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

[william.scherk]

Do you even remember what your original statement was that brought us to this little tangent? Your chest-thumping fantasy judgment was that you could live without people who do what I do, but that I could not live without people who do what you do. Do you remember that now?

Yes. I can live without your "art", and you can't live without a home and electricity.

The walls of Greg's home are decorated with his wife's paintings and a small collection of old lithographs.

He said that he could live without people who do what Jonathan does (make art) -- but in the real world he actually lives with an artist, whom he presumably would not live without. I bet Greg also appreciates design and artistry in other items in his household: coffee cups, sculptures, busts, literature, art books.

What Greg has said he does not want, and wouldn't trade for, is anything art-like made by Jonathan. This in spite of not having seen what Jonathan has produced as art.

Greg, do you already know that every artwork made by Jonathan is nothing you would ever want in your abode, sight unseen? If you don't already know, how about this picture, below. First imagine that it is from the hand of Jonathan, then imagine it is from the hands of someone else.

Does it make a difference, your prejudice against Jonathan's work?

Edited February 12, 2015 by william.scherk

[moralist]

William, you're very much like a liberal female who greedily saves up "nits" like a squirrel saves nuts, and then prance onto the stage to deliver your soliloquy to your "audience".

Jeez... what a dramaqueen.

(by the way, what happened? you actually broke your third person performance )

Greg

[Newberry]

So, why not instead ask someone who *cares* about their music enough to study and analyze it and identify the deep values it presumably communicates?

Indeed. For example your insights in the earlier post about the "voices" in the earlier church music was fascinating, and gave me more clarity and more things to listen for.

[william.scherk]

William, you're very much like a liberal female who greedily saves up "nits" like a squirrel saves nuts, and then prance onto the stage to deliver your soliloquy to your "audience".

It's a struggle, Greg. I have been posting here since 2006, and only managed 2194 comments. You are so far ahead of me now, I will never catch up.

But anyway, back to your snit with Jonathan. Is it about females, or liberals, or queens, or transvestites or prancing homosexuals or what? It's hard to get a straight answer out of you, sometimes. And sometimes you make no sense, as here.

Jeez... what a dramaqueen.

Who has been posturing about art, Greg and making big royal assumptions about moral worth? Who has dramatically upped the ante in the man-on-man struggle for moral supremacy?

If anything, I can agree with you: one doesn't need art the way humans need water and food and shelter, you in particular. And yet -- by your own telling, you do appreciate art, and you do use your walls to hang it. One can only imagine there are no females, or queens or homosexuals prancing about in your old lithographs.

The point being that we cannot point to a human need for art in the same breath as air, food, water, shelter. But at the same time, we can understand, you and I, that Ayn Rand argued differently. She argued strongly for art, for its power, for its moral substance, for a life informed by and enlightened by the very best art ...

You and I, we could probably have this conversation over in twenty minutes, and move on. You would get to say how awful and female and queenly and homosexualized is this and that art, and I would wait for the cab to come get me.

(by the way, what happened? you actually broke your third person performance )

Good writers use a variety of voices, tones, registers, idiolects, vocabulary. Wink. Wink. Winkety wink.

In the instance above I was just trying to make sense of your previous statements. You obviously appreciate art enough to put it on your walls -- like just about everybody else. You don't like Jonathan, so you believe you won't like his art.

I think this is a stupid stance to take, and now that I have made my point clearly, you might understand it. You might also, of course, repeatedly bang the 'derp feminizationism queenly homo prancer fog' bar on your keyboard. We live, we learn.

Edited February 12, 2015 by william.scherk

[Newberry]

My viewpoint is that if artists believe that they're expressing - or if viewers (or listeners) believe that they're detecting - moral dictums, or any type of specific statements, in abstract painting and sculpture (or in music or architecture), they're mistaken. Thus if, for instance, a painter says, "I meant such and such moral message," and a viewer claims to detect the message the painter claims to have meant, what's happened wasn't "communication."

Ellen

I think that is true, including representational work. But it does exist in propaganda, political cartoons, in which people can certainly grasp the message - like the recent cartoons of the pencils breaking, and multiplying, and being missiles ( the Hebo massacre). Personally I am finding it helpful to share why I painted something, it's a subtle difference in sharing what a work is about and gives the viewer a little insight into where the work came from, yet leaves them free to interrupt the work.

