ObjectivismOnline Objectivist Opposes Objectivism!

[Jonathan]

Yeah, Rand said that a sense of life "is not a criterion of esthetic judgment."

And then she often proceeded to ignore her own stated position and make "objective" aesthetic and moral judgments based on her own sense of life responses, as well as on the artist's alleged sense of life, which she believed with absolute certainty that she was detecting in the artwork (while simultaneously scolding others that no one could know another's sense of life based on such limited information).

J

[caroljane]

I didn't know it then, but a man was waiting to kill me. He didn't know I was in New Jersey, but would have found me in LA.

--Brant

the roller coaster of life

OMG - this makes me shudder! That's the type of 'material' Hemingway could have used for a short story (I've recently reread "The Killers" and the impression still lingers ...)

You really lucked out!!

I didn't know it then, but a man was waiting to kill me. He didn't know I was in New Jersey, but would have found me in LA.

--Brant

the roller coaster of life

OMG - this makes me shudder! That's the type of 'material' Hemingway could have used for a short story (I've recently reread "The Killers" and the impression still lingers ...)

You really lucked out!!

Double shudder - why on earth would anybody want to kill a lovable guy like Brant?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's a question that cuts right to the heart of Rand's idea on aesthetics.

What is a normative abstraction?

I used to think I knew, but the more I delve into how the brain works, the more the idea seems to slip out of my grasp--sort of like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands underwater,

It's funny how it all seems to fall in place, though, once I peg the idea of normative abstraction to the concept of storyline. But as a standalone abstraction (like the abstraction of a chair, for instance), I'm finding it really hard to pin it down.

As we experience our conscious lives as story, I'm beginning to believe that storyline--as a frame or mental context--is the fundamental part of value judgments.

Even in harder things to pinpoint concretes like music. Notice how a progression of notes doesn't mean much until the person hearing them has learned a suitable musical vocabulary, so to speak, to hear them in an organized manner, and aural events (like a melody or a background) bounce around in his head--sort of like improvised counterpoint--with his personal stories of moments in his experience of living and/or thinking. Then music can have a tremendous impact on him. I believe this interplay is one of the key factors in causing emotions to flow. If this idea is on the money, it would easily explain why the same piece of music excites one person and is torture to another.

Michael

[Xray]

Rand did inject moral judgments into her theory of aesthetics when she analyzed the "sense of life" that a work of art supposedly projects. But she also distinguished this evaluation from the technical execution of a work of art. In this latter sense, we can have "good" art that exhibits a crappy sense of life.

I must confess skepticism about how Rand applied her notion of "sense of life" to art. Years ago I had some horrific online flamewars with Jeff Riggenbach on this very topic. I fear that I am too much of a "subjectivist" in such matters. But I am willing to stick my head out here, since JR no longer posts on OL.

I can vividly imagine 'Riggenbach's Wrath', lol

But I think your skepticism re Rand letting her moral ideals influence her judgement of art is justified.

For example, Rand intensely disliked Shakespeare, thinking of him as a "non-valuer" who "took no sides". Beethoven and Wagner were "without merit" because their work was "malevolent", Rembrandt's work she judged as "malevolent" too, and "without value". The French Impressionists were "without value"; the whole Impressionist school she labeled as "murky and unfocused". Bach, Mozart and Händel she dismissed as well. [source: B. Branden's book]

And Peikoff seems to have given away his Brahms records because Rand thought of this artist as "worthless".

[Brant Gaede]

I didn't know it then, but a man was waiting to kill me. He didn't know I was in New Jersey, but would have found me in LA.

--Brant

the roller coaster of life

OMG - this makes me shudder! That's the type of 'material' Hemingway could have used for a short story (I've recently reread "The Killers" and the impression still lingers ...)

You really lucked out!!

The first ten minutes of "The Killers" movie is pure Hemingway.

--Brant

[9thdoctor]

Rand did inject moral judgments into her theory of aesthetics when she analyzed the "sense of life" that a work of art supposedly projects. But she also distinguished this evaluation from the technical execution of a work of art.

Here's an example:

PLAYBOY: What about Nabokov?

