Art as Microcosm (2004)

[Jonathan]

Tony, your standard, bread and butter tactics of evading and arguing with straw men isn't going to work.

You can't perform the simple, junior-high task that I've challenged you with, can you? Heh. I knew you were severely aesthetically-challenged, but I didn't imagine that you would be that incompetent!!!

Why do you laughably aesthetically inept dunces so badly wasn't to be in charge of the field of aesthetics!

J

[anthony]

You haven't shown yourself worthy, so you get nothing from me of a personal nature.

There are individuals and places I'll open up, including some minor differences I have with Rand's art, but not in this toxic air you bring.

You've been so often wrong with misinterpreted/misrepresented notions you have of Rand on art, for so long, everyone else has got tired of arguing with you and trying to correct you, so left you unchallenged - which was your goal, not the desire to learn anything. Obviously.

I have observed you consistently block any useful or original channels of thought with noise and spiteful remarks. 

[Jonathan]

2 hours ago, anthony said:

You haven't shown yourself worthy...

Yup, there's the typical elitism bluff. Heh.

2 hours ago, anthony said:

...so you get nothing from me of a personal nature.

Im not asking for anything of a personal nature. I'm asking for you to simply identify the content of the art. It's a realist, representational image, so why is it so difficult for you?

2 hours ago, anthony said:

There are individuals and places I'll open up, including some minor differences I have with Rand's art, but not in this toxic air you bring.

Poor baby! Precious, tender darling! Heh. I don't bring toxicity, Tony. I just bring an immunity to yours, and to Rand's, and Roger's, etc. It really upsets you when someone doesn't fall for your bluffs and poses, doesn't it? 

2 hours ago, anthony said:

You've been so often wrong with misinterpreted/misrepresented notions you have of Rand on art, for so long, everyone else has got tired of arguing with you and trying to correct you, so left you unchallenged - which was your goal, not the desire to learn anything. Obviously.

So, you're pretending that my purpose in being here should be to learn something from you?!!! You're an elite expert on aesthetics, and I should have the goal of being your student? Hahahaha!!!!!

2 hours ago, anthony said:

I have observed you consistently block any useful or original channels of thought with noise and spiteful remarks. 

Bluff. Answer the questions.

You can't, which is why you're whining and evading and bluffing.

"Original channels of thought"? Where? List some examples. Heh. I don't block conversation, Tony, I bring a level of knowledge that you and other Rand followers can't even grasp.

You're poseurs, and you're not fooling anyone.

J

[Brant Gaede]

4 hours ago, anthony said:

You have to endorse a picture with words?! Well, well. That says a lot.

I don't. Especially since I've explained my aim is broader. A specific picture stands unaided by language, if it's good. And this is one area, in the vast complexity of artworks, where whole truths cannot be validated or divined by one specific instance after another. Think bigger, J.

As one artist I know has said: Enough! - with all this gushing and pontificating over my work: just see, feel, think - and buy it.

Or, Howard Roark: take it or leave it but leave off me!

--Brant

boy, can Howard talk up a house! (so can Toohey)

down a house too

[Jonathan]

My, how quickly the Ojectivist Esthetics methods are abandoned!

I ask for a simple description of a work of art (one created by an O'vish, no less), and suddenly it's no longer an Objectivist Esthetic requirement that one identify an artwork's subject, content and meaning, but now that requirement is to be mocked as inducing "gushing and pontificating," and the new virtue is to just "see, feel and think" (without being able to identify in words what one is "thinking").

It out-hippys the hippies, and out-postmodernizes the postmodernists.

J

[Brant Gaede]

13 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

My, how quickly the Ojectivist Esthetics methods are abandoned!

I ask for a simple description of a work of art (one created by an O'vish, no less), and suddenly it's no longer an Objectivist Esthetic requirement that one identify an artwork's subject, content and meaning, but now that requirement is to be mocked as inducing "gushing and pontificating," and the new virtue is to just "see, feel and think" (without being able to identify in words what one is "thinking").

It out-hippys the hippies, and out-postmodernizes the postmodernists.

J

Relax. It's only fulmination.

--Brant

next!

