Apples - Rand on Still Life Paintings, Plus

[anthony]

Well, Tony, if it's not argumentum ad hominem it's close enough to be objectionable ad hominem. I don't think he's being devious, however, just exasperated, and I don't think I've ever exchanged any PM with Jonathan in my life.

--Brant

Brant: For once, you were the last person on my mind.

This is enough for me.

[Ellen Stuttle]

I have yet to see anyone claim that what Vermeer or Shakespeare depicted is what "life meant" to him or her. "Ah but we don't accept those premises!"(Convenient cop-out).

Cop-out from what? Complying with presumptions you want others to answer in terms of?

There is an enormous amount in Shakespeare which is personally meaningful to me, but I in fact do not respond to art in the way that Rand says people do.

The paintings of Vermeer's which most appeal to me with some kind of personal reaction are the ones I gather that Rand most disliked, "The Milkmaid" and "The Little Street." I like the "domesticity" of both. Another which I enjoy as a scene of life is the view of Delft. Another is the soldier and the laughing girl.

"The Procuress" I think is very rich in a "psychological story" way, but there's debate as to whether or not that painting is by Vermeer. If it is, it's from an approach to painting which he changed, due to the interest in camera obscura painting which he's thought to have developed. What I like about most of his work is the sense of composition. Vermeer wasn't very popular until the development of abstract painting. His compositional sense is akin to abstract painting. I think that the scenes depicted in his work which seems to have been done with a camera obscura look posed, except for the four I've mentioned (milkmaid, two landscapes, soldier and laughing girl), but I enjoy studying them anyway because of the composition.

But the beauty of Shakespeare's brilliant words, his aesthetics, does not gainsay his -obvious to anyone who can read- gloomy view of a determined existence. Vermeer portrays the humble folk and the privileged gentry with an accurate and caustic eye. The beauty of his aesthetics only makes his view of life worse by comparison to that beauty, by showing it up with his outstanding technique and light.

I think that I can read, and I don't get a "gloomy view of a determined existence" from Shakespeare.

Or a "caustic eye" from Vermeer. As to whom Vermeer was portraying, mostly his own family. I suppose the milkmaid was the family maid, and the kitchen was the kitchen of the Vermeer home.

In all this discussion of Vermeer there has hardly been a single personal evaluation of his work: "charming" is about all I recall. Easy enough to challenge my submissions, without taking in my intent (as poor as it is next to Rand's intent), less easy to honestly make your own judgements- and possibly open oneself to ridicule.

What is your intent?

All of this is essentially not about art, it's about conflicting philosophies. The anti-conceptual, the determinist, the mystical, the empiricist, the intrinsicist, the altruist and the subjectivist. Contra Objectivist.

Oh, great.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Objectivism is not a true philosophy, it is a truth-seeking philosophy, but that is not the philosophy of Ayn Rand; she had found the truth. She was Prometheus. She was heroic.

Best I can make sense out of your post (I can't make much sense out of it), you indeed are co-opting the name "Objectivism" and saying that Rand wasn't entitled to use it. And I think you're saying that she didn't in fact have a philosophy.

Ellen

She was entitled when she was alive.

She certainly did have a philosophy. Everybody has a philosophy. Objectivism as I use it is inside her philosophy. It's also inside my philosophy.

--Brant

So are you using "Objectivism" to mean "true philosophy" (i.e., what in your opinion is true philosophy)?

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Well, Tony, if it's not argumentum ad hominem it's close enough to be objectionable ad hominem. I don't think he's being devious, however, just exasperated, and I don't think I've ever exchanged any PM with Jonathan in my life. --Brant

Brant: For once, you were the last person on my mind.This is enough for me.

Well, if I was on your mind, I've exchanged some PMs with Jonathan in my life, occasionally, but never about you.

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

Objectivism is not a true philosophy, it is a truth-seeking philosophy, but that is not the philosophy of Ayn Rand; she had found the truth. She was Prometheus. She was heroic.

Best I can make sense out of your post (I can't make much sense out of it), you indeed are co-opting the name "Objectivism" and saying that Rand wasn't entitled to use it. And I think you're saying that she didn't in fact have a philosophy.

Ellen

She was entitled when she was alive.

She certainly did have a philosophy. Everybody has a philosophy. Objectivism as I use it is inside her philosophy. It's also inside my philosophy.

--Brant

So are you using "Objectivism" to mean "true philosophy" (i.e., what in your opinion is true philosophy)?

Ellen

I think I'm irritating you and I think I manage to do that about every three weeks. (Maybe you're leading me on.)

I'll try to say something we both can accept so you can stop chasing me around Ayn Rand.

A "true philosophy" is a philosophy axiomatically dedicated to reason dedicated to reality. That's Objectivism at its core. If I've got this wrong it needs to be dealt with first if not right now.

The use of reason thus is dynamic truth seeking. Rand told us the results and called them Objectivism. In a serious way this was necessary in the 1950s and 1960s for it was thrown right at the dominant left-wing intellectual-cultural dynamic of those years. By the 1970s the intellectual part of that dynamic was gone. The cultural remains today and still dominates.

