Apples - Rand on Still Life Paintings, Plus

[Ellen Stuttle]

I'm glad you saw the sarcasm, which should have lead you to what is self-evident. The Cyrus illustrations are not art. They are depictions of somebody else's written creation, and lacking any but the most naif stylization. i.e. illustrations.

[....]

Oh, Lord. Worm, worm, worm, and then give another of your airy-empyrean speeches. Anything to get off the hook, while proclaiming the self-evidence of your perceptions and refusing to provide any example which could give a glimmer of a clue to those not possessed of your lofty insight.

Ellen

[anthony]

One needs examples because one can't see for oneself and think for oneself - and find rational value for oneself.

At the risk, always, of innocent error.

For all Rand's apparent authoritarianism, her intent was the opposite: she spent energy on portraying a top-down view of the abstract principles of art and its essentiality to independent minds. I have all through tried to stay true to that vision. However, begin bottom-up with what she opined on artist so-and-so, and you get stuck there, forever, it seems. To get past Rand, you have to go through her.

Ellen, you have my opinion of the Cyrus illustrations, what more do you want?

Oh yes - "proof by example"...

Apart from Brant, no matter our disagreements, no one else in this discussion has been as candid and forthcoming as I.

[Brant Gaede]

I'm glad you saw the sarcasm, which should have lead you to what is self-evident. The Cyrus illustrations are not art. They are depictions of somebody else's written creation, and lacking any but the most naif stylization. i.e. illustrations.

Second, as you point out, somebody doing something is not sufficient evidence of man being able and equipped to reach goals in a world full of promise and possibility i.e. a man of volitional consciousness.

I have "thus far refused" to give examples -- because the concepts and spirit of what art 'means' have not the least purchase here.

By no means every picture can be categorised in such broad terms as Romanticist/Naturalist (and the couple of dozen paintings that are powerful to me, don't always include the figures of men and women, and my choice may be surprising to some).

But it's by the way, what I value: find your own values - but I only add that it should be truthfully of value to one, selfishly, for as much as possible in recognition of what is there in the picture, disavowing all other influence by others. As one tries to do with any existents in reality.

Art: If you want to say what is and isn't "art" you need a definition to refer to. Rand had one, one might take issue with, but it's simpler to say by way of another way that if you think it's art it's art and if you think you're an artist you're an artist. This way would-be authority figures have no authority to exercise, including Ayn Rand. I say the Cyrus drawings are art. This puts me on exactly the same footing as your they "are not art." This leaves me free to create and/or consume--most importantly create--what I think is art without any busy-body, wrong-headed intrusions from Ayn Rand or you or anybody else. If you delude yourself with Randian strictures and try to write a great or even good novel or paint a painting you'll end up with imitative mediocrity and silly things not bad enough to make it into "The Museum of Bad Art." (The basic criterion for any art getting into there is it has to be "an earnest attempt to make an artistic statement.")

There's a place for a master of good taste in a culture but no place for objective should be, ought to be authority in art. You need to strip away Rand's authority and deal with what's left qua esthetics. Esthetics plus authority destroys esthetics and no art critic is better than a second-hand esthetician. That means me too when I evaluate a work of art even for my own private, personal information. I am not an esthetician--a profession unto itself--and I don't presuppose to put my tastes into anyone else's head. An esthetician explains what is, not what should be. That most art might be crap done by crapy artists isn't my concern. I just don't want the artists I do like not to have seen the light of day because they let themselves be crapped on through ignorance by crappy art critics or estheticians. There is good reason Toohey couldn't get inside Roark's head and fuck him up--Roark didn't think of him. It's too bad Rand decided to be something of a Toohey herself latter on.

On this thread you have three people chewing you up one leg and down the other and I'm one of them. Jonathan can be quite nasty which might explain your defensiveness for you've made yourself impregnable to anything but floating abstraction criticisms to match up with your own floating abstractions on art. But floating abstractions cannot counter other floating abstractions so you're home free as long as you maintain your frontage. What's characteristic of OL is nobody gets away with BS even if a BSer gets away with being a BSer. Both the former and the latter are true of you if only respecting art. The tragedy of it all is you're a real nice guy. Nobody, though, has managed to stick around here just by being nice. I'm nice. Ellen's nice but less nice than I am. Jonathan's not nice if not nice is needed to get his point(s) across, at least for others if not you. If you add BS to your nice you get to stay and we get to keep chewing on what you say. It could be a type of sado-masochism, especially between you and Jonathan. (I know, I know. Psychologizing is not allowed in Objectivism, although that didn't stop Rand. Now both you and Jonathan can chew on me, especially if Jonathan needs some boredom relief from chewing on you.)