[Newberry]

The point being that we cannot point to a human need for art in the same breath as air, food, water, shelter.

Exactly. But the question remains in what way we need art?

[Newberry]

But there is an implicit aesthetic standard that has been in place since the dawn of storytelling. A story has to include a change of time.

Michael

Simple yet it probably creates powerful emotive responses. Thanks for the insight. I will be looking out for that in stories, and curious if that also is part of people's narratives ... interesting thought that.

[Newberry]

Endnotes for the Post Above

Who Says That's Art?

Ironically, no one would have been more surprised than Rand herself at the similarity between her view and Kant's, for she censured him as "the father of modern art," cryptically adding parenthetically ("see his Critique of Judgement)." Since that censure followed allusions by Rand to abstract painting and sculpture in "Art and Cognition" (Romantic Manifesto, 77), she appears to have shared the widespread misconception that Kant's theory divorced art from ideas.

Ellen

Thanks for sharing this stuff Ellen. If one reads Kant's Critique of Judgement and focuses on his Concepts of Beauty and ignore his Concepts of the Sublime, there is nothing controversial at all. It's pretty much a very good summation of what art is about including the senses, themes, craftsmanship, etc. I am guessing the Kahmi focused on this aspect and ignored the controversial part which is his Concepts of the Sublime. Kant's Critique of Beauty is a little like a devote Christian giving a correct summary of evolution, to show he understands, and then launches into how the world was really made. The concepts of the Sublime are what turned aesthetics of future generations on their ears. And frankly, looked this way it makes much more sense how we have the contemporary art that we do have.

[Guyau]

Of note:

The Sublime in Modern Philosophy

Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature

Emily Brady (Cambridge 2013)

PS

PPS

Psychosis and the Sublime in American Art: Rothco and Smithson

Timothy D. Martin (Tate Papers - 2010)

[This paper kinda makes my mind hurt, but Rothco prints in our home are soothing.]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Very funny Brant (#635, below). More here.

[Brant Gaede]

Great painting, done with a master's skills. The book is expensive, but I like the idea of "sublime" mixing up art and philosophy. Unfortunately, I suspect my idea of the sublime isn't sublime enough for this discussion.

--Brant

it was especially brilliant for the artist to include the human figure posing in the foreground as if it were on display in a museum, sublimating painting and photography (the trick is to have the guy looking at people looking at him instead of turned around looking at the painting as he would be doing in real life)

for some reason this painting reminds me of Jackson Turner

[Newberry]

Stephen: "PPS

Psychosis and the Sublime in American Art: Rothco and Smithson

Timothy D. Martin (Tate Papers - 2010)

[This paper kinda makes my mind hurt, but Rothco prints in our home are soothing.]"

Good find.

Martin: "One cannot hit the high road to the sublime by starting from that other part of the self, the part that lives in the phenomena of direct bodily experience and self-interest, otherwise known as the will to enjoy."

Yep. Meaning, this comment aligns with my understanding of Kant's Sublime.

[Brant Gaede]

Stephen, thanks for the reasons to visit Brooklyn.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

Thanks for sharing this stuff Ellen. If one reads Kant's Critique of Judgement and focuses on his Concepts of Beauty and ignore his Concepts of the Sublime, there is nothing controversial at all. It's pretty much a very good summation of what art is about including the senses, themes, craftsmanship, etc. I am guessing the Kahmi focused on this aspect and ignored the controversial part which is his Concepts of the Sublime. Kant's Critique of Beauty is a little like a devote Christian giving a correct summary of evolution, to show he understands, and then launches into how the world was really made. The concepts of the Sublime are what turned aesthetics of future generations on their ears. And frankly, looked this way it makes much more sense how we have the contemporary art that we do have.

Wow. I'm truly astonished. Michael, I thought that you had learned something from our many previous discussions on Kant and the Sublime. Honestly, I didn't imagine that you could be this stubborn!!!

I've informed you several times that Kant didn't invent the concept of the Sublime that you imagine that you oppose, but that Addison, Shaftsbury and Burke dealt with the same meaning of the term prior to Kant. I've informed you that the concept of the Sublime as being the "terror that delights," and of being a response to immense and fearful entities probably goes all the way back to Longinus.