There has never been any real critical thinking within what can be called the Objectivist movement. The closest was Barbara Branden's course on efficient thinking. Efficient thinking, not critical thinking, although it's hard to take that course and not do the critical. I don't think it was very popular. In1968 I was taking the BPO course by tape here in Tucson. (I finished it in NYC.) Part way through the NBI rep. asked us what the next one should be, Nathaniel's on romantic love or Barbara's on thinking. I was the only one voting for Barbara's course. The papable religious intensity of sitting in front of a tape player on an altar in front of the room was nothing compared to what I experienced walking into the NBI home office in the Empire State Building that April. I was both attracted and repelled by it, but it was quite electric and quite a front. Instead of a tape machine there was Peikoff, then Branden, then another Branden, then Ayn Rand--all in the flesh. Even Mary Ann Rukavina Sures. If anyone thinks I was merely projecting myself into the situation, they've never seen a Broadway play. Real actors love the stage. They love performing. The powerful epistemological dynamic back and forth with the audience is what it's all about for them. It was no coincidence that as a play The Fountainhead was seriously into pre-production in the summer of 1968 off a Barbara Branden adaptation. NBI was theater. Ayn Rand going to the Ford Hall Forum year after year was theater. Objectivism was theater. Most all the theater stopped with the break of '68, but went on with some force until she died. It completely petered out under Peikoff.

Now without Rand-Branden-Peikoff, Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, is dead as a hunk of lead except as represented by Atlas Shrugged, although the word isn't in there if I recall correctly. In the 1960s Objectivism, something you can't fool around with or it will destroy you (Rand), was used as a weapon, and not just against the left but to keep students of Objectivism in line as water-bearers (it's your job to tell others that Objectivism exists, it's our job to tell them what it is--N. Branden).

--Brant

[PDS]

Brant: to return to a favorite topic of mine at least, the Stoics were quite explicit that reason was its core as well, i.e., after doing a bunch of "reason", the result was Stoicism. Put another way, some very smart people believed that, by use of reason alone, one would end up with a phiosophy called Stoicism. Those who generallly accept the premises and implications of the Stoic worldview call themselves Stoics. In other words, there is/was no way of getting around the proper noun.

Doesn't the Stoic example--a philosophy based only upon reason--present a hurdle for your premise that Objectivism is merely reason applied?

[Brant Gaede]

Brant: to return to a favorite topic of mine at least, the Stoics were quite explicit that reason was its core as well, i.e., after doing a bunch of "reason", the result was Stoicism. Put another way, some very smart people believed that, by use of reason alone, one would end up with a phiosophy called Stoicism. Those who generallly accept the premises and implications of the Stoic worldview call themselves Stoics. In other words, there is/was no way of getting around the proper noun.

Doesn't the Stoic example--a philosophy based only upon reason--present a hurdle for your premise that Objectivism is merely reason applied?

To rational conclusions in the context of one's knowledge. We know a lot more now than the stoics did. As to whether their conclusions were rational for them in their time I have no idea. This whole area involves the essential tentativeness of knowledge. The more abstract, the more tentative. The single great virtue of Rand's philosophy is not reason, for that's a given, but its vertical integration logically one basic principle to the next presented as a useable package. Have you ever heard of any college philosophy course concerned with any philosophy as suitable for "living on earth" as its validation for worthwhile study to see if it's true and, if not, how to make it right or better by that standard? I haven't.

--Brant

[PDS]

Brant: to return to a favorite topic of mine at least, the Stoics were quite explicit that reason was its core as well, i.e., after doing a bunch of "reason", the result was Stoicism. Put another way, some very smart people believed that, by use of reason alone, one would end up with a phiosophy called Stoicism. Those who generallly accept the premises and implications of the Stoic worldview call themselves Stoics. In other words, there is/was no way of getting around the proper noun.

Doesn't the Stoic example--a philosophy based only upon reason--present a hurdle for your premise that Objectivism is merely reason applied?

To rational conclusions in the context of one's knowledge. We know a lot more now than the stoics did. As to whether their conclusions were rational for them in their time I have no idea. This whole area involves the essential tentativeness of knowledge. The more abstract, the more tentative. The single great virtue of Rand's philosophy is not reason, for that's a given, but its vertical integration logically one basic principle to the next presented as a useable package. Have you ever heard of any college philosophy course concerned with any philosophy as suitable for "living on earth" as its validation for worthwhile study to see if it's true and, if not, how to make it right or better by that standard? I haven't.

--Brant

Agreed. Actually a course on Stoicism would qualify. They referred to it as the "art of living".

[Jonathan]

Who the hell do you think you are?

I think that I'm a very competent professional visual artist with a deep knowledge of aesthetics, art, and art history, who is responding to a very aesthetically shallow and literalist non-artist who presumes, out of Obedient Objectivist zealotry, to instruct not only me on the visual arts and aesthetics, but also Vermeer on how he could have done better.

Who the hell do you think you are?

You make nothing but scurrilous attacks on me, put words and attitudes in my mouth, and presume to know what I mean and know.

Actually, I've asked a lot of substantive questions, but you've ignored/evaded them while preferring to squeal and whine about being attacked.

"Condemnation". For any who have followed, I have not "condemned" any piece of art here.

Apparently you've forgotten what you've said on this thread. You've stated that Vermeer could have chosen to paint "a prettier and sprightlier" woman, but instead chose to present a "lumpy," ugly woman in "gloom and dinginess" and to portray "listless service" and "stolid servitude by a bored-looking lass in a humble room." When I explained that (in not being limited to your Obedient, shallow, literalist mindset) I see a "contemplative and serene" woman who is "finding happiness and enjoyment in existence," and who fits a different time and culture's notion of beauty, you temporarily stepped out of victim mode and into Obedient smart ass zealot bully mode and asked if I meant the "calm serenity" that can be found "in a mental asylum."

