said:

Is it not a particular emotion which is evoked by some music on which one can pin one's thinking? (abstractions). A friend was just telling me how he'd once played a piece for his son and asked him to imagine an Army marching home after a battle. The question he asked was did they lose or win? The boy instantly replied "they won of course!" - he was an untrained seven y.o. and recognised the triumphal music (of 'Aida'), and could already abstract an image and a thought.  I think theres an almost unlimited musical 'vocabulary' (the large array of instrumentation and the manner specific instruments are played, is alone a huge variable) by which composers (inc. rock and ballads, etc.) are able to suggest any emotions, but the piece has to have a minimum basic structure and its development listened to over a progressive time frame to have a "suggestive" effect. Unlike 'abstract' art. Totally different perceptual processes. Abstractions from 'abstractions' (visual), don't work. A consciousness has limits.

"An Army marching home after battle." Of course the kid said, "They won, of course!" As an experiment the data are contaminated.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

55 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

We learn to talk by associating our blabber to things outside us.  And yes, it is a process that has to be tweaked and modified.  Nothing happens for us unless we get out and push.

I think you'd call that "philosophy," not science. You know, that which you're always down on.

Sure you get out and push (pull?) science--into technology. Science is identification and technology creation.

You're a lot of things you don't think you are. I see them. We are all a lot of things we don't know we are. Like science and technology, living is discovery and then creation, all wrapped up into one. That was John Galt. BUT--he was also a philosopher (no?).

Ironically, Rand's two years of sweating over Galt's speech is in contrast to Galt taking a weekend off and dashing one off except, I think, he was speaking extemporaneously: thus illustrating your supremacy of science over philosophy, especially to where the big brains are? Rand bowed down to her supreme human creation.

--Brant

 

[BaalChatzaf]

25 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

I think you'd call that "philosophy," not science. You know, that which you're always down on.

 

I would call it good sense born of experience. If one lives long enough, one learns a few things.   I am over 80 so I have picked up a trick or two and some handy dandy  true things. 

[Brant Gaede]

10 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

I would call it good sense born of experience. If one lives long enough, one learns a few things.   I am over 80 so I have picked up a trick or two and some handy dandy  true things. 

Not all of them from peer-reviewed journals.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

4 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Not all of them from peer-reviewed journals.

--Brant

I reviewed them.

[Jonathan]

18 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Gerschwin intended the music to be a cartoon of Paris traffic.  That music accompanies a traffic scene in Paris.  I will take the composers word for it. 

You missed my point.

I'm demanding scientific proof, not your or anyone else's anecdotal self-reportings. Your statements of what you experienced in a work of art while believing that you had not been exposed to any outside information prior to hearing it does not qualify as  a scientifically controlled experiment.

J

[Brant Gaede]

23 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

You missed my point.

I'm demanding scientific proof, not your or anyone else's anecdotal self-reportings. Your statements of what you experienced in a work of art while believing that you had not been exposed to any outside information prior to hearing it does not qualify as  a scientifically controlled experiment.

J

Scientific proofs and philosophy don't mix. Then philosophy would be a science. It's not; it never will be. The criterion of scientific proof is the demand for an authority-top-of-the-mountain figure, something Rand desired for herself in one form or another. Proper philosophy is sequential reasoning off it's axiomtic reason and reality base from which philosophy goes one way into ethics and politics and science--scientific philosophy--another. There is, of course, scientific ethics--just to make the science work--but it's more narrowly construed then an ethical system per se. So too for politics. It has an ethics--or individual rights won't work or make sense--but that is narrowly construed. Philosophy is should be and shouldn't be--do and not do--esthetics is not normative. Esthetics does not prescribe or proscribe thus is separate from any philosophical system, though not from morality and ethics. No human optional behavior is free from morality. Morality does not front run esthetics except the operative morality within the artist. What the artist makes one takes or leaves, likes or dislikes. Of course, if you walk into a gallery and an artist pulls out a gun and you buy his painting rather than have your brains blown out--well, that's just wrong.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

