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

[Jonathan]

Not for me: art, logic and reason.

That all depends by what standard you reason, Brant...

Jonathan holds the leftist definition of "logic and reason"... while I do not. So naturally what he worships as "reason and logic" in modern abstract art, I regard as random baby drool.

Greg

Really?!!! What's the "leftist definition of logic"?!!! I had no idea that there was such a thing. I've been referring to actual logic. Which is why I've repeatedly identified you as employing the fallacy of affirming the consequent. But you don't understand what that means, do you? You've never actually studied logic, have you?

J

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

From what I can tell of Kahmi's conditions for art, the following ancient sculpture could be made to fit.

To paraphrase:

- Stonehenge was made with special care and skill - not the product of casual whim, chance, or accident.

- These are not abstract things. They are big rocks and they represent big rocks perfectly.

- Stonehenge is intelligible within its cultural context. It embodies, in comprehensible forms, ideas and values that are important to the individuals who created them and have the potential to interest and move others. (Ask modern-day Druids.)

- Stonehenge is the product of more than just technical skill, or craft. It involves a personal sensitivity, talent, or vision, which enabled the painter or sculptor to bring a subject to life and imbue it with meaning in a compelling way.

Michael

[Jonathan]

Who Says That's Art?

Second, that the emotionally meaningful...

Emotionally meaningful to whom? If they're not emotionally meaningful to Kamhi, then they are not art for anyone?

Is the same true of everyone else? If they are emotionally meaningful to Kamhi, but not to me, are they therefore not art to Kamhi? Does everyone get to cancel out Kamhi's responses to art in the way that she insists on canceling out everyone else's? If one person doesn't feel what she does when looking at a painting, is it proof that she's pretending to see it, like in The Emperor's New Clothes?

...forms of visual art consist of two- or three-dimensional representations of actual or imagined persons, places, objects, or events.

Warhol's Brillo boxes are three-dimensional representations of actual or imagined persons, places, objects, or events, yet Kamhi asserts, arbitrarily, that they are not art!

They are not abstract.

Why not? Answer: Because Kamhi doesn't experience anything emotionally meaningful in abstract art (including architecture). And therefore Kamhi arbitrarily declares that no one does! Kamhi cannot imagine and will not believe that others can experience in abstract visual forms what she experiences in abstract aural forms!

Third, that such imagery, while not necessarily realistic in style, is intelligible within its cultural context. It embodies, in comprehensible forms, ideas and values that are important to the individuals who create them and have the potential to interest and move others.

Which others? If it interests and moves lots of people other than Kamhi, she still declares that it's not art! So she doesn't actually mean "others." She means only "Kamhi."

J

[Jonathan]

I suspect when you and I use the term aesthetically objective and subjective, we are not talking about the same things.

I think that's probably true.

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

Kamhi on Kant

This material is from Chapter 1 of Who Says That's Art?

Chapter title: "What Exactly Are We Talking About?"

Section title: "Which Eighteenth-Century Ideas about 'Fine Art' Are Worth Keeping?"

Sub-section title: "What Did the Influential Thinker Kant Really Say about 'Art'?"

Who Says That's Art?

Chapter 1, pp. 20-21

[bold emphasis added]

The eighteenth-century figure who has probably had the greatest impact on thought about art is the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Modernist scholars and critics cite him to justify abstract art. Postmodernists condemn him for the same reason. Both are mistaken, for they base their views on an egregious misreading of Kant's Critique of Judgement (1790). Scholars and critics on both sides have claimed that Kant considered the realm of art to be detached from ideas and emotions. They have thus regarded him as favoring an exclusively "formalist" view of art - which judges works of art in terms of their abstract formal properties, divorced from meaning and from any connection to personal interest and values.

The passages most often cited in that regard belong to parts of Kant's Critique that deal with beauty and taste in general, however, not with the artsper se. Although two leading Kant scholars called attention to that error three decades ago, scholars and critics have continued to misrepresent Kant's views - offering unwitting testimony to the persistence of mistaken ideas in intellectual history, especially with regard to the concept of art. [*] The sections of Kant's work actually devoted to the fine arts present a view diametrically different from the one commonly ascribed to him. They explain that the value of an art work is very much tied to meaning, for it depends on presenting what Kant termed "aesthetical Ideas."