How did you forget about that when you slipped right back into victim mode? You ignore or belittle other's statements about what they see in the art, and imply that they value the vices that you imagine seeing in paintings. You claim that when people place more importance than you do on certain details in their interpretations of art, they are being "anti-conceptual" and engaging in "art empiricism."

Yours is a typical asshole Obedient Objectivist tactic. Joe Rowlands did exactly the same thing on a RoR thread from 2006, starting here: http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/NewsDiscussions/1397.shtml#19

You also asked the loaded question:

The only question remains, honestly, would you or anyone here be able to state, after a quick scan of The Milkmaid:

"THIS is what life means to me!"

Even acknowledging you don't cater to "cognitive and normative abstractions" is art, I don't believe you would. If charm is what you look for, charm is all you'll find - and I'd say you're not shooting high enough.

My answer to your question is the same answer that I gave to that ridiculous twat Rowlands about the sculpture of Lapper: Hell yes -- fuck yes -- it represents what life means to me!

As I said on RoR, I see the sculpture of Lapper as representing courage, confidence and pride, and that's what life means to me. I see Vermeer's Kitchenmaid as being in love, and as enjoying contemplation and the pleasant task of her productive employment, and that's also what life means to me.

Now what?

May I suggest that you review my responses to idiot Rowlands' previous tactics before trying them here?

Since I've given you the courtesy of answering your loaded question, will you return the favor and answer all of the questions that I've asked so far that you've evaded?

Also, will you answer a few new ones which are directly relevant to the one that I just answered?

We The Living presents people living in filth and drudgery. It presents its "heroine" as failing to achieve her goals and dying on the frozen tundra of life. Is that "what life means" to you?

In The Fountainhead, the "hero" of the novel, the character Howard Roark, dishonestly pushes his way onto the Cortlandt project, commits the fraud of intentionally keeping his involvement hidden from the owners, knowingly violates his own stated moral principles about not working on government projects, destroys others' property over a mere difference of aesthetic opinion, then tells lies while under oath in court by claiming that he had a contract with the people from whom he hid his involvement. Is that sort of irrationality, dishonesty, fraud and violations of rights "what life means" to you?

Btw, you asked the female members of OL in particular if the Kitchenmaid "is what life means" to them. Why? Do you think that males can't identify with female characters in art? Is the same true of all other possible methods of classification? For example, only male architects can identify with stories about male architects?

But far easier to attack and undermine others thinking than to reveal anything original or truthful, anything which means something to you, right? It is obvious by the tone, lack of substance and irrationality of your nasty little remarks, that you've felt threatened by some of what I've said.

Despite all of your squawking about my "lack of substance," you still haven't answered the substance of several questions that I've asked multiple times now.

Y'know, wherever you pitch up discontent and conflict soon follow. Honesty always takes a back seat to your psychological bullying (which you call logic, or something).

That's another typical Obedient Objectivist tactic: try to bully people over their aesthetic tastes and responses, but when they stand up for themselves and blow your argument out of the water, then squeal and whine that they are bullying you.

And yes, I have little doubt you orchestrate these personal vendettas from back stage, I've seen it before and I've not been the only target.

Loony toons paranoia. I haven't orchestrated anything backstage. The people here who are reacting to you are doing so by their own free choice. They've received no orchestration from me. Perhaps it's more comfortable for you to believe that so many people can't possibly come to the same judgment of your methods and opinions, and that they therefore must be conspiring against you, but, sorry, no, the reality is that they recognize deeply flawed thinking when they see it, and need not be prompted to speak out against it.

When I speak for myself, it's egotism - when I interpret Rand agreeably, it's Randianism.

Ha, you sure have your tactics well practised. Win at all cost.

I'm still waiting for you to answer the questions that I've asked multiple times. You've put a lot of time and effort into squealing and whining, but none into answering the questions.

J

[PDS]

Tony: I really don't have a dog in this fight, but, you know, it would indeed be interesting for you to take a crack at analyzing a painting or two that Rand has never commented on, if for no other reason than to allay the notion that you are ducking the questions asked by Jonathan. I think I probably attribute less malice to your comments about Vermeer than J and perhaps others, but a "fresh start" involving a new artist would seem a worthwhile continuation of this thread without the institutional memory of any comments by Rand intruding.

[anthony]

But sure. You found 'something special' which you want to put down truthfully, for your own sake. Something of value, related intimately to your view of life - i.e. your metaphysical value premises.

Tony, that is so perfect an example of your force-fitting what others say into your presumptions.

What I was describing is NOT an issue of "metaphysical value premises," just of something I found interesting and attractive, no cosmic statement about man in relation to the universe.

Ellen

Ellen: You went to trouble to quite lyrically describe a scene, one more than "attractive" or "interesting" obviously - now you'd back down on its impact on you.

"Were I a painter, I would have painted that scene.". #69

Whatever makes you think that that emotion is not precisely what motivates every artist?

What makes you believe that it's "NOT an issue of metaphysical value premises"?

I disagree.

Who's talking of an explicit ""statement"" about man and the universe"?