[Brant Gaede]

9 hours ago, Jonathan said:

Seriously, everyone, imagine that you're Ayn Rand, and that you're writing a scene for a heroically Romantic Realist novel that you're working on, and you're about to describe the effects of flowing smoke as Romantically as you can, but without your words being about smoke, and instead their being about the flow -- the gesture, the motion, perhaps the color or lack thereof, the lighting and mood, and the emotion, meaning and impact that it all adds up to.

What would Rand write? Take up the challenge! Show some aesthetic competence and bravery!

J

 

From the George Washington Bridge Jasper gunned his black Corvette north penetrating the empty Palisades Interstate Parkway now slipping under his wheels at 150 miles an hour. The roadway twisted and turned, went up and down, in its own convulsions of lust. Lorette didn't say a word and decided not to smoke--this time. In a few minutes they were at the New York State line then at the judge's door in Nyack. Ten o'clock. They knocked. The light came on. 50 dollars and they were man and wife. Just up the road his yacht was docked next to the Hudson. They were still naked three days later.

[anthony]

Word imagery and image imagery are not the same: entirely different mental processes.

Nature to be commanded ("re-created") must be obeyed (studied, identified) by an artist.  A picture, a concrete image which focuses a person's abstractions, is fundamentally what art does for us. No, it does not gainsay the value and appreciation of beauty - 'beauty' and 'content' coexist in that image, in varying proportions from one artwork to the next.

If anyone claims he is dedicated to reality, then he is dedicated to reason, and reason applied to art - boiled down to its essence - is what Rand was on about. And why should art receive a different treatment? Is it so Platonic, mystical and that unknowable? Or the preserve of experts? It has its basic identity of being man made, which should make it ever more 'knowable'. (Except for artists who revolt against that).

In three ways I can see wedges being driven: between beauty and substance; emotions and cognition; subconscious and consciousness ... as if the former states denote an individual who occupies some higher plane of human spirituality, (or something like). Neo-mysticism enters everything it is evident. The Sublimists and Kant made their fallacious efforts to connect man closer to Nature by initially side-stepping identification and reason (which -Objectively- begins with senses and identification) and posing emotions as the starting point ... to finally be overcome - or explained, transcended, etc.- with HIS and their ideas, of "reason". i.e. "Reason" as after the fact, a posteriori, I suppose.

All of it a damaging causal reversal, since -objectively- one knows that an emotion can ONLY be a result of something perceived and identified and integrated - i.e. reason - first. As fleeting as that process often is, we first have to know what something IS. Emotions don't spring out of fresh air. How the Sublimists' horrible error has insidiously crept into not only man's perception of art, but into much of his thinking and eventually most of his politics, can be easily observable by simply looking around at its results. Art is like the soft underbelly of existents, as I see it: dictate men's perception of it - and you dictate ("universalize") men's minds.

Like it or not, and I think we know this is what's really at stake here, man is both *of* nature but forever *apart* from it - and all the wishful thinking and reverent mystification of art to "find our way back to Nature" won't change that fact.

[Brant Gaede]

You're standing on the shoulders of a genius, Tony, but it's as if I stood on the shoulders of Newton explaining how to turn lead into gold or invest in something like The South Sea Bubble. You gotta give Rand credit, though, whatever she wrote she was great with words, even her gobbledygook. You've completely aced her, however. She produced more than gobbledygook when she wrote about esthetics. You've refined it down to nothing but, except in your own mind where it's completely the opposite.

--Brant

[anthony]

Ah, well. Anybody who wants to make an effort to understand, can. That's the advantage of standing on the shoulder of a genius, one has as foremost reference her thinking and clarity, not mine.

[Brant Gaede]

12 minutes ago, anthony said:

Ah, well. Anybody who wants to make an effort to understand, can. That's the advantage of standing on the shoulder of a genius, one has as foremost reference her thinking and clarity, not mine.