What did Kant mean by an "aesthetical Idea"? As he explained (albeit in typically opaque fashion, partly paraphrased here), it was a "representation of the Imagination" that cannot be completely expressed by language. In his view, imagination" "creat[es] another nature, as it were, out of the material that actual nature gives it." Such imaginative representations "strive after something which lies beyond the bounds of [concrete] experience." They seek to be "a presentation of concepts," in effect, giving them "the appearance of objective reality." [**] As Kant further stated, "[an] aesthetical Idea is a representation of the Imagination associated with a given concept." Given his emphasis on concepts, this was surely not a view divorcing art from ideas.

Kant's "aesthetical Ideas" pertained to existential phenomena such as death, envy, love, and fame, as well as to conceptions of other-worldly things such as heaven and hell. In all cases, he implied, the products of the artist's imagination are essentially mimetic. That is, they resemble to some degree the appearance of nature, or "objective reality." Yet as he indicated, a work of art does not merely copy nature, for it embodies concepts more fully than any single instance in reality.

What Kant was saying closely resembles what philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand stated more succinctly (and to my mind far more accessibly) two centuries later. Rand argued that art brings man's concepts about things of human importance "to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allows him to grasp them directly, as if they were percepts." [***] On this view, an image of a courageous man embodies the idea of courage in general. Thus Michelangelo's renowned sculpture of David, for example, represents more than just the biblical hero of that name. For the people of fifteenth-century Florence, in particular, it signified the bold defiance and independent spirit of their own city-state in the face of powerful forces that beset them. More generally, it signifies the heroic beauty and courageous vigilance of an ideal man.

[see the next post for the endnotes.]

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Endnotes for the Post Above

Who Says That's Art?

pp. 257-258

[bold emphasis added]

[*] Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer corrected essential misconceptions about Kant's views on art in their "Introduction to Kant's Aesthetics" in Essays in Kant's Aesthetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), reprinted in Geirge Duckie teal., Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989); see esp. 309-310. Nonetheless, A Companion to Aesthetics, Ed? by David E. Cooper (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992) refers under "aestheticism" to Kant's powerfully formalistic theory in the Critique of Judgement." Critic Riger Kimball also misrepresented Kant in his review of Torres and Kamhi, What Art Is: "Can Art Be Defined?," The Public Interest, Spring 2001; see our response at http://www.aristos.org/editors/resp-pi.htm.

[**] Immanuel Kant, Critique if Judgement, 49; reprinted in Kant Selections, Ed. by Theodore M. Greene (New York: Scribner's, 1957), 426-27. Kant is among the "dead white males" whose ideas postmodernists would like to reject wholesale for their purported narrow-mindedness. Denis Dutton points out this interesting fact, however: "In formulating his grand theory of aesthetics in the Critique of Judgement, [Kant] repeatedly refers to the arts of tribal peoples - the Carib Indians, the Iroquois, the Maori - in an effort to shake his readers out of their Eurocentric prejudice and so present a more universal conception of what art is for the human race as a whole." The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), 203.

[***] Rand's pithy statement of the relationship between percepts and concepts in art is in her essay "The Psycho-Epistemology of Art," in The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Signet, 1975), 20. 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

[moralist]

Really?!!! What's the "leftist definition of logic"?!!! I had no idea that there was such a thing.

I know you have no idea... and you never will.

It's because your thought processes are the end product of government education. The difference between our two views is clearly demonstrated by this:

As a leftist, you were trained to worship random drivel as "art".

Greg

[Ellen Stuttle]

Rand: "Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments."

This, then, is art:

It certainly communicates poor metaphysical value-judgments.

Man, it must take a lot of dope to see reality like that.

You can be certain the artist who made it and the people who value it share the same moral standards.

Greg

It doesn't communicate any "metaphysical value-judgments" or any other form of value-judgments to me.

What I see is a busy display of mostly amorphous color.

I sort of like the color display, but I haven't the least idea what "moral standards" Greg thinks are indicated.

Francisco, since you posted it as an example of Rand's definition of art, what "metaphysical value-judgments" do you see in it?

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Rand on the arbitrary:

""Arbitrary" means a claim put forth in the absence of evidence of any sort, perceptual or conceptual..."

"An arbitrary idea is sheer assertion with no attempt to validate it or connect it to reality..."

"Since an arbitrary statement has no connection to man's means of knowledge or his grasp of reality, cognitively speaking such a claim must be treated as though nothing had been said".

Tony,

The material you quote isn't Rand. It's Piekoff, from - so the Lexicon entry says - Lecture 6 of his "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series.