This whole thread is an example of last-worditis. If the three of us would stop responding to you you would stop writing about art except for ineffective forays here and there, but we're all having too much fun--even you.

--Brant

[Francisco Ferrer]

Mises wrote,

All judgments of value are personal and subjective. There are no judgments of value other than those asserting I prefer, I like better, I wish.

It cannot be denied by anybody that various individuals disagree widely with regard to their feelings, tastes, and preferences and that even the same individuals at various instants of their lives value the same things in a different way. In view of this fact it is useless to talk about absolute and eternal values.

This does not mean that every individual draws his valuations from his own mind. The immense majority of people take their valuations from the social environment into which they were born, in which they grew up, that moulded their personality and educated them. Few men have the power to deviate from the traditional set of values and to establish their own scale of what appears to be better and what appears to be worse.

What the theorem of the subjectivity of valuation means is that there is no standard available which would enable us to reject any ultirnate judgment of value as wrong, false, or erroneous in the way we can reject an existential proposition as manifestly false. It is vain to argue about ultimate judgments of value as we argue about the truth or falsity of an existential proposition. Theory and History

With that in mind, art, literary and music theory can discuss color, line, shape, structure, rhythm, harmony, influences, etc., but the value of a particular work is not derived from any logical demonstration. How can one prove that green is better than purple, that round is better than square?

I share some of Rand's enthusiasms: the Classical and Renaissance periods, Michelangelo and Vermeer, Hugo and Rostand. But I would never presume to declare that the works of the Romantics Géricault and Delacroix are intrinsically superior to those of Rothko or Pollack, even though the latter leave me cold.

Moreover, I am distrustful of any theorist who can't find a kind word for Rembrandt, Shakespeare, or Beethoven.

Then when I see her followers adoringly link to sentimental paintings that offer what Walter Benjamin called "instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort," I have to wonder if those followers see the same thing that I see in Rand's art.

[anthony]

Mises wrote,

All judgments of value are personal and subjective. There are no judgments of value other than those asserting I prefer, I like better, I wish.

It cannot be denied by anybody that various individuals disagree widely with regard to their feelings, tastes, and preferences and that even the same individuals at various instants of their lives value the same things in a different way. In view of this fact it is useless to talk about absolute and eternal values.

This does not mean that every individual draws his valuations from his own mind. The immense majority of people take their valuations from the social environment into which they were born, in which they grew up, that moulded their personality and educated them. Few men have the power to deviate from the traditional set of values and to establish their own scale of what appears to be better and what appears to be worse.

What the theorem of the subjectivity of valuation means is that there is no standard available which would enable us to reject any ultirnate judgment of value as wrong, false, or erroneous in the way we can reject an existential proposition as manifestly false. It is vain to argue about ultimate judgments of value as we argue about the truth or falsity of an existential proposition. Theory and History

With that in mind, art, literary and music theory can discuss color, line, shape, structure, rhythm, harmony, influences, etc., but the value of a particular work is not derived from any logical demonstration. How can one prove that green is better than purple, that round is better than square?

I share some of Rand's enthusiasms: the Classical and Renaissance periods, Michelangelo and Vermeer, Hugo and Rostand. But I would never presume to declare that the works of the Romantics Géricault and Delacroix are intrinsically superior to those of Rothko or Pollack, even though the latter leave me cold.

Moreover, I am distrustful of any theorist who can't find a kind word for Rembrandt, Shakespeare, or Beethoven.

Then when I see her followers adoringly link to sentimental paintings that offer what Walter Benjamin called "instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort," I have to wonder if those followers see the same thing that I see in Rand's art.

I have much agreement with your general view, though I'm not as familiar with some of the artists-writers you are.

I'm mainly interested in the Mises piece. I wonder if he distinguishes properly between each individual as the *subject* of his own life - and *subjective* valuation. His explanation looks - well, facile to me. "All judgments of value are personal and subjective".

That's one distinction - because "personal", does not equate with "subjective", I believe.

So, I love Jill, you love Mary - is subjective? You like Beethoven, I like Mozart - similarly?.

You say tomayto, I say tomahto?

