Michelle Marder Kamhi's "Who Says That's Art?"

[moralist]

What color then would the emerald green in the fishermen painting be, in real life?

That painting wasn't in the exhibition.

I searched online to find a painting that had the closest to green I could find.

If I was a leftist abstractionist I'd likely see more green.

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

I didn't and don't see that. All I saw was contrivance and refusal to defend and engage.

That's a likely reason why Newberry didn't bother me. I also tend not to argue with the understanding that no one ever changes their chosen view... least of all on an internet forum. Only real life possess the power to do that...

...with a 2X4 over the head!

Greg

let's see then. (1) You are only writing to address that one other person. (2) You really don't care about any deficiencies in presentation, including your own. (3) You think the purpose of an argument is to win an argument. (4) You don't consider the other person might see the light even if it takes a few more days. (5) You don't think the subject is important. (6) You got yours. (7) You got hit by a "2X4 over the head!" (and suffered permanent brain damage explaining all your posts).

--Brant

Mean Joe Greene got nothin' on me!

[Brant Gaede]

After reading the 75 pages here i'll have to take my hat off to Jonathan. He's convinced me to take abstract art much more seriously

He's a convincing peddler of leftist crap all right.

Greg

You mean he sold you a painting?

--Brant

what did you do with it?

[moralist]

I didn't and don't see that. All I saw was contrivance and refusal to defend and engage.

That's a likely reason why Newberry didn't bother me. I also tend not to argue with the understanding that no one ever changes their chosen view... least of all on an internet forum. Only real life possess the power to do that...

...with a 2X4 over the head!

Greg

let's see then. (1) You are only writing to address that one other person. (2) You really don't care about any deficiencies in presentation, including your own. (3) You think the purpose of an argument is to win an argument. (4) You don't consider the other person might see the light even if it takes a few more days. (5) You don't think the subject is important. (6) You got yours. (7) You got hit by a "2X4 over the head!" (and suffered permanent brain damage explaining all your posts).

--Brant

Mean Joe Greene got nothin' on me!

1. I do tend to address others directly, while avoiding feminized leftist third person monologues.

2. Becoming fixated on presentation over content only means the idea was lost on the person anyways. That's what I mean by no one ever changes their chosen view short of the objective reality of milled kiln dried #1 choice lumber to cranium impact.

3.Arguments can never be "won" or "lost", because squiggles on a monitor lack the real power of reality to change a chosen view. That's why in my opinion, I consider it a waste of time to argue.

4. No one ever sees the light other than what they already chose to see. The objective reality of the Sun only shines in real life.

5. A subject is important enough to me for me to state my view and to clearly describe how it differs from the view of others... but definitely not important enough for impotent futile arguing.

6. Yes. I do get mine by doing what's morally right, because that's just one blessing God promises to anyone who does what's right... whether or not they believe in Him. I can only relate what I do, and how it works for me. It's totally up to you or anyone else who happens to read this to go effing figure things out for yourselves. You are supposed to be adults by now.

7. Getting clobbered is a blessing. That's how you learn to be where the wood isn't.

Greg

[moralist]

After reading the 75 pages here i'll have to take my hat off to Jonathan. He's convinced me to take abstract art much more seriously

He's a convincing peddler of leftist crap all right.

Greg

You mean he sold you a painting?

--Brant

what did you do with it?

Nope.

Jonathan is only convincing to other leftists who live by the same values he does. Business transactions are impossible without shared values. Or legally put, without "a meeting of the minds". So he can only peddle crap to his own kind... as each rightfully deserves the other.

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

Jonathan the leftist.

Thanks for nothing, Jonathan.

Time for the tar. Time for the feathers.

--Brant

where'd he go?

[moralist]

Thanks for nothing, Jonathan.

Everyone provides something. Jonathan was the catalyst for this thread.

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

Thanks for nothing, Jonathan.

Everyone provides something. Jonathan was the catalyst for this thread.

Greg

And I'm its salvation!

--Brant

~snarl~

[moralist]

Thanks for nothing, Jonathan.

Everyone provides something. Jonathan was the catalyst for this thread.