No, clearly at that moment, it was you and the universe, alone. The (presumed) awe and grandeur you experienced of a night sky was what drove your creative impulse. Whatever later viewers would make of your painting or prose WOULD be an experience of your view of life - life amidst a universe. I.e. your metaphysical value judgment. An artist seldom (I think) sets out to make "statements". If he's good and has integrity, however, his contemplated vision of universe/man is apparent.

(This is one more instance of the "implicit" (or, "universal", as you call it) behind the act of creation, which does not need to be spelled out on every occasion.)

You get over-hung up on the phrase "metaphysical value judgment", I feel.

The only alternative I can guess, is that you believe the universe "touched" your 'unconscious' mind.

Of course, it would have touched you sub-consciously, by my, or the Objectivist reckoning - but anything else is mystical.

[anthony]

Tony: I really don't have a dog in this fight, but, you know, it would indeed be interesting for you to take a crack at analyzing a painting or two that Rand has never commented on, if for no other reason than to allay the notion that you are ducking the questions asked by Jonathan. I think I probably attribute less malice to your comments about Vermeer than J and perhaps others, but a "fresh start" involving a new artist would seem a worthwhile continuation of this thread without the institutional memory of any comments by Rand intruding.

PDS,

A most reasonable suggestion, and I appreciate your input.

Except.

There's one basic premise that the nay-sayers make one swallow: that we (or I) have to "prove" Rand right. Why should one? She dedicated a book to the subject, let them "prove" her wrong. They'd have to understand it first, and this ain't easy.

But not "proof" by show-and-tell, either. The visual arts are complex in nuance and mixed premises. Fiction, otoh, is relatively easy to assess. A painting might be ambiguous or ambivalent according to the artist's competence or honesty - or his sense of life and mv-j's conflicting.

It does certainly require some amount of intimacy with the 'vocabulary' of art -but we don't need a degree in English to comprehend a novel (we learn the vocabulary quickly by the act of reading), and likewise we shouldn't need extra skills to comprehend a painting.

It's there for our perusal. "Works of art--like everything else in the universe--are entities of a specific nature". [AR, Art and Cognition]

The battle is simple: the known and knowable versus the unknown and unknowable. Rand as you know, had really one purpose, which was to rescue man's consciousness from previous philosophers who'd gone a long way to drive a wedge between it and reality. Why should art be any different? As much as she could (pushing boundaries some, and sometimes I feel, too broadly/too specifically) she identified art objectively, fully inclusive of man's subconscious and his emotions.

Why would the nay-sayers try to make art LESS comprehensible, rather than more? What is their purpose, one has to ask?

There's the false premise we allow them, the presumption that art is a discipline disconnected from consciousness. E.g. that one has to be a qualified expert in art first. I think an "expert" doesn't necessarily have even the least higher knowledge of consciousness, than an "inexpert" could.

The "proof" of art lies in a long conceptual chain which has to be formed by each person. If this was not clarified enough by Rand, I'm not able to do better obviously (and I haven't read TRM for too long)... less, in this present atmosphere.

Bringing forth examples of paintings will end up in arguments over detail, only increasing the ambiguity, and again we'd lose the plot in the smoke and mirrors. Art has to be discussed in the abstract first and second- hierarchically, as with any concepts.

"...its enemies seem to know that ~integration~ is the psycho-epistemological key to reason, that art is man's psycho-epistemological conditioner, and that if reason is to be destroyed, it is man's integrating capacity that has to be destroyed."

[PDS]

Tony:

This is only a guess, but it might be a pretty good one: my guess is that if you were to use an example of a painting Rand never addressed that it would create an interesting discussion where everybody's various forms of "Rand baggage" would actually be irrelevant (for once...).

Last year I spent roughy 20k US for 3 paintings for the lobby of my law office. They are abstract landscapes. Their colors and (somewhat simple) compositions I find quite pleasing--every day I walk through the doors of my firm. Their "look" plays off of the natural light the office otherwise has with floor to ceiling windows--and they vaguely remind me of summer sunsets, looking to the west, on the lake I grew up on. In short, although they were ridiculously expensive for a kid from a working class family, I am quite pleased with these paintings. They look kind of like this.

Why must I say anything more? Frankly, what more is there to say?

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

[Brant Gaede]

Tony:

This is only a guess, but it might be a pretty good one: my guess is that if you were to use an example of a painting Rand never addressed that it would create an interesting discussion where everybody's various forms of "Rand baggage" would actually be irrelevant (for once...).

Last year I spent roughy 20k US for 3 paintings for the lobby of my law office. They are abstract landscapes. Their colors and (somewhat simple) compositions I find quite pleasing--every day I walk through the doors of my firm. Their "look" plays off of the natural light the office otherwise has with floor to ceiling windows--and they vaguely remind me of summer sunsets, looking to the west, on the lake I grew up on. In short, although they were ridiculously expensive for a kid from a working class family, I am quite pleased with these paintings. They look kind of like this.

Why must I say anything more? Frankly, what more is there to say?

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I) I can depreciate them--hooray!

2) I can't depreciate them--damnit!

(Bet you didn't see that coming up behind you)

--Brant

[anthony]

Tony:

This is only a guess, but it might be a pretty good one: my guess is that if you were to use an example of a painting Rand never addressed that it would create an interesting discussion where everybody's various forms of "Rand baggage" would actually be irrelevant (for once...).