All subjective preferences? I've called it universalist -even perfectionist- as opposed to objective. Jill is not objectively 'better' than Mary. Nor is one or other a subjective choice: it all stems from misinterpreting objective and subjective.

What it is I think, is hierarchical and contextual. You value (i.e. identify, make conscious, care for and pursue) love, intimacy and companionship - objectively, as I do. On the next level, each particular woman is of objective value to each of us, as the personification of that primary, objective value.

The context is the individual's life, knowledge, needs and rationality - at the time of making a choice and sustaining it.

So with the musical values.

The ultimate objective value is each person's life and thriving, and all the rest descends from that.

Also, I see some of Mise's determinism, as you have noted before.

It is surprising to me, still. Though he qulaifies it with "Few men have the power to deviate from the traditional set,,," OK, what about them? If some do, why can't all?

[Brant Gaede]

An "objective value" to a particular person's life might be suicide.

If you want objectivity in values you can objectify them for man--the idea--not men or a man except as they value values for man. Thus this planet earth is an objective value as is art, food, water, shelter, companionship, etc. You can then posit what in art would be of objective value for man, but not for me or my own valuing. Not even for thee. Well, you can--you'd just be wrong.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Apart from Brant, no matter our disagreements, no one else in this discussion has been as candid and forthcoming as I.

Hate to tell you this, but you're right, not about me but you. We see right through you. You just see bullies bullying. What you think you are getting is what you want. The question is whether you consciously know it?

--Brant

[anthony]

Suicide, by definition, is anti-life and anti-thriving. Life then, has no objective value.

[anthony]

Apart from Brant, no matter our disagreements, no one else in this discussion has been as candid and forthcoming as I.

Hate to tell you this, but you're right, not about me but you. We see right through you. You just see bullies bullying. What you think you are getting is what you want. The question is whether you consciously know it?

--Brant

I know what I'm getting, and when it becomes sacrificial, it will end.

The ideas matter first to me - and second that I've maybe challenged some thinking - as I likewise enjoy (amicable) challenges myself. After dozens of posts, it says plenty to me that nobody has seen anything useful in them to comment on favorably. I know I haven't always been wrong. And even wrong, I'm always original.

[william.scherk]

I have "thus far refused" to give examples -- because the concepts and spirit of what art 'means' have not the least purchase here.

By no means every picture can be categorised in such broad terms as Romanticist/Naturalist (and the couple of dozen paintings that are powerful to me, don't always include the figures of men and women, and my choice may be surprising to some).

I don't see the downside of posting images of art, images that illustrate a point, a definition, an argument. It seems a little odd to foreswear illustrations from the get-go, lay down a Hell No to using powerful means of communication.

I think your points, definitions, and arguments would gain strength when supported by actual pieces of art. A visual example adds heft and weight, adds instances of what you are trying to illustrate only by words ...

Is it that you think only a minefield awaits you, a spiked pit-trap, a blind alley where you might be cudgeled or otherwise abused? if you posted, say, a canvas from an undeniably Romanticist/Romantic artist, what is the worst thing that could happen? I figure that you have endured the crashing of the waves upon your argument quite well so far, neither devolving into Phil-ism nor DeVoonism. I bet you can easily select and upload a picture that exemplifies your views -- or poses a challenge to your collocutors -- and easily dodge the cudgels that await. How much worse could the figurative beating be, anyway?

One needs examples because one can't see for oneself and think for oneself - and find rational value for oneself.

At the risk, always, of innocent error.

[...]

Ellen, you have my opinion of the Cyrus illustrations, what more do you want?

Oh yes - "proof by example"...

"One needs examples because one can't see for oneself"? But see what? Find rational value in which thing? Error of what kind, made by whom and how? I just don't see giving examples as a dangerous thing to do, dangerous to reason, to analysis, to discourse.

If posting an image is not gonna happen, as a point of principle, well, too bad. I think you have already passed the point of maximum danger with regard to harsh and unpleasant criticism. Posting an example of a rip-roaringly right Romantic canvas that turns your crank might inform the argument and turn it in a good direction. Illustrations can sometimes punch through the verbiage and instantiate the abstract -- performing the 'teachable moment.'

Then when I see her followers adoringly link to sentimental paintings that offer what Walter Benjamin called "instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort," I have to wonder if those followers see the same thing that I see in Rand's art.