RAND: I have read only one book of his and a half -- the half was Lolita, which I couldn't finish. He is a brilliant stylist, he writes beautifully, but his subjects, his sense of life, his view of man, are so evil that no amount of artistic skill can justify them.

[caroljane]

Rand did inject moral judgments into her theory of aesthetics when she analyzed the "sense of life" that a work of art supposedly projects. But she also distinguished this evaluation from the technical execution of a work of art.

Here's an example:

PLAYBOY: What about Nabokov?

RAND: I have read only one book of his and a half -- the half was Lolita, which I couldn't finish. He is a brilliant stylist, he writes beautifully, but his subjects, his sense of life, his view of man, are so evil that no amount of artistic skill can justify them.

Interesting. A novelist decides that novelistic skill is less important than sense of life and view of man...what is to be done with the evil novel then? Sounds positively Platonic.

Plato is said to have destroyed his own poetry and plays,in service of his higher views,

[Brant Gaede]

Rand did inject moral judgments into her theory of aesthetics when she analyzed the "sense of life" that a work of art supposedly projects. But she also distinguished this evaluation from the technical execution of a work of art.

Here's an example:

PLAYBOY: What about Nabokov?

RAND: I have read only one book of his and a half -- the half was Lolita, which I couldn't finish. He is a brilliant stylist, he writes beautifully, but his subjects, his sense of life, his view of man, are so evil that no amount of artistic skill can justify them.

Interesting. A novelist decides that novelistic skill is less important than sense of life and view of man...what is to be done with the evil novel then? Sounds positively Platonic.

Plato is said to have destroyed his own poetry and plays,in service of his higher views,

I think Rand generally over-used "evil," except she was a first-class polemicist. I'd have used "bad" here instead of "evil."

--Brant

polemicist third-class

[caroljane]

Rand did inject moral judgments into her theory of aesthetics when she analyzed the "sense of life" that a work of art supposedly projects. But she also distinguished this evaluation from the technical execution of a work of art.

Here's an example:

PLAYBOY: What about Nabokov?

RAND: I have read only one book of his and a half -- the half was Lolita, which I couldn't finish. He is a brilliant stylist, he writes beautifully, but his subjects, his sense of life, his view of man, are so evil that no amount of artistic skill can justify them.

Interesting. A novelist decides that novelistic skill is less important than sense of life and view of man...what is to be done with the evil novel then? Sounds positively Platonic.

Plato is said to have destroyed his own poetry and plays,in service of his higher views,

I think Rand generally over-used "evil," except she was a first-class polemicist. I'd have used "bad" here instead of "evil."

--Brant

polemicist third-class

I think you evade the issue though. Plato rejected art that excited the senses without reference to morality , and so did Rand,

[Brant Gaede]

Rand did inject moral judgments into her theory of aesthetics when she analyzed the "sense of life" that a work of art supposedly projects. But she also distinguished this evaluation from the technical execution of a work of art.

Here's an example:

PLAYBOY: What about Nabokov?

RAND: I have read only one book of his and a half -- the half was Lolita, which I couldn't finish. He is a brilliant stylist, he writes beautifully, but his subjects, his sense of life, his view of man, are so evil that no amount of artistic skill can justify them.

Interesting. A novelist decides that novelistic skill is less important than sense of life and view of man...what is to be done with the evil novel then? Sounds positively Platonic.

Plato is said to have destroyed his own poetry and plays,in service of his higher views,

I think Rand generally over-used "evil," except she was a first-class polemicist. I'd have used "bad" here instead of "evil."

--Brant

polemicist third-class

I think you evade the issue though. Plato rejected art that excited the senses without reference to morality , and so did Rand,

Morality is about control. So, Rand was a Platonist?

--Brant

[anthony]

So art should only be experienced as some unattainable floating abstraction?

It was Rand who brought it down to reality, for the common man's profit - necessitating style, content, and definitely, morality. It was the intelligentsia who Platonized art. "If you don't understand it, or hate its premises - well, you must be ignorant".

For bleak sense of life, Shakespeare's the best example I know. Life is long-suffering,

and then you die. Brilliant mind, the finest writing... and the message that we are

doomed before we start by Fate and human weakness.