Greg

And I'm its salvation!

--Brant

~snarl~

Puleeze!

Greg

[Selene]

This is a Professor who has been teaching this course for eleven (11). It is not a requirement for graduation.

He is alleged to require all students in the class to "strip down" for the final "gesture." Additionally, it is alleged that if the student does not "strip down" they will receive an "F."

This the syllabus for the course.

Performing for the Self
104A (4 units)
Tues. and Thrus. 12:30 - 3:50 MANDE 219

Professor: Ricardo Dominguez
Email: rrdominguez@ucsd.edu
Office Hours: 1pm to 2pm Mondays (CAL IT2 2nd fl - 2555)

Since the 1970's, performances in with which performers perform themselves, through performing stories from their lives, have been
ubiquitous. This is particularly so within the 'performance art' arena, with performers ranging from Rachel Rosenthal to Annie Sprinkle to Spalding Gray to Ron Athey. We will also watch post-contemporary, contemporary and classic work about the "self" by Nikki Lee, Nam June Paik, Chris Burden, Ulay and Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Faith Wilding, William Pope L., Maria Teresa Hincapie, Nao Bustamante, Ana Mendieta, Cindy Sherman, Adrian Piper, Sophie Calle, Patty Chang, James Luna and beyond. Each student in the class will be expected to participate in class dialogue, critiques and most importantly the presentation of new gestures. Each gesture
should be no-longer than 5 minutes and any media can be used to presented to the class (from video to live).

Attendance:

You will be expected to attend every class. If you have more than 2 unexcused absences, your final grade will drop 1/2 a letter for every additional unexcused absence. Two unexcused lateness will be considered an absence.

CATALOGUES AND BOOKS THAT ARE RECOMMENDED:

CATALOGUES:
Out of Actions (LA MoCA)
Outside the Frame: Performance and the Object (Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art)
Performance Art (edited by Roselee Goldberg)
Body and the East: Form the 60s to the Present, (Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia)

BOOKS:
Art Works: Perform, Jens Hoffmann and Joan Jonas
The Twentieth Century Performance Reader, eds. Michael Huley and Noel Witts
Performance, Marvin Carlson
Contract with the Skin, Kathy Odell
Performing the Body, Amelia Jones
The Explicit Body of Performance, Rebecca Schneider
Performance Art from Futurism to the Present, Roselee Goldberg
Happenings and Other Arts, ed Mary Ellen Sandford
Unmarked, Peggy Phelan
Acting Act: Feminist Performances, eds. Lynda Hart and Peggy Phelan
Let’s Get it On: The Politics of Black Performance, ed. Catherine Ugwu
Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas, ed. Coco Fusco
Greenwich Village 1963, Sally Banes
The Blurring of Art and Life, Alan Kaprow
Imaging Her Erotics, Carolee Schneeman
The Citizen Artist: An Anthology from High Performance Magazine
Liveness, Philip Auslander

CLASSES

Introduction to the Self(s):

A dialogue on the histories in Western Culture of the Selve(s) and the trajectories that potential gestures can follow during
the class.

(FIRST GESTURE): (Bit's & Pieces).

Select a body part that you feel best represents your "self." Create a performance
based on the selected body part. This first gesture will be presented to the class the following week.

Confessions of the Self.

Read: Confessions of the Self. The Confessions of St. Augustine Bishop of Hippo
http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/augconfessions/bk2.html#BOOKIICHAPI

BRING (FIRST GESTURE) DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.

(SECOND GESTURE): Confession.

Select a something that happened in your life that you felt or feel bad about and create
gesture that can frame it or amplify the gesture.

Oct 9 - Everyday Me.

DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.

Oct 11th - (THIRD GESTURE): Everyday Me

The banality of the everyday often offers a space for the "self." The "self" who fills out forms, rides elevators and pays bills.
Use an aspect of your "everyday self" to create a gesture.

Not I/Almost I/Another I

Read:

"Look At Me: Self-Portrait Photography After Cindy Sherman"
http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/lookatme.pdf

and

The Guise of Disguise
http://nyartsmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2744&Itemid=214

BRING ( THIRD GESTURE) DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.