Here's a link to one of our many previous discussions on the topic. On that thread, it came close to looking like you were on the verge of accepting reality, and learning. What happened?

I've informed you that what Kant added to the historical notion of the Sublime was actually very pro-Objectivist. Kant's view was that the enjoyment or exhilaration that we experience in viewing entities of incomprehensible magnitude and destructive power is that they stimulate our heroic will to resist. I've informed you that his view was not that the incomprehensible magnitude was Sublime, nor that destructive power was, but that our positive moral response and willfulness in the face such fearful forces was the experience of the Sublime.

I've informed you that Modernism and/or Postmodernism were not based on Kant's notion of the Sublime, nor on anyone else's notion of the Sublime. Rather, what was heavily influenced by the Sublime was Romanticism, and Ayn Rand's signature aesthetic style is the Kantian Sublime -- it is the presentation of willful individuals showing moral courage in resisting and facing down amorphous, destructive forces of immense magnitude, and usually of their triumphing against those massive forces. I've instructed you that Ayn Rand's "sense of life" was pure Kantian Sublimity.

I've informed you that you have inadvertently practiced and supported Kantian Sublimity when you imagined that you were opposing it! I've explained that in this embarrassingly unaware essay of yours, you unknowingly admitted to having experienced Kantian Sublimity in response to the 9/11 attacks.

In that essay, you wrote of the 9/11 attacks:

"To witness the obliteration of those glowing, lithe twins was a shock beyond comprehension," and that there are "people in the world who can't stand to see that beauty and creativity exist."

And then you also said:

"On the other side of humanity, a vast majority of people felt universal shock. Waves of anger, sorrow, and sadness have followed. Though, personally, after I experienced the shock of the attack, I felt none of those other emotions. Instead a quiet calm spread over me and I knew it was a time for cold, calculating, and uncompromising action and thought. A time to expose evil and put it in its place. And a time to stand up proudly and defend the values of civilization against the onslaught of a species of human beings that romanticize destruction."

In other words, you unknowingly experienced Kantian Sublimity in reaction to the attacks! You felt your will to resist this thing which was a "shock" and "beyond comprehension," and to "regard your estate as exalted above it," and you did so while imagining that you were rejecting Kant!!!

And, finally, I've also informed you that I've identified your stubborn fixation on vilifying Kant as an additional example of your inadvertently practicing and supporting Kantian Sublimity. You are so addicted to experiencing Kantian Sublimity that, in order to get your fix of it, you have needed to invent a villain -- Kant -- of such destructive power and magnitude that his villainy stimulates your will to resist and overcome. In other words, you're doing exactly what you falsely accuse postmodern art of doing -- you are inventing and inflicting on the world an illusion of a powerful evil so that you can experience the feeling that you're above it.

Please, Michael, stop embarrassing yourself by being so stubborn! Learn! Understand! Grasp it! Get it! It's not that difficult!

J

[anthony]

I really don't get it. I didn't say reality didn't exist. That would be arguing with an axiom. That "man" is an abstraction doesn't mean man doesn't exist. You can posit that the universe is a gigantic, interconnected something, but reality is an even broader concept ...

We use it for the search for the unknown but hopefully knowable, not the unknowable. When we find something new we then throw that into "the universe." It was always there, but prior it wasn't in anybody's head except as a possibility, if that. To say something is "real" is only the abstraction concretized. It may be a rock in one's hand but there is no way to put "real" in one's hand, only a real something.

--Brant

reality exists, and . . .

.

Brant,

Only as a concept, which every word is, I think it is true to say "reality is an abstraction".

"A word is merely a visual-auditory symbol used to represent a concept".

[iTOE]

Reality contains every existent which exists, known and as yet unknown, by man or by one man. Man's word-concepts of the components of reality have to mirror that -basically and simply, I think.

"Abstractions as such do not exist; they are merely man's epistemological method of perceiving that which exists--and that which exists is concrete".

(Rand's "merely"s...)

So we momentarily have to mentally separate its identity from an entity, to be able to say "reality is a concept" (or an abstraction). While all the while reality itself exists without heed of our devices.