I like you, Tony. But I like disliking crap even more, especially on OL. If I ever leave OL (to do something more important and productive to me) I'll simply stop posting here. It won't be a dribble off. Then my implicit sanction of what others post without challenge from me goes with me. This is just my locked in mental attitude. I don't actually object to all the crap that comes up here nor does my not objecting constitute any sanction. I expect Jonathan will now come along and chew up your horrific post paragraph by paragraph as is his natural wont. I hope you continue to be amused about our ineffectually beating you up with our idea about reality, truth and the American way. Nobody wants you to change. Nobody thinks you will be changed. Nobody thinks you can be changed. You are the primo artifact qua esthetics of Rand gone wrong with her influence and, more generally, with her philosophy for her followers and those who always knew to stay away or not to get too close.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

On May 25, 2016 at 4:01 PM, Jonathan said:

On May 25, 2016 at 4:16 AM, Ellen Stuttle said:

But must one be lacking in artistic sensitivity to doubt that whatever she experienced was in fact "the primary essence of creation"?

One must be lacking in not only artistic sensitivity, but also in general life experience and fundamental social interaction in order to not recognize the very simple reality that others often experience in art what one does not. Many people have differing views on what they think is the “essence” of creation, what is the “essence” of each of the art forms, and what is the “essence” of each individual work of art. There doesn’t have to be a single, universal, objectively definable/identifiable “essence” of any of those categories in order for one to accept the reality that another person is reporting that she experienced what she describes as an “essence.” She has an opinion on what is essential, then she experiences a work of art which meets her criteria of what she thinks is essential, and then states that the art work hit her essence button. We don’t have to agree with her on what is essential, nor do we have to even accept the idea that anything can boil down to a single “essence,” in order to recognize and accept that she experiences it as an essence, even though we do not.

Accepting that the person "is reporting that she experienced what she describes as an 'essence'" is one thing.  Accepting that the person in fact experienced exactly what she says she did is another.

Apply your statement to people's reporting that God is talking to them.  Don't you see a difference between believing that the person experienced something which the person believes is the voice of God and accepting upon the person's say-so that the person really is being talked to by God?

Ellen

[anthony]

22 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

I like you, Tony. But I like disliking crap even more, especially on OL. If I ever leave OL (to do something more important and productive to me) I'll simply stop posting here. It won't be a dribble off. Then my implicit sanction of what others post without challenge from me goes with me. This is just my locked in mental attitude. I don't actually object to all the crap that comes up here nor does my not objecting constitute any sanction. I expect Jonathan will now come along and chew up your horrific post paragraph by paragraph as is his natural wont. I hope you continue to be amused about our ineffectually beating you up with our idea about reality, truth and the American way. Nobody wants you to change. Nobody thinks you will be changed. Nobody thinks you can be changed. You are the primo artifact qua esthetics of Rand gone wrong with her influence and, more generally, with her philosophy for her followers and those who always knew to stay away or not to get too close.

--Brant

I invite all criticism based on reality and reason. Objections may be twofold: that my expansions misrepresent Objectivism, or that Rand on Art is wrong throughout.

And before criticism, participants should answer to themselves these simple queries:

Is man able to comprehend reality? yes/no.

Is art reality? yes/no?

Can artworks be of conceptual value to men's minds? yes/no?

If there's assent to those, I think one will find the rest follows logically. Dissenters will have to come up with a rational, logical and conceptual alternative, or it's just mumbo jumbo.

 

[Brant Gaede]

Yes, yes and yes.

[anthony]

11 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

Accepting that the person "is reporting that she experienced what she describes as an 'essence'" is one thing.  Accepting that the person in fact experienced exactly what she says she did is another.

Apply your statement to people's reporting that God is talking to them.  Don't you see a difference between believing that the person experienced something which the person believes is the voice of God and accepting upon the person's say-so that the person really is being talked to by God?

Ellen

In a different way I often find myself faced with something alike. Not "God talking" to me, but of "faithfully following" Rand's words, and the general rejection and disbelief when I claim I had many internal experiences as a result of art and literature when young, which well pre-dated reading her on the subject of art. Rand gave me a rational foundation to my inchoate thoughts, sort of: "I see now!" Seldom is anyone going to believe your own mental experiences--as they probably shouldn't. However, that disbelief goes equally for someone else's purported artistic sensitivity, and what they report.

No one can have their cake and eat it too.

[Brant Gaede]

21 minutes ago, anthony said:

No one can have their cake and eat it too.

I can have my cake and eat a slice.