Last year I spent roughy 20k US for 3 paintings for the lobby of my law office. They are abstract landscapes. Their colors and (somewhat simple) compositions I find quite pleasing--every day I walk through the doors of my firm. Their "look" plays off of the natural light the office otherwise has with floor to ceiling windows--and they vaguely remind me of summer sunsets, looking to the west, on the lake I grew up on. In short, although they were ridiculously expensive for a kid from a working class family, I am quite pleased with these paintings. They look kind of like this.

Why must I say anything more? Frankly, what more is there to say?

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

PDS, You're not kidding about those representational pictures. I can imagine seeing one every day in the sort of dazzling office you described and it has to be like a kick to the soul. Preferably 6'X 4' sized. The recession of complementary colours going off to the 'horizon' gives an undeniable sense of depth and distance which would pull you in. That you make a personal association with a real past scene is all the grander the experience.

[Jonathan]

PDS,A most reasonable suggestion, and I appreciate your input.

Except.

There's one basic premise that the nay-sayers make one swallow: that we (or I) have to "prove" Rand right. Why should one? She dedicated a book to the subject, let them "prove" her wrong.

First of all, you have to prove Rand right because that is how proof/logic works. It's basic fucking logic 101. You know, logic, the stuff that Objectivism loves and claims to be the essence of its epistemology? The onus of proof is on the party who is making the positive assertion -- the person claiming to know an artists' metaphysical views based on attempting to read a non-verbal form of communication. You're an Objectivist, and therefore should know that Objectivism is very dedicated to logic. You should brush up on it to the point where you understand that proof is the OBJECTIVIST premise, and not that of evil "nay-sayers."

(Using your confused notion of logic, Tony, people could say, "Why should one prove the existence of God, or AGW, or the superiority of socialism. Great thinkers have dedicated books to supporting those subjects, so let their opponents 'prove' them wrong!" See what's wrong with your statement????)

Secondly, what's up with your putting quotes around the word "proof"? Are they intended to be scare quotes? Do you not think that the concept of proof is a valid one?!!!

Thirdively, one of my major points on this thread is that the Objectivist PseudoEsthetics is irrationally set up so as to not allow any possible disproof, which is specifically why I've taken to calling "pseudo." It is unfalsifiable, just like witch trials and AGW.

See, here's how it usually goes: Ayn Rand and/or one of her Obedient followers looks at a work of art and claims to "objectively" know it's "real meaning," along with the artist's metaphysical views, his sense of life, and his psychological deficiencies. After hearing their judgments, I seek to logically, critically examine them, and either confirm or reject the claims.

I look at the evidence contained in the painting, and I almost always come to a very different interpretation of it and of its creator. More often than not, I think that the image in question does not contain what the Objectivists assert that it does. So I ask others to also look at the evidence contained in the painting, and they usually have interpretations that turn out to be very similar to mine (without my revealing in advance to them what my interpretations were). They usually laugh when I tell them what the Objectivists' interpretations were. (Often times the issue of Aspergers/Autism comes up at this point, because of the lack of ability to be affected by subtle facial expressions and body language, and people ask if I know whether or not Autistic people tend to be attracted to Objectivism.)

Sometimes I ask different Objectivists what their interpretations are, and they have different opinions than the original Objectivists, but all of them assert that only their own opinions are the truly objective opinions, and that everyone else is "in denial" or "really wrong."

Then, in my further quest to objectively prove or disprove the Objectivists' opinions and methods, my next step is to study up on the artist. If possible, I read his descriptions of his own intentions and beliefs, and I read interviews with his associates, friends and family about who he was as a person, what he thought was important in life, etc. On a few occasions, the artist in question has been someone I've met or known as a friend, and therefore someone whom I could ask detailed questions. Sometimes the artist has even been me. In all cases in which I could access the artist's own professed beliefs, it has turned out that he did not believe what Rand or her Obedient followers claimed that he MUST have believed as revealed in their interpretations of his art.

I discover that the artist was nothing like what the Objectivists claim he was, and that the Objectivists are the only people who came to the condemnatory conclusions about him and his art.

The Objectivists' responses have been that they know the artist's mind better that he knows it himself, and better than anyone else knows it. Their having studied the Objectivist Esthetics gives them this ability. When I mention that I've also studied the Objectivist Esthetics, but that I still disagree with their interpretations of the art, as do some of their fellow Objectivists, we apparently still haven't arrived at anything which would make them consider the possibility of questioning the validity of their opinions.

In other words, they allow for no possible disproof of their assertions. Their method is therefore anti-rational, anti-scientific, and anti-Objectivist.

They'd have to understand it first, and this ain't easy. But not "proof" by show-and-tell, either.

Do you not know what proof is? Proof IS "show-and-tell." What it's not is "Tony or Ayn makes an assertion and therefore it's true without having to show or tell."

The visual arts are complex in nuance and mixed premises.

You're saying that the medium itself contains "premises"?!!! WTF? It's a medium. It is not alive. It does not have premises, mixed or otherwise.

Fiction, otoh, is relatively easy to assess.

Actually, fiction is not easy for most Objectivists to assess, at least not without hearing what Rand had to say first. The average Objectivist is as inept at interpreting literature as he is at all of the other art forms. He brings the same angry urge to selectively disregard elements as inconsequential details so that he can succeed in his goal of condemning the art because it was not created by Rand.

A painting might be ambiguous or ambivalent according to the artist's competence or honesty - or his sense of life and mv-j's conflicting.