42 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Scientific proofs and philosophy don't mix. Then philosophy would be a science. It's not; it never will be. The criterion of scientific proof is the demand for an authority-top-of-the-mountain figure, something Rand desired for herself in one form or another. Proper philosophy is sequential reasoning off it's axiomtic reason and reality base from which philosophy goes one way into ethics and politics and science--scientific philosophy--another. There is, of course, scientific ethics--just to make the science work--but it's more narrowly construed then an ethical system per se. So too for politics. It has an ethics--or individual rights won't work or make sense--but that is narrowly construed. Philosophy is should be and shouldn't be--do and not do--esthetics is not normative. Esthetics does not prescribe or proscribe thus is separate from any philosophical system, though not from morality and ethics. No human optional behavior is free from morality. Morality does not front run esthetics except the operative morality within the artist. What the artist makes one takes or leaves, likes or dislikes. Of course, if you walk into a gallery and an artist pulls out a gun and you buy his painting rather than have your brains blown out--well, that's just wrong.

--Brant

The only scientific  proofs are well established empirical falsifications  of a hypothesis or theory  Anything else is either the statement of a hypothesis or an empirical corroboration of a prediction, which does not constitute proof.

If you want proofs,  do mathematics.  If you want corroborations of hypotheses  or empirical falsifications,   do science. 

[Brant Gaede]

My one and your two--or the old one-two.

--Brant

all good science--a redundancy--is off the axiomatic philosophical base of reality and reason (non-contradiction)

[Brant Gaede]

On 10/7/2016 at 11:57 AM, Jonathan said:

Wow, what a devastating zinger! The Kantians are attacking!

Heh.

And yet the fact still remains that my challenges remain unanswered, both by Rand's dumbest followers and her brightest. Nothing has ever been shown to qualify as art by the Objectivist Esthetics, nor by any of Rand's followers' personal variations on the Objectivist Esthetics.

We're six pages into this thread, and my challenges remain unmet. All that Rand's followers have to offer is evasion, bluff, distraction and pouting.

J

Reprise.

--Repriser

[Jonathan]

Thanks for bumping the thread, Brant. Aside from my being very busy, this is another reason that I haven't posted in a long time. There's been no need to. If I were to take the time to post an argument, it would be in regard to my primary area of interest, aesthetics. But there have been no substantive or intelligent responses to the challenges that I laid down in this thread. O'vishism's best, brightest, and most publicly prominent run from the challenges, censor or ban them from their websites, or are reduced to whimpering and throwing tantrums.

Alas, I have no more O'vish Esthetics foes to conquer.

J

[Brant Gaede]

21 hours ago, Jonathan said:

Thanks for bumping the thread, Brant. Aside from my being very busy, this is another reason that I haven't posted in a long time. There's been no need to. If I were to take the time to post an argument, it would be in regard to my primary area of interest, aesthetics. But there have been no substantive or intelligent responses to the challenges that I laid down in this thread. O'vishism's best, brightest, and most publicly prominent run from the challenges, censor or ban them from their websites, or are reduced to whimpering and throwing tantrums.

Alas, I have no more O'vish Esthetics foes to conquer.

J

I figured that out late last year--or I figured you'd been run over by irrationality.

--Brant

but I didn't know if you were sweating it out or drinking it down

[Theo]

A representational painter focuses on the attributes of his/her chosen subject ie colour, light, texture and decides how these attributes enhance his subject. How an artist arranges his subject matter also highlights and makes prominent certain elements within the composition. Through a process of stylisation the painter will either exaggerate certain attributes and details or omit them depending on the effect and end result. Further to this, for an artist to convey a broader theme in their work they must include 2 or more visually related objects/elements.

So what does an abstract "artist" do? They take attributes ie colour, light, texture and disconnect them from the entities they represent and then pretend that they have some meaning without those entities in the form of their "feelings" or "experiences". Attributes alone convey NOTHING other than pure sensations. Attributes disconnected from entities don't even reach the perceptual level.

My own personal view is clear: I do not knock abstract "art" I simply state that it is NOT art and is at best decorative and should be recognised for what it is. Design discipline uses decorative elements to the best effect and you see this in architecture, interior design, graphic design, car design etc.
 

[Brant Gaede]

3 hours ago, Theo said:

A representational painter focuses on the attributes of his/her chosen subject ie colour, light, texture and decides how these attributes enhance his subject. How an artist arranges his subject matter also highlights and makes prominent certain elements within the composition. Through a process of stylisation the painter will either exaggerate certain attributes and details or omit them depending on the effect and end result. Further to this, for an artist to convey a broader theme in their work they must include 2 or more visually related objects/elements.