--Brant

that aphorism has always annoyed the heck out of me because it seems like someone wants to get between me and that cake so they can eat my cake

[Jonathan]

On May 30, 2016 at 8:10 AM, anthony said:

In three ways I can see wedges being driven: between beauty and substance; emotions and cognition; subconscious and consciousness ... as if the former states denote an individual who occupies some higher plane of human spirituality, (or something like). Neo-mysticism enters everything it is evident. The Sublimists and Kant made their fallacious efforts to connect man closer to Nature by initially side-stepping identification and reason (which -Objectively- begins with senses and identification) and posing emotions as the starting point ... to finally be overcome - or explained, transcended, etc.- with HIS and their ideas, of "reason". i.e. "Reason" as after the fact, a posteriori, I suppose.

All of it a damaging causal reversal, since -objectively- one knows that an emotion can ONLY be a result of something perceived and identified and integrated - i.e. reason - first. As fleeting as that process often is, we first have to know what something IS. Emotions don't spring out of fresh air. How the Sublimists' horrible error has insidiously crept into not only man's perception of art, but into much of his thinking and eventually most of his politics, can be easily observable by simply looking around at its results. Art is like the soft underbelly of existents, as I see it: dictate men's perception of it - and you dictate ("universalize") men's minds.

Like it or not, and I think we know this is what's really at stake here, man is both *of* nature but forever *apart* from it - and all the wishful thinking and reverent mystification of art to "find our way back to Nature" won't change that fact.

The Whackadoodle off-to-the-races build-and-attack-an-army-of-strawman kookiness as a means of avoiding the challenge at hand is amusing, but the best part is the regular revisiting of the subject of "the Sublimists." Hahahaha!!!!

Tony (and similar O'ish dopes) always forget that Rand was a greater "Sublimist" than all others, since the others merely added their two cents to an existing philosophical topic, where she practiced it, and lived and breathed it in all of her art!

After I remind Tony (and similar O'dimwits), over and over again, that Rand's signature aesthetic style was the Kantian Sublime, the next standard tactic is just the outright denial of reality: "No, her work wasn't the Sublime, because she was good and the Sublime is bad, because Kant was bad."

So, this is the structure of the argument:

Kant is bad (Rand said so).

Kant addressed the issue of the Sublime.

Therefore the Sublime is bad.

But Rand's art is the Sublime!

Therefore, shouldn't Rand also be bad?

No! Therefore her art isn't the Sublime! It doesn't contian destructive forces of immense magnitude! It just doesn't!!!! It can't!!!!

J

[Jonathan]

12 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

Accepting that the person "is reporting that she experienced what she describes as an 'essence'" is one thing.  Accepting that the person in fact experienced exactly what she says she did is another.

Apply your statement to people's reporting that God is talking to them.  Don't you see a difference between believing that the person experienced something which the person believes is the voice of God and accepting upon the person's say-so that the person really is being talked to by God?

Ellen

Yes, I understand the difference. Do you have a point? Or did you lose your point while chasing electrons?

J

[anthony]

1 hour ago, Jonathan said:

The Whackadoodle off-to-the-races build-and-attack-an-army-of-strawman kookiness as a means of avoiding the challenge at hand is amusing, but the best part is the regular revisiting of the subject of "the Sublimists." Hahahaha!!!!

Tony (and similar O'ish dopes) always forget that Rand was a greater "Sublimist" than all others, since the others merely added their two cents to an existing philosophical topic, where she practiced it, and lived and breathed it in all of her art!

After I remind Tony (and similar O'dimwits), over and over again, that Rand's signature aesthetic style was the Kantian Sublime, the next standard tactic is just the outright denial of reality: "No, her work wasn't the Sublime, because she was good and the Sublime is bad, because Kant was bad."

So, this is the structure of the argument:

Kant is bad (Rand said so).

Kant addressed the issue of the Sublime.

Therefore the Sublime is bad.

But Rand's art is the Sublime!

Therefore, shouldn't Rand also be bad?

No! Therefore her art isn't the Sublime! It doesn't contian destructive forces of immense magnitude! It just doesn't!!!! It can't!!!!