I have been reading Jonathan's interactions with Objectivish Arts Eggheads for a few years. He (and since departed OLer Dragonfly) sometimes illustrated the category 'objecti-kitsch.'

Here is an example from the Quent Cordair Fine Art gallery, which promises "The Finest in Romantic Realism." The piece is "Yes" by artist Danielle Anjou. It illustrates for me the neck-snapping awfulness to be found in the genre.

Edited July 16, 2014 by william.scherk

[Brant Gaede]

Suicide, by definition, is anti-life and anti-thriving. Life then, has no objective value.

But the suicide could be. Galt would have killed himself if Dagney were tortured.

--Brant

or a cancer victim in intolerable and unending pain

[Brant Gaede]

I'm always original.

Not when you repeat yourself.

--Brant

don't say it again

[Brant Gaede]

Do people buy this on-the-face-of-it crap? I guess so or Cordair wouldn't be selling it. One thing about Rand, though--I can't imagine her liking this kind of thing either. Her kitsch was way, way above this kitsch.

--Brant

_______________________________

\WS:

I have been reading Jonathan's interactions with Objectivish Arts Eggheads for a few years. He (and since departed OLer Dragonfly) sometimes illustrated the category 'objecti-kitsch.'

Here is a example from the Quent Cordair Fine Art gallery, which promises "The Finest in Romantic Realism." The piece is "Yes" by artist Danielle Anjou. It illustrates for me the neck-snapping awfulness to be found in the genre.

[Francisco Ferrer]

I have much agreement with your general view, though I'm not as familiar with some of the artists-writers you are.

I'm mainly interested in the Mises piece. I wonder if he distinguishes properly between each individual as the *subject* of his own life - and *subjective* valuation. His explanation looks - well, facile to me. "All judgments of value are personal and subjective".

That's one distinction - because "personal", does not equate with "subjective", I believe.

So, I love Jill, you love Mary - is subjective? You like Beethoven, I like Mozart - similarly?.

You say tomayto, I say tomahto?

All subjective preferences? I've called it universalist -even perfectionist- as opposed to objective. Jill is not objectively 'better' than Mary. Nor is one or other a subjective choice: it all stems from misinterpreting objective and subjective.

What it is I think, is hierarchical and contextual. You value (i.e. identify, make conscious, care for and pursue) love, intimacy and companionship - objectively, as I do. On the next level, each particular woman is of objective value to each of us, as the personification of that primary, objective value.

The context is the individual's life, knowledge, needs and rationality - at the time of making a choice and sustaining it.

So with the musical values.

The ultimate objective value is each person's life and thriving, and all the rest descends from that.

Also, I see some of Mise's determinism, as you have noted before.

It is surprising to me, still. Though he qulaifies it with "Few men have the power to deviate from the traditional set,,," OK, what about them? If some do, why can't all?

Mises's "Few men . . ." statement is part of the idea that, to a great extent, our preferences are products of a wider cultural setting.

If you prefer "universalist -even perfectionist" to objective, or if you insist that the personal is not the subjective, it's all the same to me. I still have not seen Rand or anyone else present a logical argument that shows Symphony (or Painting or Novel) X is "better," more "valid," more in touch with the "human spirit," or more "ideal" than Symphony Y.

Suicide, by definition, is anti-life and anti-thriving. Life then, has no objective value.

But life for people in certain situations is unending pain. That's why tragedy has a distinguished status in literature: it shows how men might (even ought) to behave in conditions that are a far remove from the ideal.

[anthony]

Oh, death can be an objective value, too. But everything else surely presupposes the -at least, implicit- choice, life.

[Ellen Stuttle]

One needs examples because one can't see for oneself and think for oneself - and find rational value for oneself.

Great. So if a reader can't figure out what the f you think volition in a painting looks like if you won't give an example, the reader can't think for him/herself.

You're avoiding again, Tony. Par, par, par for the course.

To get past Rand, you have to go through her.

Rand has never been anywhere as far as my own views on aesthetics are concerned, or my reactions to art. She's to be ignored in those respects. The interest to me is the weirdness of her theory. There's also the sadness of seeing her effect on people who take her views of art seriously.

Ellen, you have my opinion of the Cyrus illustrations, what more do you want?

See above. An example of a painting in which you think volition IS displayed.

Apart from Brant, no matter our disagreements, no one else in this discussion has been as candid and forthcoming as I.

So candid and forthcoming, looks like you'll hide forever.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

How about this painting, Tony?