Rand was in attendance at that series, which was given in the fall of 1976. I suppose we can presume that she didn't disagree with what was said. But the material isn't her style. (And frankly I wonder if it's an entirely accurate transcript of what Peikoff said at the time, but that's another story.)

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Where does [Rand] specify that a work's recreation of reality must adhere to a particular subject, format, arrangement or protocol in order to qualify as art per se?

Multiple places, and at some length, in "Art and Cognition."

Rand disqualifies abstract painting and sculpture, photography, and the "decorative arts" as being "art" according to her definition.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

From what I can tell of Kahmi's conditions for art, the following ancient sculpture could be made to fit.

I'm not sure, but my bet is that she'd say that the formation isn't sculpture (I don't think it is), but just hewn rock - put together for a culturally significant purpose, but that isn't sufficient to meet all her criteria. (She says all the criteria have to be met for her to classify something as art.)

There's no listing for "Stonehenge" in the book's index.

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

From what I can tell of Kahmi's conditions for art, the following ancient sculpture could be made to fit.

I'm not sure, but my bet is that she'd say that the formation isn't sculpture (I don't think it is), but just hewn rock - put together for a culturally significant purpose, but that isn't sufficient to meet all her criteria. (She says all the criteria have to be met for her to classify something as art.)

There's no listing for "Stonehenge" in the book's index.

Ellen

Ellen,

What did I miss? Didn't my explanations fulfill her conditions?

Is it not possible to represent a big-ass rock in fine art?

She may not like the subject and prefer mountains and lakes and clouds and so on for nature, but representing a big-ass rock as a big-as rock is representational.

I agree with you that she would not consider Stonehenge to be sculpture, but, as my example shows, her standards are extremely difficult to present with any kind of precision. I nominally fulfilled her conditions, but presented a work I am sure she would not call art. So what does that say about her nominal conditions?

I tend to think like Jonathan, that she uses her own subjective taste in art as the fundamental and wraps words and attempts at principles around that. I think the idea of looking at reality, at what humans do and have done for a long time, and deriving principles from that is foreign to her approach.

Instead, she transubstantiates opinion into principle and tries to conceal it with verbiage.

This is a perfect example of what I call the normative before cognitive thinking. She judges (all art), then tries to identify what she is judging (all art).

The correct mental sequence for logical validity is to identify something correctly so you can judge it correctly.

I wouldn't mind if she limited her scope to one kind of art and I could even agree with a lot of what she says, at least the part I have seen and seen discussed.

But I can't agree with her setting the definition of art for all mankind when she simply blanks out what a good chunk of mankind does and consumes as art--across different cultures, too--as her method of identification, logic and reasoning.

My false-scope-buster warning system is sounding alarm bells in my head.

Michael

EDIT: Just to be clear, I believe Kahmi is highly intelligent with a lot of insights to offer. So she is worth reading and studying. My criticism is on one aspect of what she presents, not the whole shebang. Besides, I don't want to make the same scope mistake she does.

[moralist]

From what I can tell of Kahmi's conditions for art, the following ancient sculpture could be made to fit.

To paraphrase:

- Stonehenge was made with special care and skill - not the product of casual whim, chance, or accident.

- These are not abstract things. They are big rocks and they represent big rocks perfectly.

- Stonehenge is intelligible within its cultural context. It embodies, in comprehensible forms, ideas and values that are important to the individuals who created them and have the potential to interest and move others. (Ask modern-day Druids.)

- Stonehenge is the product of more than just technical skill, or craft. It involves a personal sensitivity, talent, or vision, which enabled the painter or sculptor to bring a subject to life and imbue it with meaning in a compelling way.

Michael

Stonehenge also had a practical purpose...

Gerald Hawkins, an American astronomer, published the results of an intense study of Stonehenge's astronomical alignments in Nature in 1963. In the article he described how he had used a computer to prove that alignments between Stonehenge and 12 major solar and lunar events was extremely unlikely to have been a coincidence.

http://www.tivas.org.uk/stonehenge/stone_ast.html

[Ellen Stuttle]

Kamhi cannot imagine and will not believe that others can experience in abstract visual forms what she experiences in abstract aural forms!

There's a difference between "abstract" aural forms and "abstract" painting and sculpture in that musical forms are systematically identifiable whereas whatever form is seen in abstract painting and sculpture is projective - similar to seeing figures in the stars in the sky.