I argue that an abstract painting is as concrete as any other man made creation, while being non-identifiable. So it's real, but without pertaining to reality - in its depiction. It is metaphysically real, and epistemologically 'not real' all at once. Again, but differently, so-called 'musical abstraction' is equally real, but it does pertain to reality -- except by a process not yet understood.

[Jonathan]

My viewpoint is that if artists believe that they're expressing - or if viewers (or listeners) believe that they're detecting - moral dictums, or any type of specific statements, in abstract painting and sculpture (or in music or architecture), they're mistaken. Thus if, for instance, a painter says, "I meant such and such moral message," and a viewer claims to detect the message the painter claims to have meant, what's happened wasn't "communication."

Ellen

I think that is true, including representational work. But it does exist in propaganda, political cartoons, in which people can certainly grasp the message - like the recent cartoons of the pencils breaking, and multiplying, and being missiles ( the Hebo massacre). Personally I am finding it helpful to share why I painted something, it's a subtle difference in sharing what a work is about and gives the viewer a little insight into where the work came from, yet leaves them free to interrupt the work.

Um, Michael, do you not remember having authored essays on "detecting metaphysical value-judgments" in works of art?!!!! And now you've swung to the total extreme opposite view?!!!

I think that my view is much more reasonable than either your past position or your current one. My view is that some non-literary art can communicate 'metaphysical value-judgments' and other very complex, high-level concepts and meanings to some people; that some viewers or listeners can detect such distinct messages in some art works; and that such non-literary means of communication are generally not very reliable, but that it is not logical to conclude that just because they are not as reliable as literary means they are not actually communication.

In fact, there are often as many communication failures when discursive means are used. I'm still often surprised how difficult it can be to communicate clearly with people who are stubborn and whose minds have been kind of warped or distorted by ideology, misinformation and careless thinking methods.

J

[Jonathan]

Stephen: "PPS

Psychosis and the Sublime in American Art: Rothco and Smithson

Timothy D. Martin (Tate Papers - 2010)

[This paper kinda makes my mind hurt, but Rothco prints in our home are soothing.]"

Good find.

Martin: "One cannot hit the high road to the sublime by starting from that other part of the self, the part that lives in the phenomena of direct bodily experience and self-interest, otherwise known as the will to enjoy."

Yep. Meaning, this comment aligns with my understanding of Kant's Sublime.

I think that Stephen's point was that the painting that he is standing in front of in the image that he posted is an example of the Sublime in art. It is about threatening forces of incomprehensible magnitude. See? And it's not postmodernism. Understand? I think the idea of Stephen's post was that it was a hint to you to reconsider your mixed up perspective on Kantian Sublimity.

J

[Jonathan]

So you don't make anything from scratch, but rather just buy things that others -- others like me -- make.

What do you make from scratch?

Do you even remember what your original statement was that brought us to this little tangent? Your chest-thumping fantasy judgment was that you could live without people who do what I do, but that I could not live without people who do what you do. Do you remember that now?

Yes. I can live without your "art", and you can't live without a home and electricity.

I do many things. I've worked as a painter and sculptor, and as a technical illustrator and graphic designer, and as a photographer, and as a product and packaging designer, and in art/architectural restoration, and a bit in video, animation and sound production, and I've played in several bands.

What kind of work are you doing presently to support yourself financially?

Greg

I'm not interested in going into anymore detail about my work or finances, especially with someone with your pervy background of having spent a year stalking another male. I'm done with your dick swinging' contest. M-kay?

J

[Jonathan]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Very funny Brant (#635, below). More here.

Ha! "Walter aghast" is funny.

J

[Jonathan]

So, why not instead ask someone who *cares* about their music enough to study and analyze it and identify the deep values it presumably communicates?

Indeed. For example your insights in the earlier post about the "voices" in the earlier church music was fascinating, and gave me more clarity and more things to listen for.

Asking someone who cares about the Stones' music wouldn't achieve the purpose of my question. As I said in an earlier post, I asked the question of someone who is not a fan of the Stones "because the Objectivist Esthetics, as well as other Objectivish theories of art, makes assertions about what is 'communicated' in music, and to what degree and percentage of the population, even to those who do not '*care*' about the music 'enough to study and analyze it and identify the deep values that it presumable communicates.'"