What about the possibility that the Objectivist who is doing the judging of the art is incompetent and/or dishonest rather than the artist? What if the Objectivist claims to see ambiguousness or ambivalence, but it's actually just his personal inability to deal with complexity and nuance? By what method would you suggest that we objectively test and determine that a failure to communicate between an artist and a viewer is the artist's fault versus the viewer's?

Do you understand that Objectivism is a philosophy of logic and reason, and that objectively measuring and comparing the viewer's competence at viewing and finding meaning is as relevant as measuring the artist's competence at creating and expressing meaning? So far, you (and every other Objectivist I've asked about objectively measuring their aesthetic competence) has appeared to be highly offended by the question, which is perplexing. I'd think that true Objectivists would welcome the question and be eager to answer it, rather than getting all emotional, evading the question, and storming off in a huff. It almost seems as if they might know, deep down, that they're not up to snuff. If they were as competent as they like to pose at being, you'd think they'd love the opportunity to show it off.

As for the reasons that you listed for ambiguity and ambivalence in a work of art, do you believe that your list is exhaustive? Is it possible that there might be positive reasons for an artist to include ambiguity and ambivalence rather than its necessarily being an issue of his "competence," "honesty" or "conflicting sense of life and metaphysical value-judgments"?

If visual language is, by its nature, complex and nuanced, as you say it is, and not as easy to comprehend as verbal language, how can you hold the position of certainty that you can know an artist's metaphysical views via his visual art?

It does certainly require some amount of intimacy with the 'vocabulary' of art -but we don't need a degree in English to comprehend a novel (we learn the vocabulary quickly by the act of reading), and likewise we shouldn't need extra skills to comprehend a painting.

Define "extra skills." Are "extra skills" any skills beyond what Tony has? Are Tony's skills the limit of human cognition and ability, and anyone who claims to have more is claiming to have "extra skills"?

I, for one, have never claimed that anyone would need "extra skills." Rather, my point is that those who have a deficit of skills shouldn't be trying to establish their personal limitations as either the norm, the standard, or the limit of human cognition.

It's there for our perusal. "Works of art--like everything else in the universe--are entities of a specific nature". [AR, Art and Cognition]The battle is simple: the known and knowable versus the unknown and unknowable.

Knowable versus unknowable to whom? Your entire argument, and Rand's, is still based on nothing but the unwarranted assumption of your own superiority at judging art, and your irrational resentment that others might exceed your skills. The fact that you or Rand are incapable of knowing or experiencing something doesn't make it "unknown or unknowable." You are not the limit of visual cognition. You are actually visually inept, but Dunning-Kruger certain of your superiority. Your accusations against others -- that they are trying to destroy man's consciousness, disconnect the mind from reality, etc. -- are all comical misaccusations due to the distortions that your mind must make of reality and of others in order to hang on to the Dunning-Kruger certainty of your superiority.

Rand as you know, had really one purpose, which was to rescue man's consciousness from previous philosophers who'd gone a long way to drive a wedge between it and reality. Why should art be any different? As much as she could (pushing boundaries some, and sometimes I feel, too broadly/too specifically) she identified art objectively fully inclusive of man's subconscious and his emotions.

No, she didn't. She came up with a personal, subjective theory of literature, and tried to force it onto the other arts while merely calling it "objective." The other art forms do not meet her own stated "objective" criteria, yet, irrationally, she declared that they were valid art forms anyway. She limited art to what she, personally, was capable of experiencing. She didn't investigate what mankind is capable of experiencing, just what Ayn Rand was capable of experiencing. In fact, she very angrily denied what others were capable of experiencing (probably out of jealousy or feeling insulted and inferior that others might in any way be more capable than she). She was very confused and self-contradictory.

The most amusing thing to me is her belief that she could look at an arrangement of abstract forms and identify deep, glorious meaning in them when they were filed under the name of "architecture," but the exact same arrangement of abstract forms would be seen by her as not only meaningless, but as a vicious attach on man's "proper method of cognition" when filed under a different name. She brought way too much anger and eagerness to condemn for her approach to actually qualify as "objective."

Why would the nay-sayers try to make art LESS comprehensible, rather than more?

Who are you talking about? Imaginary people again? Who do you believe is trying to make anything less comprehensible? Tony, you silly fool, when you have difficulty in comprehending something, it isn't logical to conclude that others are trying to make it incomprehensible. What we're actually trying to do is to discuss or express something that's only over your head, not everyone's. You really have to get beyond this perspective of yours that you are the limit of human cognition, and that anyone who deals with larger thoughts than you can handle is an evil destroyer.

What is their purpose, one has to ask? There's the false premise we allow them...

Who is "we" and "them"? Are you and some imaginary friends the "we" who is engaged in a PM conspiracy against me and the other "thems"? Heh.

...the presumption that art is a discipline disconnected from consciousness. E.g. that one has to be a qualified expert in art first.

You're off on one of your phantom strawman monologues again. Tilting at windmills. My position is not that one needs to be an expert in art. My position is that one cannot be a brainwashed, visually inept zealot who is convinced of his own competence by nothing but his having read Ayn Rand and his belief that his having done so somehow qualifies him to unerringly know artists' senses of life, metaphysical views and psychological deficiencies.

Bringing forth examples of paintings will end up in arguments over detail, only increasing the ambiguity, and again we'd lose the plot in the smoke and mirrors.

