anonrobt

Agree - with the music being the 'words' of the play, using auditory stimuli to configure the emotional responses originally entailed by singing...

All of the images that I posted are basically as I found them on the web, and are the full images of the artworks, with the possible exception that in reducing them and placing them side by side into the format the I chose, I may have shaved off two or three millimeters from some of the images' edges. There is nothing missing to provide context that will help you to see some sort of story in them. There are no small details that you're not seeing that would turn the images into the type of blunt visual literature that would meet your Objectivist expectations. So, since you don't appear to be capable of objectively identifying any of the "artists' meanings" that the images communicate, or the artists' "senses of life" as revealed in their art, or the "metaphysical value-judgments" that the images reveal, or which artists believe in volition and mankind's ability to achieve his goals and which are determinists who believe that mankind is fated to defeat and despair, then apparently all of the images, including the realistic ones, are "gibberish" -- very much like the music and architecture that I've asked you and hundreds of other Objectivists to objectively explain the meanings of. There sure is a lot of stuff that doesn't qualify as art according to Objectivist theories, eh? But, hey, let's cling to those theories anyway! J Oh, a few things could be said, despite them being too small to include telling details... To begin with, there is a difference between a work done with contemplation in mind and one done as a recorder - for despite the advent of photography to remove the recorder mode which inflicted artists from millenia ago, many artists never grasped the freedom gained and only intuited the contemplation in their preferences of what was wished to be painted... Given that, tho, one can note the top left and bottom left are formal floral arrangements, which in itself reflect a consensus of humanity being important, and that structure or orderliness is an attribute consequence.... the same can be said of the second down and the fourth, as these, too, reflect humanity's presence - the one being a garden and the other cultivated roses, and indeed the garden one evokes the emotion of gaiety and festive delight, tho not too much as the cropped universe only alludes to humanity by what it is and not by an overtness... the impressionist forest scene, however, involves nothing human - its universe is 'manless', yet even here it shows a point of upliftedness with the solo tree in the clearing, like a ballerina pirouetting on the floor, despite the subdued quietedness possibly pointing to the lessening of optimism as fall is preferred to, say, spring... the fall leaves, full of blemishes and deliberately so close cropped, have the same sense of decay... The ones on the right leave little emotion other than the so-called psychological ones of color responses, best viewed in the one across from the leaves - the brightness of a drunken festivity - and the Pollock, bleary dismalness of low chroma best suited as a rug decorative but nothing more [unless perhaps in a psychiatrist office as a case study], or the second down as perhaps a tile design... indeed, the tree on the left side is so abstracted and so emphasizing chaos it might as well be a pattern for use too...

I trust these will later be able to be read by those unable to attend?

I would think art to be very boring, kind of like "ooh, what a lovely color to go over the couch," if these kinds of concepts weren't part of it. And these kinds of ideas have been around a long time, for example, in religious art like Christ on the Cross. I'm not suggesting that art should be meaningless to us, that we shouldn't have profound responses to it, or that we should treat it like choosing a fabric color for a couch. The point is that neither the still life paintings nor the abstract paintings that I posted communicate objectively identifiable "artists' meanings," or the artists' "metaphysical value-judgments," or the artists' views on free will. The representational images do not have meanings which are any more "intelligible," as Rand uses the term, than the abstract images. J Other than the top left and bottom left, the others seem to be clips rather than the full painting shown, so of course, along with them being too small to see the details, grasping their meanings may be difficult... as for such as Pollock and Kandinsky, makes ok rug patterns and/or other decorative uses, but not as fine art, any more than gibberish makes for literature...

P.S. I also wanted to note for the record that I've officially accepted the Lord back into my life and have become a Christian. This past week I've been listening to Mario Lanza singing I'll Walk With God, because it's good, proper, objectively superior music, and it has convinced me to walk with God from this day on. I'll lean on Him forever, and He'll forsake me never. I'm not so sure yet that I'm willing to let His hand near my throne or rod, but other than that, I'm now totally dedicated to loving God and His boy Jesus and all that, thanks to listening to the right kind of music. As Michael Valentine Smith would say - I Am God... so GROK...

thought had been listed on this way way back, but if so, no longer remember under what name... and yes, forgot of this place until reminded me by Stephen...

A few comments of this abruptly stopped thread... indeed, the first is the wonder of its abruptness, aside from the crass cross bickering, for there is much left in the balance of discussion... For one, there is a strangeness to me of the face supposedly being 'hidden' - when in fact it is not, and to the extent it seems so is that the perspective of one seeing this sculpture is the 'looking up' one that is not a familiar one in this day and age, and indeed - to a number even in here it seems - an insulting perspective one is induced to doing... how odd, from one who purports to the heroic, the uplifting - purports, because the given answer is to bury it BENEATH the level of the viewer, so that it becomes the viewer who possesses the superlative in the relationship... The hands, tho, are the most remarkable of this sculpture - and tho has been remarked by two women as meriting comment, has austidiously been avoided... the whole figure is a frozen moment in time, when a decision has been rendered, an 'enlightenment' of sorts, a 'conclusion' reached, one indeed of arching importance - an importune moment - in which the smacking of the one hand into the palm of the other is of great significance, the "raison d'etre" of the sculpture's being, in fact... and the response has been as if it were an acting of vulgerness... Coupling that with the so-called emphasis of the genital only serves to show the innerness of those who dispairingly see this part of the sculpture as 'kitsch' and 'vulger' in addition to the hands... the glory of this work is that, in a rare moment, someone was willing to glorify the HUMAN - not the nude human, but the NAKED one, and THAT is the unforgivable 'sin' committed... And as for the 'pigeon-toedness' - as mentioned, this is a moment frozen in time, including a turning point in motion, a further metaphoric playing of the theming in this work... There is more on this - but this should be enough to take another look-see.. Anonrobt ........... www.visioneerwindows.blogspot.com

Considering how you are all viewing Linda Mann's works, what would you consider of these - www.visioneerwindows.blogspot.com ? As for her works as I see them - for one, despite an artist claiming there is no symbolism involved in the objects presented in the works, all art as such deal with symbols as a consequence of their being selected from their fundamentality as worthy of being important enough to present [as opposed to being not included - the 'selective re-presentation' aspect] ... consequently, her shapes as such imply a purity in forms which, thru the detailing, ties into reality as elevating the seeming common into a rarified universality...