(FORTH GESTURE): Someone Almost Like Me or Not Me.

Create a gesture that is a "mask" or a "disguise" that allows you to do or say things that you would never do as "you."

Skinning the Self

Read:Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art and the 1970s
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_3_87/ai_54099515

An esthetics of masochism?
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_4_92/ai_114924480

BRING (FOURTH GESTURE) DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.

(FIFTH GESTURE): Cutting the Self

Open a segment of skin (in whatever way you read this) or use your skin as a microscope to your self.
Try to get as deep or beneath the skin as is possible. (YOU WILL TWO CLASS SESSIONS TO DEVELOP THIS
GESTURE)

CONTINUE (FIFTH GESTURE) DEVELOPMENT

Objects Over Me

Read: "Miniature awakenings"

BRING (FIFTH GESTURE) DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.

SIXTH GESTURE): Object(s) as Self.

Create an object or objects that represent your "self."

M/F as a self.

Gender as Performance
http://www.theory.org.uk/but-int1.htm

Mathew Barney and KIein Bottle of Vaseline
http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/barney.pdf

BRING (FIFTH GESTURE) DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.

(SEVENTH GESTURE): Gender as Self.

Create a gesture that traces the condition of your "self" as gender.

Erotic Self

Some of my performances in retrospect
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0425/is_n4_v56/ai_20544730

BRING (SEVENTH GESTURE) DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.

(EIGHTH GESTURE) Erotic Self(s)

Create a gesture that traces, outlines or speaks about your "erotic self(s)."

(CONTINUE EIGHTH GESTURE)

(FINAL CLASS).
BRING (EIGHTH GESTURE) DOCUMENTATION TO CLASS. In class we will review and discuss everyone’s documentation.

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/self.html

Dominguez confirmed that students indeed have to be nude to pass the final.

"At the very end of the class, we've done several gestures, they have to nude gesture. The prompt is to speak about or do a gesture or create an installation that says, 'what is more you than you are.'"

He said that 20 students strip down, including him. He calls it a performance of self, in a dark room lit only by candlelight.

"It's a standard canvas for performance art and body art," Dominguez said.

“It is very all controlled," he added.

Dominguez said that students know what to expect from the first day of class.

"If they are uncomfortable with this gesture they should not take the class," Dominguez said bluntly.

The student’s mother countered that this was not true.

“Nothing was ever explained, nothing was ever stipulated prior to Thursday," she said.

In Dominguez’s 11 years teaching the class, he says he has never received a complaint.

The Chair of the Visual Arts Department, Dr. Jordan Crandall, provided 10News the following statement Monday. In it he states that the class is not a requirement for graduation and that students are not required to be nude. The statement reads:

“The concerns of our students are our department's first priority, and I’d like to offer some contextual information that will help answer questions regarding the pedagogy of VIS 104A.

“Removing your clothes is not required in this class. The course is not required for graduation.

“VIS 104A is an upper division class that Professor Dominguez has taught for 11 years. It has a number of prompts for short performances called “gestures.” These include "Your Life: With 3 Objects and 3 Sounds" and "Confessional Self," among others. Students are graded on the "Nude/Naked Self" gesture just like all the other gestures. Students are aware from the start of the class that it is a requirement, and that they can do the gesture in any number of ways without actually having to remove their clothes. Dominguez explains this – as does our advising team if concerns are raised with them. There are many ways to perform nudity or nakedness, summoning art history conventions of the nude or laying bare of one's "traumatic" or most fragile and vulnerable self. One can "be" nude while being covered.

“There are many comments from former students that are visible online. These comments clarify the matter quite directly. It is important to listen to students who have actually taken the class. Again, the concerns of our students are our department's first priority.”

Copyright 2015 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

http://www.10news.com/news/mom-outraged-her-daughter-is-asked-to-perform-naked-for-ucsd-art-class-final-050915

I do not see a problem with this teacher at all.

A...

[Brant Gaede]

I see a problem. The cost of college ratio to the quality of the course.