So, again, what you're saying is that you're the ultimate in visual aptitude, and all of us lesser beings out here resort to using "smoke and mirrors" in order to deny the final, ultimate, true objective reality that only you are capable of identifying.

Art has to be discussed in the abstract first and second- hierarchically, as with any concepts."...its enemies...

Its "enemies"?!!! Are you calling ME an "enemy" of art?!!!! I create art for a living, you ridiculous twit! I am more passionate about it than anything you've experienced in your entire life!

Wait, well, maybe I'm not as passionate about it as you are about being Obedient to Rand. I'll give you that.

...seem to know that ~integration~ is the psycho-epistemological key to reason, that art is man's psycho-epistemological conditioner, and that if reason is to be destroyed, it is man's integrating capacity that has to be destroyed."

Damn, you are just a programmed little robot, quoting from the script, but unable to actually apply logic to a discussion. Why did you latch on to Objectivism? You don't actually live it or use it.

J

"Nay, nay, nay, nay..." -- just being a "nay-sayer."

[Brant Gaede]

Well, I like the idea of falsifiability interjected into this discussion. A falsifiable proposition is a theory and a theory embraces the tentativeness of knowledge and Rand was tentative that way on only a few things. Now if Objectivist core principles are applied to seemingly factual knowledge you enter tentativeness from working absolutism, but Rand liked to take her absolutism ("certainty") with her wherever she went. This is where her philosophy fails logic. The axiomatic principles aren't to be proved or disproved; they just are. Leaving behind the metaphysical and epistemological core of the philosophy--two basic principles (reality and reason [facts plus logic]) you come to the next two basic principles--one for ethics and the other for politics--and even though they are basic qua philosophy they aren't axiomatic so you've entered the room of tentativeness. The more you build here the more tentative, even speculative, it becomes (hence the ugly appearance of empiricism).

Tony, you need to give up your tentative absolutism for it really isn't absolute or you cannot begin to deal with the way Jonathan logically eviscerates you on item after item for it's your absolutism that is absolutely indefensible and a crumbling fortress against the cannonballs of real reason. Don't be the Macbeth of OL. The forest approaches.

--Brant

loneliness sucks: it's the deepest essence of individualism but not its living destiny (if you don't honor it you will hurt yourself)

Ayn Rand blockades reason, so after you embrace her you have to let her go before you embrace her again

[anthony]

Brant, What you call absolutism, is not. It is the criticality of consciousness which I've endlessly gone on about as the primary. The abstraction of art begins with each item of art, bottom up - but it also begins from the top, down, with Aristotle and his "...represents [things] as they might be and ought to be".

Can anyone "falsify" that statement? Let's hear about it.

Is consciousness "absolutely indefensible"?!

What J. calls logic, is not reason. His "logic" is empiricism sans conceptualization.

[AR]:

"Art is a concretization of metaphysics. Art brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness, and allows him to grasp them directly, as if they were percepts. THIS is the psycho-epistemological function of art and the reason of its importance in man's life (and the crux of the Objectivist esthetics)".

I don't know your knowledge of The Romantic Manifesto, but only Ellen that I've seen here has a quite good understanding IMHO. Even then, she's puzzled me on Rand's esthetic/cognitive/normative abstractions.

It looks like a possible confusion that she emphasises the esthetic, when all three are central to Rand's theory, not only the esthetic. (I.e. "The important", the "essential", the "good".)

J. started a thread exactly one year ago based on a similar mistake:

He wrote:

"Peikoff...erroneously adds that 'Romanticist art' is the essence of the Objectivist Esthetics".

What!? Every beginner in O'ism knows that Peikoff was right: Romanticist art IS the essence... etc.

I asked J. then - what he thought was the essence of the Objectivist Esthetics? He seemed to think it was esthetics.

And so another acrimonious debate.

I have no idea if he's corrected his misperception to this day. So basically, J.'s understanding of TRM is incomplete, or derivative from secondary sources and arguments with Objectivists - who may have been uncertain themselves.

So I'd rather not hear about his "logic".

Rand's works have been around a long while.

All her proof is in them.

This is an Objectivist forum.

Where does the onus of proof lie, but with the nay-sayers?

Let them crack a book and criticise her theory directly, and maybe something useful will come out in a discussion - ONCE they have grasped most of it.

As it stands, I have not seen enough good faith argument fron J. to continue this.

[anthony]

Ayn Rand blockades reason, so after you embrace her you have to let her go before you embrace her again

And by the way, this is and has been precisely my sentiment for years now.

(Which is why I can come back with certainty.)

[Jonathan]

Rand's works have been around a long while.

All her proof is in them.

Bullshit. There is no proof in Rand's works, which is why you can't cite any. In her comments on aesthetic judgment, Rand makes assertions without backing them up with anything. She offers no proof for her ridiculous opinion that she can know others' senses of life, metaphysical value-judgments and psychological problems just by looking at their art. She offers no indication of how one might even test and verify such claims, but, in fact, tries to leave herself an out in the event that her assertions are shown to be completely wrong (she claims that she can know the artist better than he knows himself). She seems to think that just making these assertions is enough. And, of course, it's enough only for her -- it would not be enough for me or anyone else to make the same assertions about her based on her art.