J

An inexperienced person, one in the Kantian mold, say, may think that any reference to an extreme, heightened emotion -e.g. exultation, awe, horror - is, q.e.d., 'the Sublime', in operation in men or art. Could you stop to think that all emotions were in existence in human beings long before and long after, and independent and irrespective of, Kant, Rand, etc.? They didn't 'discover' emotions. But the Sublime according to those Sublimists is rigidly prescribed as they wished it to be - of firstly feeling some arbitrary emotion to some unidentified phenomenon... which only afterwards, is to be over-ridden by "reason". In Rand, you won't find that, not in her fiction's main characters, unless you're misreading her. (Nor in all her other writing on emotions and the subconscious, which is distinctly clear on their causality). You will find in her novels ~caused~ emotions, which one can call 'sublime' if one desires.

Since it is those heroes' *reason* (identification, conceptualization, evaluation) - and their correspondingly virtuous actions, which ~creates~ the appropriately exultant emotion through the vision of their eventual triumph over nature or other, immoral people. ("Happiness is the state of non-contradictory joy").

There is not an emotion the cause of which has not been identified by a mind first. What is it? Is it good for me - bad for me? And from memory, by Peikoff:- there is nothing in one's subconscious that didn't come by conscious means.

To reiterate, a "sublime" emotion is the RESULT of rationality, reason and value-judgment. I think the Sublimists had it back to front, and weakened reason -and confused many people's attitudes to their emotions - in the process.

[Jonathan]

32 minutes ago, anthony said:

An inexperienced person, one in the Kantian mold, say, may think that any reference to an extreme, heightened emotion -e.g. exultation, awe, horror - is, q.e.d., 'the Sublime', in operation in men or art. Could you stop to think that all emotions were in existence in human beings long before and long after, and independent and irrespective of, Kant, Rand, etc.? They didn't 'discover' emotions. But the Sublime according to those Sublimists is rigidly prescribed as they wished it to be - of firstly feeling some arbitrary emotion to some unidentified phenomenon... which only afterwards, is to be over-ridden by "reason". In Rand, you won't find that, not in her fiction's main characters, unless you're misreading her. (Nor in all her other writing on emotions and the subconscious, which is distinctly clear on their causality). You will find in her novels ~caused~ emotions, which one can call 'sublime' if one desires.

Since it is those heroes' *reason* (identification, conceptualization, evaluation) - and their corresponding actions, which ~creates~ the appropriately exultant emotion through the vision of their eventual triumph over nature or other, immoral people. ("Happiness is the state of non-contradictory joy").

There is not an emotion the cause of which has not been identified by a mind first. What is it? Is it good for me - bad for me? And from memory, by Peikoff:- there is nothing in one's subconscious that didn't come by conscious means.

To reiterate, a "sublime" emotion is the RESULT of rationality, reason and value-judgment. I think the Sublimists had it back to front, and weakened reason -and confused many people's attitudes to their emotions - in the process.

^Nonsense babble from a pretentious Rand-follower who hasn't read or understood the topics that he's talking about. Refusing to read and understand, and preferring instead to just make shit up, attack strawmen, and babble on endlessly.

J

[Jonathan]

37 minutes ago, anthony said:

An inexperienced person, one in the Kantian mold...

Heh. So, you're implying that you're an "experienced" person?

 

38 minutes ago, anthony said:

Could you stop to think that all emotions were in existence in human beings long before and long after, and independent and irrespective of, Kant, Rand, etc.? They didn't 'discover' emotions.

No one has argued otherwise. Are there people in your head again with whom your having an argument?

 

39 minutes ago, anthony said:

They didn't 'discover' emotions. But the Sublime according to those Sublimists is rigidly prescribed as they wished it to be - of firstly feeling some arbitrary emotion to some unidentified phenomenon... which only afterwards, is to be over-ridden by "reason".

Totally false. You're just making shit up, as always.

 

40 minutes ago, anthony said:

Since it is those heroes' *reason* (identification, conceptualization, evaluation) - and their correspondingly virtuous actions, which ~creates~ the appropriately exultant emotion through the vision of their eventual triumph over nature or other, immoral people. ("Happiness is the state of non-contradictory joy").