[moralist]

I list my lack of higher government education as a business asset.

Greg

[Jonathan]

Here's a wonderfully typical post from Louis Torres that I found from last year in the comments section following a WSJ-online article on Andrew Wyeth, interspersed with my analysis. I think it's the best post of his that I've seen which illustrates/reveals the irrationality, subjectivity, double standards and pompous anger of his -- and Kamhi's -- attitude toward interpreting and judging art.

Bruce Cole (whose writing on art I generally admire) presumes to tell the viewer what to think and feel regarding "the whiteness of the house" in Wyeth's "Evening at Kuerners."

Hahahaha!!! It is absolutely precious that Torres is upset about Bruce Cole's presuming "to tell the viewer what to think and feel" about the Wyeth painting, since that is precisely what Torres and Kamhi do all of the time! They always behave as if what they see, interpret and experience in a work of art, or what they fail to, is the universal, "objective," proper, and only true interpretation and experience! What's sauce for the goose is apparently not sauce for the gander!

It "stands out, but in an ominous sinister way," he writes, as if stating an incontrovertible fact. The painting "evokes a sense of dread." In whom?

Good question! But why is it that neither Torres nor Kamhi ever ask the same question when they are making assertions about what is contained and expressed in works of art?!! Why do they find it perfectly acceptable when they themselves treat their interpretations of artworks as statements of "incontrovertible facts"? Why is it that when they don't experience anything in an artwork, they declare that no one else does either? And yet Torres is upset about another art critic practicing the exact same method that he uses?

In Mr. Cole, it seems, and in Jamie Wyeth, who is said to find his father’s art 'terrifying.'" Not in me for one.

Here's the context from the article of the "terrifying" statement:

One of these, "Evening at Kuerners" (1970), depicts a house and outbuilding set in a barren landscape with leafless trees whose spiky, fingerlike branches claw the sky. In this penumbral world only the whiteness of the house, with its illuminated windows, stands out, but in an ominous, sinister way, rather like the Bates's home in "Psycho." The painting evokes a sense of dread also seen in several of the still lifes, including "Untitled" (1983), a disquieting portrayal of a shattered skull on a window ledge. Wyeth's artist son Jamie recognized this emotional substratum when he wrote that his father's art was "terrifying."

Anyway, I don't think it would come as a surprise to anyone that Torres doesn't experience in a work of art what most people do. With his track record (and Kamhi's) of demonstrating severe aesthetic limitations -- his lack of aesthetic sensitivity and his inability to experience what others experience with ease -- it should be quite expected that he would continue to be as incapable as always.

Quite the opposite, in fact. I sense dignity in the house, and an overall tranquility in the painting as a whole.

I've discussed Wyeth's work with a hell of a lot of people over many years, and the notion of its containing creepy and even "terrifying" content is very common. Wyeth's work is rustic and rusty, worn and creaky, sparse and reclusive. Most people describe it as giving the feeling of its being inbred, secretive, witchy, impoverished, xenophobic, and superstitious. Look at it this way: when viewing a Wyeth painting, ask yourself if you think it would be fun to take a bunch of kids trick-or-treating there, and if it might be a good spot to film a sequel to the Chainsaw Massacre films. Or, conversely, would you choose to pay for a bed-and-breakfast weekend there relaxing in the "dignity" and "tranquility"?

Usually, Torres and Kamhi are very quick to claim to speak for "ordinary people" and "average viewers" and such, but in this case, Torres seems to avoid accepting what the common take is on Wyeth. Why? Is it because he likes Wyeth's work, and, being a Rand acolyte, he needs to believe that any art that he likes must pass the Official Objectivist Approval Test? And therefore Wyeth's work cannot, must not, contain what everyone recognizes it as containing -- the opposite of what Rand advocated in art -- so therefore everyone but Torres must be wrong?

Ayn Rand argues that the psychological mechanism guiding such emotional responses to art is one's "sense of life." (See Ch. 3, "Art and Sense of Life," in 'What Art Is' for more. At Amazon.com search in the book's page for "the role that sense of life plays," retaining quotes.)