So what does an abstract "artist" do? They take attributes ie colour, light, texture and disconnect them from the entities they represent and then pretend that they have some meaning without those entities in the form of their "feelings" or "experiences". Attributes alone convey NOTHING other than pure sensations. Attributes disconnected from entities don't even reach the perceptual level.

My own personal view is clear: I do not knock abstract "art" I simply state that it is NOT art and is at best decorative and should be recognised for what it is. Design discipline uses decorative elements to the best effect and you see this in architecture, interior design, graphic design, car design etc.
 

If you are an abstract artist you may say you are not an abstract artist because what you do is not art. That contradiction, however, does not travel. You may also say the contrary. Same contradiction. The point is what is and is not art cannot be objectified, only defined into and out of existence. That's the province of esthetics, not philosophy. Hence, turf wars. Your "personal view" vs someone else's. Whoever says he's an artist and what he does is make art, I never argue the point. I merely like it or not. The closest I can objectify art is to say it's all abstract.

--Brant

[Peter]

Brant wrote: Whoever says he's an artist and what he does is make art, I never argue the point. I merely like it or not. end quote

I like art that is objective but not seemingly, photographic. Yet I also think some of Van Gogh’s abstract works are spooky . . . but good, like “Starry Night.” That is all I know about art.

Peter  

[Theo]

Brant wrote: If you are an abstract artist you may say you are not an abstract artist because what you do is not art. That contradiction, however, does not travel. You may also say the contrary. Same contradiction.

What a person calls themselves is irrelevant - if a person paints a canvas red and calls themselves an artist that doesn't make them an artist. I clearly spelt out the different processes in creating fine art and decorative design which you did not address.

Brant wrote: Whoever says he's an artist and what he does is make art, I never argue the point. I merely like it or not.

Your definition of art is whether you like it or not - this is a complete cop-out.

Brant wrote: The point is what is and is not art cannot be objectified, only defined into and out of existence. That's the province of esthetics, not philosophy. Hence, turf wars. Your "personal view" vs someone else's.

What does this mean? You can not define things out of existence. One can believe that Kandinsky is a master artist or Michelangelo is a designer but it does not change the existence or nature of their works.

Brant wrote: The closest I can objectify art is to say it's all abstract.

Fine art is in the province of both esthetics and philosophy because of the process I outlined and its ability to convey meaning - ironically, great representational paintings should be called abstract art because of the themes they project. "Abstract art" projects nothing but sensations - a red canvas is no more than a red canvas but it can feel warm which is the province of design. Both processes are so different they are not in the same category.

 

[Brant Gaede]

Uh, huh. Art is what you say it is. Artists are who you say they are.

--Brant

[Theo]

Brant wrote: Uh, huh. Art is what you say it is. Artists are who you say they are.

The reason I can not agree with this anything goes view on art is because, for example, if a person looks at a car and believes that it is a wonderful work of art because he sees the beauty in it, what that person is seeing is the thought, design, craftsmanship that has gone into it or maybe he just likes the shade of red. To place it in the same conceptual category as visual fine art and totally ignoring the way in which it is created, the design process including the utilitarian reason for creating it is an insult to both the field of design and the field of painting/sculpture. Is a Ferrari a painting or a sculpture? Oh silly me I forgot - anything goes, it's anything you believe it is. Someone may ask - does it really matter? Of course, it matters. The "Art is what you say it is" view of art is evading the actual process and reasons why an artist creates art. It is a disservice to the design process to pretend that it is anything other than a decorative process, just as it is a disservice to fine art to using non-representational elements; because it relies on observing objects in reality and showing how significant those objects are to the artist by the way in which they are included and by simply including them. It is an intellectual crime to ignore the nature of both fields. The design disciplines include a very broad field: decorative design, architecture, cooking, fashion, graphics, jewellery, bridges, cars etc. The visual fine arts are very specific in its nature and it is made up primarily of painting and sculpture (dance, movies are made up of combinations). The nature of visual fine art allows an artist to convey broad themes which can only be achieved via representational means ie dealing with recognisable subjects that relate to each other. Those elements may include: how light shines on an object, the pose of a character, the contrast and placement of objects, the colour/tone of an object. Many artworks don’t necessarily convey an obvious theme because of the limited elements or disconnected elements within.