That's what Kantian Sublimity is, dimwit. You're describing your appreciation and agreement with Kantian Sublimity, while being too stupid to recognize it. You're so bent on hating that you can't think straight.

 

42 minutes ago, anthony said:

To reiterate, a "sublime" emotion is the RESULT of rationality, reason and value-judgment. I think the Sublimists had it back to front, and weakened reason -and confused many people's attitudes to their emotions - in the process.

The Sublime is indeed the result of rationality, reason and value-judgment, which is exactly what Kant's position was. Tard.

You should try using rationality and reason sometime!

J

[Thorn]

I think these threads must be considered some form of installation art. You should make a collage of images and quotes and approach some art gallery with it. ;)

On a more serious note... Last summer I was in San Marino. It's like a mountain rising up from the flatlands in northern Italy. On top of the mountain there's an old medieval city.

Of course I had to get to the top. Scale the highest walls and look out over the landscape. That's what you do, right?

Standing there, on top of the wall, and looking out is a peculiar kind of feeling. The height  is dizzying and the view is mesmerizing. It's absolutely delightful, but also scary. I'm not particularly scared of heights, but I get very dizzy. That's a bit frightening when you're facing a 1,5-2km drop to the nearest rock. But seeing that landscape from a birds perspective is well worth it.

I would call the feeling sublime. That's my understanding of the term. Now, is that so frigging hard to understand?

[anthony]

Schopenhauer

To clarify the concept of the feeling of the sublime, Schopenhauer listed examples of its transition from the beautiful to the most sublime. This can be found in the first volume of his The World as Will and Representation, § 39.

For him, the feeling of the beautiful is in seeing an object that invites the observer to transcend individuality, and simply observe the idea underlying the object. The feeling of the sublime, however, is when the object does not invite such contemplation but instead is an overpowering or vast malignant object of great magnitude, one that could destroy the observer.

• Feeling of Beauty – Light is reflected off a flower. (Pleasure from a mere perception of an object that cannot hurt observer).
• Weakest Feeling of Sublime – Light reflected off stones. (Pleasure from beholding objects that pose no threat, objects devoid of life).
• Weaker Feeling of Sublime – Endless desert with no movement. (Pleasure from seeing objects that could not sustain the life of the observer).
• Sublime – Turbulent Nature. (Pleasure from perceiving objects that threaten to hurt or destroy observer).
• Full Feeling of Sublime – Overpowering turbulent Nature. (Pleasure from beholding very violent, destructive objects).
• Fullest Feeling of Sublime – Immensity of Universe's extent or duration. (Pleasure from knowledge of observer's nothingness and oneness with Nature).

[william.scherk]

5 hours ago, Thorn said:

I think these threads must be considered some form of installation art.

[anthony]

6 hours ago, Thorn said:

Standing there, on top of the wall, and looking out is a peculiar kind of feeling. The height  is dizzying and the view is mesmerizing. It's absolutely delightful, but also scary. I'm not particularly scared of heights, but I get very dizzy. That's a bit frightening when you're facing a 1,5-2km drop to the nearest rock. But seeing that landscape from a birds perspective is well worth it.

I would call the feeling sublime. That's my understanding of the term. Now, is that so frigging hard to understand?

An emotion, identifiable too, is a rapid reaction to making an identity of something - and, according to one's metaphysical view of existence. So it is not a certainty to be the same emotion someone else has in the same circumstance. In Sublimity, I guess this one you describe would fall under "pleasurable terror", of the imagined possibility of harm while knowing you're safe. Not "dynamic" sublime, more like the "mathematical" sublime of vast space. That feeling, everyone has known at some stage, is of 'discombobulation', a temporary 'disembodiment' and mental hiatus from briefly being unable to take in the scale of the height and view, which your sight is not accustomed to.

So what, really? We are capable of a huge range of emotions and this is one of them. Unless one considers emotions are "tools of cognition", so prime causes. Unless the object by philosophers is to -emotionally- link our minds directly Nature, to achieve "Oneness". Then, through beauty and sublime in art -emotionally- link us to all mankind. Except, it is the knowledge and understanding of man and nature by which we feel emotions for them. The more you know, the more you feel - in a nutshell. Is that so hard?