What a douche. In the above, in his haste to condemn others' "senses of life," and to parade his own as superior, Torres has misidentified what is going on. He has misidentified others' identifications of the content of works of art as statements of their "sense of life" responses. They did not offer sense of life judgments. They did not say whether or not they identified with or disliked the witchy vibe in Wyeth's work.

Now, it is very interesting that Torres would dare to cite Rand in his attempt to psychologically smear others as having inferior "senses of life" in regard to their identifying the content of Wyeth's work, especially since Rand herself would have agreed with those whom Torres is attempting to smear!

Additionally, she HATED the old and weathered, she DETESTED the cracked and faded, she LOATHED the humble "folks next door," small villages, and muddy colors, and she declared them to be examples of things that only people who have horrendous "senses of life" would enjoy and find comfort in! Rand would have blown 17 gaskets if she had heard that one of her followers, like Torres, claimed to be using her aesthetic theory when judging such depictions of shabbiness and decay as representing "dignity" and "overall tranquility."

J

[Jonathan]

Newberry (who now claims to be "an internationally-recognised artist") has recently taken to calling his work (and that of some of his friends) the "Neo-Sublime."

https://www.facebook.com/michael.newberry.12

http://www.michaelnewberry.com/bio/bio1.htm

...sometimes while begging for financial support:

https://www.patreon.com/newberry

Hahahaha!!!

He still believes that he's heroically rejecting Kant's allegedly evil concept of the Sublime, and engaging in an "epic pursuit" of his own morally virtuous version of the Sublime.

And he's still not offering an explanation for his blaming of Kant instead of the thinkers who had the same concept of the Sublime prior to Kant.

And he's still not showing any signs at all of actually understanding that very simple historical concept of the Sublime.

It just doesn't get any better than watching Newberry stubbornly tilting at his windmills. He's the gift that keeps giving.

J

[william.scherk]

Newberry (who now claims to be "an internationally-recognised artist") has recently taken to calling his work (and that of some of his friends) the "Neo-Sublime."

https://www.facebook.com/michael.newberry.12

http://www.michaelnewberry.com/bio/bio1.htm

One of the new artworks he is touting is part of a 'smoke series.' Here is one of them. I think it is beautiful. Abstract and beautiful. Neo-Sublime, I don't know.

[Jonathan]

One of the new artworks he is touting is part of a 'smoke series.' Here is one of them. I think it is beautiful. Abstract and beautiful. Neo-Sublime, I don't know.

I also think it's beautiful. But, would Kamhi and her universal "average viewer" be able to objectively identify its subject and meaning without having access to "outside considerations"? If the Rand-deformed spawn at OO were exposed to it without knowing that it was created by one of their elderly, fading brothers, would they hesitate for even a millisecond before reviling it and its creator for "disintegrating the mind" and turning people into "drooling monstrous degenerate mewling infants with empty drooling monstrous eye sockets," or whatever?

J

[Jonathan]

Here's a fun psychological study in Followers of Rand positively interpreting an artwork which they know to be created by someone friendly to Rand where they would have had a completely different interpretation if they hadn't known who created it, or if they had known that a philosophical/political enemy had created it:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204554858052581

It's a great example of commenters inventing what they want to find in the piece and ignoring what they don't want to see. It's a perfect example of their being purely subjective and arbitrary while pretending to be objective. And it's also a wonderful example of their shouting down valid, objective criticism, and intimidating critics into silence and into accepting the Objectivist bullies' subjective interpretation in place of their own objective observations.

If the work had been created by anyone who is not in Newberry's small circle of artist friends, Newberry would have been encouraging readers to focus on the importance of the contorted and unnatural pose, and to interpret it as representing the view that the essence of existence is pain and suffering, and that the artist values the idea of mankind being crushed and broken.

J

P.S. The commenter named Ifat Glassman is the student artist from OO whom I've mentioned before who was certain that I was just "making things up" when pointing out perspective errors that she couldn't see in a painting (not one of her own) which she had posted as an example of good art. Heh, the overly self-important do tend to congregate, don't they?