Does this display "volitional consciousness" according to you?

Corpus Hypercubus

by Salvador Dali

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Then when I see her followers adoringly link to sentimental paintings that offer what Walter Benjamin called "instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort," I have to wonder if those followers see the same thing that I see in Rand's art.

I've wondered about that many times. I think that generally people who become Objectivists do not see in Rand's art what I do.

I loved Atlas Shrugged as literature. I was fascinated by her skill in putting something like that together. Also fascinated by what started seeming to me from fairly early in the book a naivety.

I didn't even realize the first time through that she took herself seriously as a philosopher.

Ellen

[Jonathan]

The Cyrus illustrations are not art.

Why? Because you arbitrarily assert that they're not?

I think you've misunderstood Rand's position on the subject of illustrations, and you're being mistakenly Obedient to it. She believed that commercial or educational illustrations were not art -- those whose purpose was to sell products or to visually demonstrate a utilitarian process. She did not believe that drawings contained in short stories and graphic novels were not art.

So, once again we're back to the issue of your lacking any proof for your arbitrary assertions. Objectively prove that drawings contained in a short story are not art.

They are depictions of somebody else's written creation...

Is today the first time that you're being exposed to the idea that individuals can collaborate on a work of art? Did you not know that words and images can be combined from different individuals? In addition to illustrated texts, other examples would include movies, music videos, symphonies, plays, musicals, etc. Are you really just now discovering that individuals with similar tastes and "views of existence" can work together to artistically express their similar tastes and views?!!!

...and lacking any but the most naif stylization. i.e. illustrations.

Didn't you know that Rand judged the drawings of Cyrus to be very powerfully heroic? She adored them. They inspired her throughout her entire life. They influenced her tastes in men, and in the creation of her fictional characters.

So, since Objectivism holds that only one of your views can be objectively right, which of you has made the objectively correct judgment of the drawings of Cyrus, you or a Rand? Was Rand imagining style and expression which wasn't there, or, as I've been suggesting all along, are you very cognitively limited when it comes to the visual arts?

Second, as you point out, somebody doing something is not sufficient evidence of man being able and equipped to reach goals in a world full of promise and possibility i.e. a man of volitional consciousness.

Then you must be saying that Rand was wrong to judge the illustrations of Cyrus to be displaying volition and heroism.

Are you also saying that she didn't have enough visual evidence to categorize other paintings as portraying volition?

In this conflict between you and Rand, how would we objectively determine which of you is right? What objective method would you propose that we use to scientifically test whether she was imagining things or that you are visually lacking?

I have "thus far refused" to give examples -- because the concepts and spirit of what art 'means' have not the least purchase here.

Heh. No, you've refused to give examples because doing so would further illustrate what a fucked up, irrational mess your theory of aesthetic judgment is.

No one is buying your excuses for failing to prove your assertions. You have no proof. You're clinging to an irrational theory, and you've actually tried to make fun of the idea of our requiring proof.

By no means every picture can be categorised in such broad terms as Romanticist/Naturalist (and the couple of dozen paintings that are powerful to me, don't always include the figures of men and women, and my choice may be surprising to some).

But it's by the way, what I value: find your own values -

No one has asked what you value, or to assist anyone in finding values. We're not questioning you because we're in need of guidance or because we see you as a guru. The opposite is true. We are challenging you to practice Objectivism and support your assertions with proof, and we see you as a fool who is incapable of doing so. You're not being asked to give examples of what you value, but to identify your method of categorizing art as Romanticism, and to give examples of that categorization.

J

[Jonathan]

One needs examples because one can't see for oneself and think for oneself - and find rational value for oneself.

Ah, yes, the Doubly Irrational Genius Pose!!!

It's a specific act of posing as a genius:

When caught in an irrational, incoherent position and challenged to explain it, one offers no substance, but just acts as if one is being bothered with personal requests to do others' thinking for them.

It's kind of a doubly irrational misidentification of how the burden of proof works. Rational people understand that they have the burden of supporting their assertions with evidence and logic. Irrational people think that they can make assertions and that others then have the burden of refuting them with evidence and logic. Well, these doubly irrational poseurs act as if they believe that when they make an assertion, it is their opponents' burden to help them support it with evidence and logic!

It's like this:

Doubly Irrational Person: My theory is that X is true.

Rational Person: Then prove that X is true.

Doubly Irrational Person: I'm not going to do your thinking and your homework for you!!!