It comes down to the viewer's sense of life too: you see yourself as insignificant, the world as a hell-hole and man as ridiculous, we have a match - Will's your guy.

Long before reading AR, he was never mine. Style and content the best, however a

shitty morality.

(J. and others have made some valid criticisms, but because of some dirty

bath-water, I'm not throwing out the baby. Fundamentally, Rand was spot-on.)

[BaalChatzaf]

, Shakespeare's the best example I know. Life is long-suffering,

and then you die.

That is the literal truth. What is the problem?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[anthony]

, Shakespeare's the best example I know. Life is long-suffering,

and then you die.

That is the literal truth. What is the problem?

Ba'al Chatzaf

This too, is a statement of a 'sense of life'. I know all about fatalistic Jewish angst, please believe me. With some dour Scots mixed in, I'm way ahead of you.

(Snowing here in Jo'burg, one-degree Cent at mid-day, so I'm in a Northern frame of mind.

It is fun, though!)

[BaalChatzaf]

, Shakespeare's the best example I know. Life is long-suffering,

and then you die.

That is the literal truth. What is the problem?

Ba'al Chatzaf

This too, is a statement of a 'sense of life'. I know all about fatalistic Jewish angst, please believe me. With some dour Scots mixed in, I'm way ahead of you.

(Snowing here in Jo'burg, one-degree Cent at mid-day, so I'm in a Northern frame of mind.

It is fun, though!)

Since when is facing facts "angst"? What is, is.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

, Shakespeare's the best example I know. Life is long-suffering,

and then you die.

That is the literal truth. What is the problem?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Whack off the first part of the statement, drive in and attach the truth, and you won't have a crappy generalization.

--Brant

mud to wallow in

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

After I started grasping the idea about story being fundamental to values, thus fundamental to art (even art that does not explicitly tell a story), I started finding all kinds of cool things.

 

Here is a good example from a recent TED talk. Tracy Chevalier shows how a story you resonate with, even if you create it, suddenly provides meaning--and lasting meaning at that--to a painting that means very little to the public at large. Even when the painting is a masterwork.

 

Let's be honest. How many masterworks are truly appreciated qua paintings by Joe Sixpack or Susie Secretary or Bill-the-Boss or Gary Geek or Sally Shopper or Charlie Couch Potato, etc.? I believe they mostly think masterworks are masterworks because other people say so, not because of anything deep resonating within them to the works.

 

Chevalier gave a funny description at the start of the talk. She gets afflicted with gallery fatigue after about 15 minutes and feels an ensuing tang of guilt. This is spot on from my experience and observation. Her solution is to focus on fewer paintings while letting her mind drift on storylines. In her case, this means things like thinking about the story of the artist and the model or what happens in the subject's world.

 

Reflecting on story is the way I have appreciated paintings for years. (btw - Chevalier is correct about story being the way humans think. Neuroscience is proving it.) Maybe I didn't think so much about the artist and model like Chevalier did with Vermeer, but I have certainly thought about different stories and slivers of stories as my mind drifted in front of a work. Many of these stories didn't even have anything to do with the world or subjects of the painting.

 

That's how I managed to appreciate the abstract paintings of my ex, Lenora. She had a beautiful abstract style, but she also painted representational works (she was quite good, in fact). I was simply unable to throw her abstract stuff in the Randian garbage bin of non-art or bad sense-of-life art or whatever. There was a hell of a lot more going on in her work and I am glad I had the good sense to use my own mind, seek my own stories, rather than adopt the Rand-As-Expert-Approver-And-Disapprover storyline of what to think about what I see in paintings.

 

From reading comments on Objectivist boards over several years, I see many people (not all) try to evaluate a work of art within that particular Randian storyline. I don't mean story like one that starts with, "Once upon a time..." This story starts with a person looking at a work of art and thinking something like, "Ayn Rand would have approved of this and she had her reasons..." (Or disapproved, or partially approved or whatever.) 

 

And off they go ferreting out, and commenting on, aspects of the work--or even making stuff up out of thin air--to add to that story, i.e., making it so Ayn Rand would have approved even more, or making it so they are absolutely certain Ayn Rand would have approved. (Or disapproved or whatever.)