She didn't even consider some of the very basic simple issues of aesthetics that I've brought up. She doesn't address the idea of testing the viewer's competence when claiming to objectively judge the artist and his work. She didn't address the possibility that she might have been aesthetically challenged in regard to certain art forms, but just assumed her own superiority. And she is the one who first constructed the device of unfalsifiability of claiming to know the artist better than he knows himself, thus ruining the Objectivist Esthetics by putting it into the realm of pseudoscience.

This is an Objectivist forum.

Where does the onus of proof lie, but with the nay-sayers?

Um, the onus of proof doesn't change depending on which forum a discussion is in. The burden of proof is always on the person making the positive assertion. Rand asserted that she could identify artists' metaphysical value-judgments, senses of life, and psychological problems just by looking at their art. The onus is always on her and those who share her silly opinion. The onus doesn't shift to anyone else in an Objectivist forum, or even on Rand's birthday, or on every other Tuesday if the moon is full.

Where is the proof? There is none.

Let them crack a book and criticise her theory directly, and maybe something useful will come out in a discussion - ONCE they grasp it all..

I'm not going to go and search for proof from Rand which doesn't exist. I'm not going to fall for your variation on the Doubly Irrational notion of the burden of proof, as explained here:

He's displaying an attitude/tactic that I've seen a few times in the past. Here on OL, I've seen Newberry and Coates use it, and a few of the kids at OO have used it too. I find it very fascinating. 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!

As it stands, I have not seen enough good faith to continue this.

I knew that was coming. It's the standard Objectivist cop-out.

Tony, you got your ass kicked intellectually. Be a man instead of an Obedient little wuss. Have some integrity. Learn from your mistakes. Be a Roark or a Galt instead of a sniveling coward.

Do you seriously think that you're going to save face by using the old "good faith" flounce? Man, how pathetic.

J

[Jules Troy]

I gotta give the win to Jonathan hands down on this one. He is nailing every counter argument with sound reason here.

Also..you know when the prosecution in a courtroom brings in expert witness testimonials? Jonathan qualifies. I have seen his art and he is very masterful at his craft. I suspect he makes a damn good living at it too, he has skills. He had not once evaded a question and is very forthcoming with his reasoning. My opinion is just that an outsiders view looking in and calling it as I see it. Nothing personal. As far as advice? Here is a much over used cliche. Check your premises.... It actually fits here.

[anthony]

Wow. That has to go down as the most inane and superfluous remark.

You're in good company though. J. also doesn't quite get that art is conceptual as well as a concrete.

The "proof" he demands is a chain of reasoned concepts from percepts, but you and he don't understand

"reason" either, do you? Back to the drawing board, bud. Check your aperture, seems to fit.

[Jonathan]

I gotta give the win to Jonathan hands down on this one. He is nailing every counter argument with sound reason here.

Also..you know when the prosecution in a courtroom brings in expert witness testimonials? Jonathan qualifies. I have seen his art and he is very masterful at his craft. I suspect he makes a damn good living at it too, he has skills. He had not once evaded a question and is very forthcoming with his reasoning. My opinion is just that an outsiders view looking in and calling it as I see it. Nothing personal. As far as advice? Here is a much over used cliche. Check your premises.... It actually fits here.

Thanks, Jules, I appreciate it. Your $100 check is in the mail, as we discussed in our backstage conspiracy sessions.

J

[Jonathan]

Wow. That has to go down as the most inane and superfluous remark.

You're in good company though. J. also doesn't quite get that art is conceptual as well as a concrete.

The "proof" he demands is a chain of reasoned concepts from percepts, but you and he don't understand

"reason" either, do you? Back to the drawing board, bud. Check your aperture, seems to fit.

The really sad thing is that Tony doesn't seem to realize that he's illustrating my point about certain Objectivists being inept at finding meaning in any form of communication -- visual, verbal or otherwise. I say something clearly and directly, and then Tony goes off into his fantasy strawman la-la land and comes up with completely insane notions of what he thinks I'm really saying, and then fights those phantoms.

I could say that the object that I'm holding in my hand right now is pink (it's an eraser), and Tony would say something like, "See, J. is admitting that he's anti-conceptual and trying to destroy man's consciousness!"

This is your brain.

This is your brain on the Objectivist PseudoEsthetics.

Any questions?

J

[PDS]

Visual artists are probably not that much different than martial artists.

I think the mistake that people make with J is that they forget he makes his living doing this stuff. From appearances, J is a master of the visual arts. He is an advanced black belt.

A master of the martial arts is not, in my experience, likely to take kindly to advice or criticisms from white belts, blue belts, etc., especially when a dollup of psychoanalysis is thrown in. "I can tell by the way you executed that blocking technique that you hate women and view the world thus and so." Such a comment--absurd on its face--if ever made in a dojo (it woudn't be), would get you thrown out of said dojo pronto. The same is probably true for visual artists. In fact, no mid-level martial artist would ever dream of making criticisms or psychoanalysis of the kind commonly made by amateurs (i.e., the average Objectivist) when it comes to the visual arts. But more important, perhaps, no mid-level martial artist would ever consider himself a black belt because he read an essay by Bruce Lee. This, then, is the problem. Just like reading Bruce Lee doesn't make one a black belt, neither does reading Rand make one have any particular competence in the visual arts. Jonathan finds such behavior galling. Even though, being a civilan, I don't, I can't say I blame him.

There. I think I have tortured this metaphor into submission.

Carry on as you were.