J

[Jonathan]

In an earlier post, I wrote,

You're so whiny and fragile! Especially for someone who enjoys dishing it out as much as you do. But, of course, when you dish it out, you don't think you're dishing it out, do you? When you pose and preen and jab and ridicule, you're not "turning anything against" anyone or being unfair or anything? Right? Heh. When you stupidly drag your wife's comment into a discussion as an attempt at ridicule, you're so self-important and self-unaware that you think that your opponent owes you an apology for commenting on your posting of your wife's comment!

Let me clarify my perspective behind the above for anyone who might not be aware of the history here.

People here at OL like to imagine motives. Why is Jonathan so focused on this or that? It's so personal to him! Etc.

Well, no, it's not personal. It's not that I feel that I've been stung by something as stupid as Roger's reporting his wife's comment of "Give me a break!" The issue is actually that I think that Roger has stung himself with it. My perspective is that his posting it was a stupid move on several levels, and that it encapsulates his (and other Objectivish-types') mindset toward abstract art. It is his practicing of not only badly attempted ridicule, but of making compound errors while posing as scholarly and respected and respectful.

The compound errors are:

1. "Give me a break" is pure "Argument from Personal Incredulity." The specific phrase "Give me a break!" is second only to "I can't believe it!" in the jargon of the Personally Incredulous, and just above "You can't be serious!"

2. Roger's quoting his wife was an attempt at the fallacy of treating congregated fallacies as adding up to something other than fallacies. He didn't just report his own Personally Incredulous reaction, but believed that sharing his agreement with his wife's would make his position Extra Personally Incredulous!

3. Roger still hasn't recognized and admitted to his error, or to his bullying and fallaciousness, and he hasn't apologized, but instead made demands about my referring to the incident. He arrogantly announced that his terms were not negotiable, and that I was to stop talking about the issue, or he would cease to participate in the discussions, thus apparently depriving me of the great, important, scholarly, grownup value that someone of his amazing stature could deliver.

So, that's where I'm coming from. That's the perspective behind why I don't buy the bullshit that Roger is trying to sell about my being a snarky meanie while he's a sweet, gentle, respectful scholar who is being unjustly attacked.

J

[Brant Gaede]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Very funny Brant (#635, below). More here.

Ha! "Walter aghast" is funny.

J

The naked male model, btw, is lighting the sculptor's cigarette lightly implying--with a tinge of humor--they just had sex, without actually saying that.

--Brant

hence, "Walter aghast"--the humor being in Walter logically exaggerating Koch's intent by his reactive interpretation of pretending the mild eroticism was virtually pornographic: "I'm shocked, shocked, to find that gambling's going on in here."

[Jonathan]

But anyway, back to your snit with Jonathan. Is it about females, or liberals, or queens, or transvestites or prancing homosexuals or what? It's hard to get a straight answer out of you, sometimes. And sometimes you make no sense, as here.

You and I, we could probably have this conversation over in twenty minutes, and move on. You would get to say how awful and female and queenly and homosexualized is this and that art, and I would wait for the cab to come get me.

I think this is a stupid stance to take, and now that I have made my point clearly, you might understand it. You might also, of course, repeatedly bang the 'derp feminizationism queenly homo prancer fog' bar on your keyboard. We live, we learn.

It's kind of got a Colonel Fitts vibe to it, doesn't it?

[Brant Gaede]

I'm beginning to understand Kantian sublimity, thanks to Jonathan.

I'm all for it!

--Brant

[Newberry]

Deleted, the quote function didn't work in iPad

[Newberry]

Rather, 1. it is a stance wholly in defence of the uniqueness of art. 2. It is in defence of objectivity and objective definitions. 3. It is all for the mind of man.

And a few individuals who are speaking up, clearly and rationally, against the entrenched and powerful Art Establishment are hardly the bullies you make of them. By far, the reverse, more like rocks against the popular current; while they might not get everything right all the time.

Art is symptomatic (and the motivator) of much, today. Here is a huge (probably favoritist or cronyist) industry which self-rewardedly deems what art is, for its own benefits and status. Following them, the many people who blindly depend on what they are told of the nature of art, and great art, by 'experts'. And underneath, common and universal egalitarianism which dictates that everybody has equal talent, everybody equally deserves success by only existing, and art is 'anything goes'. All together, I think the result is a corruption and devaluation of what art means.

Nice!