 

Only after doing all that, they look at the painting and start entertaining other views (including their own visceral ones)--but now they are framed in a deeper "added value" meaning. The painting now belongs to a story they can understand. They have somewhere they can mentally fit the work and not feel like a nincompoop, especially if they don't resonate with it at all. 

 

Then some of them spoil what little there is in that by trying to feel what Rand would have felt, but that's another story for another frame. (Also, there are shattering conflicts when they resonate in a way that jumps outside the storyline, when that puts them on the dark side... oh... the inner turmoil... the agony...)

 

I find this whole process to be an odd form of self-obliteration while consciously trying to be individualistic. You know, trying to learn the rules and get it right. The thing that's all wrong with this is learning rules while not recognizing what the storyline is. Just stepping into it without really thinking about it.

 

Anyway, about the talk, I loved it.

 

After Tracy Chevalier's stories, I know I'll never look the same at Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring," Chardin's "Boy Building a House of Cards" or the anonymous Tudor portrait she examined. For the record, I do not recall ever seeing these last two before, so my first impression of them will always be wedded to this talk.

 

Storyline qua storyline, the idea of Vermeer having a clandestine affair with a maid--or maybe not, then capturing a piece of her conflicted feelings on the canvas while lending her one of his wife's earrings to use when modeling, is far more interesting to me than vaguely saying something about Vermeer's  rational psycho-epistemology and radiant austerity as he raises the perception of light to the level of concepts by contextualizing the brightest parts. 

 

(btw - That's pure Rand. Look it up.)

 

I used to say this kind of stuff--and believe it--but I don't even know what it means anymore. I do on the surface, of course, but no longer as an explanation of why a painting moves me or why it is great. It sounds pretentious, but I was sincere. Well, there is one level I do grok it as fundamental--and grok it perfectly. It is dialogue from a Rand-As-Expert-Approver-And-Disapprover storyline I used to carry around in my head. 

 

Now I prefer to let Vermeer be Vermeer and bring his work into my own stories. Granted, I now have a story I got from Chevalier and it's a pretty cool one at that. But I also have others that are quite personal to me. Oh, I'll try to learn more details, think about light and technique and historical context and so forth so I can deepen my appreciation, but now I seek details to enhance my story wedded to the painting, not Rand's.

 

Now, rather than seeing a painting as as a visual form of concept formation, I vastly prefer Chevalier's idea that a great painting leaves you with a feeling of something not quite complete to prompt you to bring your own stories into it.

 

A great painting makes you think--and think in stories.

 

And, please. I'm not saying this to bash Rand. Her inner storyline, including setting her character as an expert in stuff where she had little knowledge, allowed her to create her magnificent novels. Looking at the outcome, there is nothing wrong with that and everything right with it. My thing is that I am not a writer of Ayn Rand novels, so I have learned to be selective about which parts of her storyline I carry, especially which I used to carry and now have to jettison...

 

I'm posting a great talk below. Enjoy.

 

My evil agenda?

 

Heh heh heh...

 

I hope this shakes some hardening of the categories premises up and prompts people to think in directions that enrich their life-affirming individuality as they entertain great stories...

 

 

Michael

[Xray]

Rand did inject moral judgments into her theory of aesthetics when she analyzed the "sense of life" that a work of art supposedly projects. But she also distinguished this evaluation from the technical execution of a work of art.

Here's an example:

PLAYBOY: What about Nabokov?

RAND: I have read only one book of his and a half -- the half was Lolita, which I couldn't finish. He is a brilliant stylist, he writes beautifully, but his subjects, his sense of life, his view of man, are so evil that no amount of artistic skill can justify them.

It would interest me whether the above allows the inference that Rand neither regarded Lolita as a great work of literature, nor Nabokov as a great artist because, in her opinion, he did not "project and concretize the value goals of man's life. This is the essence of the Romantic school of literature, which has all but vanished from today's scene." (Ayn Rand 1964 PLAYBOY interview)

http://www.ellenspla...et/ar_pboy.html

[Xray]

(J. and others have made some valid criticisms, but because of some dirty

bath-water, I'm not throwing out the baby. Fundamentally, Rand was spot-on.)