[Brant Gaede]

8 hours ago, Theo said:

Brant wrote: Uh, huh. Art is what you say it is. Artists are who you say they are.

The reason I can not agree with this anything goes view on art is because, for example, if a person looks at a car and believes that it is a wonderful work of art because he sees the beauty in it, what that person is seeing is the thought, design, craftsmanship that has gone into it or maybe he just likes the shade of red. To place it in the same conceptual category as visual fine art and totally ignoring the way in which it is created, the design process including the utilitarian reason for creating it is an insult to both the field of design and the field of painting/sculpture. Is a Ferrari a painting or a sculpture? Oh silly me I forgot - anything goes, it's anything you believe it is. Someone may ask - does it really matter? Of course, it matters. The "Art is what you say it is" view of art is evading the actual process and reasons why an artist creates art. It is a disservice to the design process to pretend that it is anything other than a decorative process, just as it is a disservice to fine art to using non-representational elements; because it relies on observing objects in reality and showing how significant those objects are to the artist by the way in which they are included and by simply including them. It is an intellectual crime to ignore the nature of both fields. The design disciplines include a very broad field: decorative design, architecture, cooking, fashion, graphics, jewellery, bridges, cars etc. The visual fine arts are very specific in its nature and it is made up primarily of painting and sculpture (dance, movies are made up of combinations). The nature of visual fine art allows an artist to convey broad themes which can only be achieved via representational means ie dealing with recognisable subjects that relate to each other. Those elements may include: how light shines on an object, the pose of a character, the contrast and placement of objects, the colour/tone of an object. Many artworks don’t necessarily convey an obvious theme because of the limited elements or disconnected elements within.

I respect your opinion about what is and isn't art. I don't respect it as an objectification of that and your attempt to universalize your opinion. Esthetics purely considered is not a category of discussion on this matter. All kinds of objectifications are possible in esthetics as long as we don't try to make them part of a philosophy. Philosophy is a bunch of shoulds from ises. Esthetics are just for what is, not what should be. You can have a philosophy for esthetics but that kind of philosophy is cut off from the objective world and is for you and those who agree with you. Take law. Law is what the law says it is. The philosophy of law is what law should be. That's objectifiable and part of the Objectivist philosophy.

--Brant

[anthony]

Seems crazy that men can identify a type of body far out in the universe, and yet can't come to agreement of what constitutes art - simply, a man made entity that's been around, forever. No trouble with the written word, everyone knows an advert from an instruction manual, a news report from a work of fiction. What is it that renders art a special case? Some guy envisages and puts something together out of other things, with a final plan in mind. Which covers everything anyone can 'create': engineered, crafted, designed, invented, constructed, re-created, etc. etc. You the observer can see the result directly, or deduce its purpose. If in doubt, you can ask him what he made, and why.

When it comes to art, if one can't 'see' what it is, then what IS it? Not much good, many times, asking this of the maker, or of art experts, curators, collectors, etc. They'll tell you : "If you can't see it, you can never know". At least one point of being ambiguous and ambivalent is to keep the mystique and the mystery of art alive, I presume for reasons of elitism and financial gain, in that vastly profitable market. Better that most viewers and buyers of art remain awed by the beauty, of a sort, (in abstract art, without recognizable content) which appears to 'transcend' the ordinary, which could have been directly inspired by gods, delivered to earth via a creative genius (as early philosophers had it) - and so on.

They really don't want to know about one man's eye and mind and world-view and his many choices which made it. It's all too ... prosaic, so rational. They prefer to keep their subjective notions and their emotions which feed the mystique, intact. Art looks to be one of the last preserves of mysticism in a scientific age.

For sure, an objective philosophy cannot and should not back off from asking of art, What is it? What is it - not? What purpose can it have for men? Of art, especially - made by man, for contemplation by man - not the complexity and confusion we find in nature.

Identity and identification is the central business of Objectivism, in stark opposition to any form of "the unidentifiable". Next thing you know, this subjective  - "whatever, dude" - attitude to art, spins off into society, bringing unidentifiable, variable 'facts of reality' (i.e. fake news? moral relativism?) Good art will often challenge the eye and the mind's concepts, but when 'art' obscures and resists reality, it undermines the consciousness attempting in vain to perceive and comprehend it.

Also Theo says, it is "a disservice" to genuine practitioners of art [when everything is called "art"].