[william.scherk]

Here's a fun psychological study in Followers of Rand positively interpreting an artwork which they know to be created by someone friendly to Rand where they would have had a completely different interpretation if they hadn't known who created it, or if they had known that a philosophical/political enemy had created it:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204554858052581

It's a great example of commenters inventing what they want to find in the piece and ignoring what they don't want to see.

Here are some of the Facebook comments, with IDs obscured, except for those from the artist herself; the esthetic orgasms seem forced to me (except for the artist). It is significant that the comments do take measure of the contortions in the sculpture:

-- This is one of the most intense expressions I have seen in art. An incredible state of passion, and an astounding creative composition of the figure.

-- Ok I'm going to write about it some (what I think makes this pose so awesome).

-- The active part of the pose is the head and the arms because she is in a sort of a hunting position (that's how it seems to me) and the legs are left unconscious, like what happens when you put all your focus into something and let part of your body become unaware and frozen.

But in this case the legs are frozen in a very bold position, especially for a woman but at the same time this entire pose is a place of strength. She is contorted because she is hunting. So it makes the woman seem powerful enough to not be aware of or pay attention to any possible vulnerability that the position of her legs can create in a viewer. That's what's awesome about it. It shows a high degree of power.

-- I would have liked it if her head was just slightly a little more raised to make her look more active.

I bet this was impossible to hold for the model and will undoubtedly cause damages to the spine. Ouch. But what a work of art!!!

Also the contortion itself shows ability. It is the same deal with a cat about to pounce or a comic drawing of Spider-Man hanging from the ceiling. The combination of the relaxed and contorted shows a kind of strength.

-- You know I wonder how many people will get the meaning of this sculpture. It's frustrating when so few people do.

-- Bill, every artwork is a unique problem to solve. And Martine's takes us into Einstein territory

-- As someone who modelled extensively for Michael Newberry, and Martine Vaugel, and other brilliant artists, I can confirm that this would be an excruciating pose to sustain- but with good team work and excellent communication and respect between artist and model, it's possible.

-- Praying Mantis is about the delicious and excruciating pain of passion so intense that nothing else is present, including how painful the pose literally would be - it's at the limits of what a body can do.

-- Martine Vaugel hello you beautiful incredible people who actually write and think and see!! holy moly!...( yes I still say things like that when I'm excited and don't want to curse) 1st Michael... I love you. thank you so much for remembering me and my work in so many ways. I love you.

-- Martine Vaugel FOR the pose of this... it was 3 different poses... all based on the feeling. the angst and desire... and the abstraction of power that created this ... it was not a pose... but an incredible expression that had to come out.

But this isn't about just putting a body into an abstract contortion. It enhances the metaphor of a praying mantis, giving a clue that this might precluded a very intense mating ritual.

-- "What does the "uncomfortableness" of the position get across, in your analysis?"

-- The stride towards true individualism, expressing your soul, metaphysically unconcerned for society's values may come with pain in the struggle to achieve them. And it is very doubtful that they can be accomplished any other way.

[Jonathan]

It's so fun seeing these ridiculous people, who would mock others for "reading into" works of art, obviously starting with the desired positive judgment -- because the artist is known to be friendly to Objectivists and Objectivism -- and working back from there. It's like watching really, really bad cold reading.

Heh. "And Martine's takes us into Einstein territory."

HahahahaHawHawHaw!!!!

That's almost as funny as some of shit that Valliant wrote in PARC.

J

[william.scherk]

Jonathan -- I think Martine comes off the best of the bunch, sincere and passionate. I expect artists to be a bit kooky or super-individualistic or seemingly absurd-in-part, especially when giving verbal expression to their creative process.

But yeah, the fawning and verbal contortions are entertaining. These two are my favourites:

"[the pose] will undoubtedly cause damages to the spine"

"I can confirm that this would be an excruciating pose to sustain"

[Brant Gaede]

I hope the model didn't hurt herself--or is it rigor mortis?

--Brant

Pompeii comes to mind

[Jonathan]

Jonathan -- I think Martine comes off the best of the bunch, sincere and passionate. I expect artists to be a bit kooky or super-individualistic or seemingly absurd-in-part, especially when giving verbal expression to their creative process.