The real issue here may be the bathtub: If it is used like an 'ideological vessel' where it is suggested that works of literature/visual art/music which don't praise certain moral values do not qualify as 'valuable' art, I'd opt for not using that kind of 'bathtub' at all ...

[syrakusos]

After I started grasping the idea about story being fundamental to values, thus fundamental to art (even art that does not explicitly tell a story), I started finding all kinds of cool things. ... Tracy Chevalier shows how a story you resonate with, even if you create it, suddenly provides meaning ...

From reading comments on Objectivist boards over several years, I see many people (not all) try to evaluate a work of art within that particular Randian storyline. I don't mean story like one that starts with, "Once upon a time..." This story starts with a person looking at a work of art and thinking something like, "Ayn Rand would have approved of this ...

I had two classes in art history in college and the first was the better, though less technical, of the two. That first was as a series of guest lectures from an English lit professor to our honors English class. The guest lecturer was only passionate about at, not a technical artist. The second class was taught by an art studio professor who had to teach art history. That class taught me a lot about how to read a painting, how they are made, what is intended, etc., etc., but the first class was all about the story.

I believe that this is what was - maybe always was and is - intended. They are not pictures, like snapshots, but novels and poems in oil on canvas.

[caroljane]

"This too, is a statement of a 'sense of life'. I know all about fatalistic Jewish angst, please believe me. With some dour Scots mixed in, I'm way ahead of you.

(Snowing here in Jo'burg, one-degree Cent at mid-day, so I'm in a Northern frame of mind.

It is fun, though!)"

O god how I envy you. Having just survived another day of the ten-tonne boiling sauna that passes for air here, I would kill for a snowflake.

Angstily and Dourly,

Carol

[Dan Haggerty]

"This too, is a statement of a 'sense of life'. I know all about fatalistic Jewish angst, please believe me. With some dour Scots mixed in, I'm way ahead of you.

(Snowing here in Jo'burg, one-degree Cent at mid-day, so I'm in a Northern frame of mind.

It is fun, though!)"

O god how I envy you. Having just survived another day of the ten-tonne boiling sauna that passes for air here, I would kill for a snowflake.

Angstily and Dourly,

Carol

I'd complain about the heat too but I know I'd eat those words come winter, so now I wait for fall and the ability to sleep with the windows open.

[anthony]

.

(Snowing here in Jo'burg, one-degree Cent at mid-day, so I'm in a Northern frame of mind.

It is fun, though!)"

O god how I envy you. Having just survived another day of the ten-tonne boiling sauna that passes for air here, I would kill for a snowflake.

Angstily and Dourly,

Carol

Carol,

You are a hardy breed, you far Northers. This aberrational weather we are seeing (about one day every 10-15 years) is great as a change - but snow and darkness endlessly for months would be bloody awful. It's back to normal now, with blue skies along with the low temperatures.

Never mind, you will have all the snowflakes you'll need soon, and we can have back our sun we lent you.

(These heavy snows across Southern Africa - what will those Global Cooling Denialists say about that?!!)

[caroljane]

FRATERNAL ORDER OF THE SACRED IGLOO Local 13

Office of the Grand Shaman

Dear Brother Tony,

Hope you enjoyed the shout-out we gave you from the Weather Manipulation workshop at the Sweat Lodge!

ISS,

Nanook

[Jonathan]

After I started grasping the idea about story being fundamental to values, thus fundamental to art (even art that does not explicitly tell a story), I started finding all kinds of cool things.

Here is a good example from a recent TED talk. Tracy Chevalier shows how a story you resonate with, even if you create it, suddenly provides meaning...

Thanks for the fun post, MSK.

I think I've probably mentioned Sophie Matisse's work many times here in the past, but I thought that I'd do so again because her series of paintings called "Be Back in 5 Minutes," which is a collection of paintings of other artists' famous paintings minus the people, adds a deeper sense of reality to the "story" approach to viewing paintings, at least it does for me.

J

[caroljane]

I just something on Oonline that made me mad, "Obama vs my grandfather", saying there is an enormous difference between people who think build create etc and those who do not. This simplistic them-us view seems to be what OOers crave but it just does not hold up in today's world, if it ever did. Argh.