Somehow we are being lazy and shirking our burdens by not proving his assertions!

For all Rand's apparent authoritarianism, her intent was the opposite: she spent energy on portraying a top-down view of the abstract principles of art and its essentiality to independent minds.

No, she tried to force her subjective tastes into being objective principles. It didn't work. She ended up with contradictions and double standards. And she wasn't just an authoritarian on the arts, but a quite angry and irrational one.

I have all through tried to stay true to that vision.

Yes, we already know that you are Obedient to your personal, loopy interpretations of Rand's PseudoEsthetics, even to the point of rejecting the concepts of logic and proof!

However, begin bottom-up with what she opined on artist so-and-so, and you get stuck there, forever, it seems. To get past Rand, you have to go through her.

So, what you're saying is that her theories can't be practiced in reality -- that even she couldn't practice them -- but you don't want to deal with that reality, so therefore let's not focus on silly things like proof, examples or testing of theories. Instead, let's just pretend that being highly abstract without proof or examples is superior to expecting theories to work in reality.

Anyway, Tony, thank you for stating it in the way that you did. It's very reminiscent of Supreme Master Newberry's ancient guru fortune cookie wisdom, which I haven't thought of in long time. It's fun to see the same empty posing and preening again!

Ellen, you have my opinion of the Cyrus illustrations, what more do you want?

Oh yes - "proof by example"...

I don't know about Ellen, but what I want is logic and objective proof, not just more of your baseless, irrational, subjective opinions, misidentifications of others' positions, and irrelevant, pompous speeches.

Apart from Brant, no matter our disagreements, no one else in this discussion has been as candid and forthcoming as I.

Heh. No. The opposite is true. You've been evading and refusing to prove your assertions.

J

[Jonathan]

Jonathan can be quite nasty...

Well, it's all relative (or I suppose I should say "contextual"?). In comparison to Rand on the subjects of art and aesthetics, I'm not nasty at all, but very rational, generous, fair and patient.

The tragedy of it all is you're a real nice guy.

That would depend on how you define "nice." Personally, I don't accept Tony's smug posing and evading as being "nice." I don't accept his ridiculing the notion of proof as being "nice."

Now both you and Jonathan can chew on me, especially if Jonathan needs some boredom relief from chewing on you.)

I don't feel the need to chew on you for stating what you think of my style of arguing. You think I'm mean or nasty? Okay. I really don't care.

Now, if you thought that my arguments were irrational or ill-supported, then you'd get a chewing from me.

J

[Jonathan]

Then when I see her followers adoringly link to sentimental paintings that offer what Walter Benjamin called "instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort," I have to wonder if those followers see the same thing that I see in Rand's art.

I have been reading Jonathan's interactions with Objectivish Arts Eggheads for a few years. He (and since departed OLer Dragonfly) sometimes illustrated the category 'objecti-kitsch.'

Here is a example from the Quent Cordair Fine Art gallery, which promises "The Finest in Romantic Realism." The piece is "Yes" by artist Danielle Anjou. It illustrates for me the neck-snapping awfulness to be found in the genre.

Back in 2007 I created this piece of ObjectiKitsch:

It's a digital rendering that follows all of the Objectivist rules, written and unwritten, of visual "Romantic Realism": Bright, pure colors (the entire fucking spectrum!), back-bending-neck-snapping joy, leaping through the air, Newberrian "Transparency," and even a tightly puckered, Objectivist sphincter! I call it Dog Qua Dog: "Atlas," the Objectivist Wonderdog.

Dogs are "man's best friend," and my rendering represents how objective Dogs "ought to live" alongside objective Man. They should leap and bound about through empty space together, each enjoying the joy of enjoying watching the other leaping in joy.

J

[Brant Gaede]

All that really is about, Jonathan, is the dog's asshole.

--Brant

[Jules Troy]

I think if I were to render doggy doodoo coming out of that puckered hoop it would come out looking like spaghetti!! However if I were to apply objectivist reality to that poor dog he would probably just end up farting out crushed diamond dust lol!!

[caroljane]

Jonathan, your inimitableness continues to humble a a wretched second hand world. I recall you also once value traded with fellow Freedom Leaper WSS to create a Man Medallion of stark ruthless uncompromisingness, or something. Now your overarching artistic vision embraces, yea, all creatures great and small!

Eat your heart out Kanye West.

In awe,

c.