But yeah, the fawning and verbal contortions are entertaining. These two are my favourites:

"[the pose] will undoubtedly cause damages to the spine"

"I can confirm that this would be an excruciating pose to sustain"

In addition to Newberry's hilarious, grandiose appraisal of his own petty, pigheaded failure to understand the very simple concept of the Sublime as being an example of his engaging in an heroic, "epic pursuit," my favorite revelation from the discussion is that he equates "passion" with "excruciating pain." He calls such pain "delicious." How much hatred must a man have for existence in order to value excruciating pain? He's saying that to be "passionate" is to be needy, and that the intense pain of being needy is the best feeling that humans can experience. He's saying that he hates happiness and pleasure, and that they are just temporary, accidental states, because mankind was meant to suffer. And while taking such an ugly position, he has the gall to condemn Kant for ideas that he never held or believed!

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

Rand would have blown 17 gaskets if she had heard that one of her followers, like Torres, claimed to be using her aesthetic theory when judging such depictions of shabbiness and decay as representing "dignity" and "overall tranquility."

I'm not sure, but I think I recall mentions of Mary Ann Sures (then Rukavina) thus describing Wyeth's work in her early-'60s art course.

At any rate, I knew Objectivists who described Wyeth's work in such terms and who had Wyeth prints.

My own reaction to "Evening at Kuerners" is like Torres', not Cole's.

In general, I don't get a "creepy" feeling from Wyeth's work, though I can see why people might.

Ellen

[Jonathan]

Rand would have blown 17 gaskets if she had heard that one of her followers, like Torres, claimed to be using her aesthetic theory when judging such depictions of shabbiness and decay as representing "dignity" and "overall tranquility."

I'm not sure, but I think I recall mentions of Mary Ann Sures (then Rukavina) thus describing Wyeth's work in her early-'60s art course.

It's too bad that the Objectivist movement has used, and continues to use, a largely aural method of distribution. It's way behind the times, and destined to lose many potentially valuable resources. The benefit is that really dumb mistakes, and probably a few acts of downright viciousness, have also been quickly buried in the sands of time, which is probably the most important benefit to Objectivism's official "heirs."

At any rate, I knew Objectivists who described Wyeth's work in such terms and who had Wyeth prints.

Did Rand know about their positively appraising it? Is there any record of her commenting on Wyeth's work? Perhaps those of her followers who liked it had leapt before getting permission, just as fans of Parrish's work had?

My own reaction to "Evening at Kuerners" is like Torres', not Cole's.

In general, I don't get a "creepy" feeling from Wyeth's work, though I can see why people might.

"In general" I don't either. The witchy vibe is a part of it, not the entirety of it. As is true with any artist's work, there are many different vibes and possible interpretations. A painting can have "creepy" elements, and also have "dignified" and "tranquil" elements, all at the same time. Torres' and Cole's interpretations are each as valid as the other. Torres' tastes and interpretations aren't more valid or objective just because he needs to believe that they are.

J

[Brant Gaede]

My best guess is Rand wouldn't have much dumped on others in private having different views on art, especially music--as long as it wasn't folk music--except to say "not my sort of person." The more public the more absolutist she seemed to be. To well substantiate this would require a lot of work for I took no notes over the years. Frankly, I think this belongs in the it-does-not-really-matter category anyway. Generally, I think philosophy is fact following. I don't think facts are discovered through philosophy as such. I think philosophy is sanctioning and re-enforcing. To be more particular, there is no such thing as "Objectivist Esthetics" until we know a lot more about esthetics as in objectifying them. The Objectivist Ethics seem much better done and along, but again, too much too soon not in what was done but implicitly claimed--that they were effectively done--and with not one hint I can remember of differentiation betweem ethics and morality when there is hardly a complete over-lapping--and that's not all. As for Objectivist politics, it's more modest in its claims because the subject is easier, but too much damaged by utopianism. Not to say, btw, that Objectivist man isn't also ruined by utopianism. It's just not political utopianism.

--Brant