As to pleasure in various works, she says that there are works which she enjoys which she doesn't classify as art and vice versa. I'm not yet seeing that she's trying to interfere with your enjoyment of abstract art. I think that what her thesis pertains to is the desirability of conceptual clarity and the consequences of its lack. And so far I think you're taking personal umbrage where there isn't any reason to feel offense.

I wonder: Do you have any criteria for classifying works as "art" beyond their being labeled as such by whoever made them, or by an art collector or museum curator or art critic?

Ellen

[moralist]

Rand: "Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments."

This, then, is art:

It certainly communicates poor metaphysical value-judgments.

Man, it must take a lot of dope to see reality like that.

You can be certain the artist who made it and the people who value it share the same moral standards.

Greg

It doesn't communicate any "metaphysical value-judgments" or any other form of value-judgments to me.

Correct. It communicates a lack of them.

Greg

[Ellen Stuttle]

From what I can tell of Kahmi's conditions for art, the following ancient sculpture could be made to fit.

I'm not sure, but my bet is that she'd say that the formation isn't sculpture (I don't think it is), but just hewn rock - put together for a culturally significant purpose, but that isn't sufficient to meet all her criteria. (She says all the criteria have to be met for her to classify something as art.)

There's no listing for "Stonehenge" in the book's index.

Ellen

Ellen,

What did I miss? Didn't my explanations fulfill her conditions?

Is it not possible to represent a big-ass rock in fine art?

Sure it's possible, but I don't think that's what the people who made Stonehenge were trying to do, represent anything.

I agree with you that she would not consider Stonehenge to be sculpture, but, as my example shows, her standards are extremely difficult to present with any kind of precision. I nominally fulfilled her conditions, but presented a work I am sure she would not call art. So what does that say about her nominal conditions?

Agreed that the conditions she presents have precision problems.

I tend to think like Jonathan, that she uses her own subjective taste in art as the fundamental and wraps words and attempts at principles around that. I think the idea of looking at reality, at what humans do and have done for a long time, and deriving principles from that is foreign to her approach.

So far I don't agree but instead think that what she is attempting is to look "at what humans do and have done for a long time, and [derive] principles from that." Maybe my opinion will change as I progress.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Stonehenge also had a practical purpose...

Gerald Hawkins, an American astronomer, published the results of an intense study of Stonehenge's astronomical alignments in Nature in 1963. In the article he described how he had used a computer to prove that alignments between Stonehenge and 12 major solar and lunar events was extremely unlikely to have been a coincidence.

http://www.tivas.org.uk/stonehenge/stone_ast.html

I think the "practical" purpose (probably religious/practical) was the point of the configurations and that this has been pretty well established with further research on the alignments.

Ellen

[Francisco Ferrer]

As a leftist, you were trained to worship random drivel as "art".

Greg

Art historians shall now have to start thinking of the Soviet Union and other communist dictatorships as non-left-wing. For the dominant style of those regimes was realism.

[Brant Gaede]

I intend to start a thread on how to do electrical work that traduces--without admitting it--the boundaries of competence. Anyone disagreeing with any thing I say is a communist except me if I disagree with myself--which isn't going to happen for that would require thinking.

--Brant

get ready, but remember it won't matter to me how bad the work for I won't be there when the juice starts flowing

[moralist]

As a leftist, you were trained to worship random drivel as "art".

Greg

Art historians shall now have to start thinking of the Soviet Union and other communist dictatorships as non-left-wing. For the dominant style of those regimes was realism.

I was speaking of leftists and their perversion for contemporary abstract art. That is neither abstract nor contemporary. But nevertheless, it's nice try at wallowing in the dead past you're in love with, Frank

Greg

[Jonathan]

Kamhi cannot imagine and will not believe that others can experience in abstract visual forms what she experiences in abstract aural forms!

There's a difference between "abstract" aural forms and "abstract" painting and sculpture in that musical forms are systematically identifiable whereas whatever form is seen in abstract painting and sculpture is projective - similar to seeing figures in the stars in the sky.

That's false. The colors and forms in abstract paintings and sculptures are systematically identifiable. Things such as proportional relationships, color coordination, contrast and balance are systematically identifiable in abstract works. Pollock's work is often cited as reliably making use of the golden mean, for example. And keep in mind that Pollock's work does not represent the limit of abstract styles. Others' styles are quite overtly geometrical and systematic.

As to pleasure in various works, she says that there are works which she enjoys which she doesn't classify as art and vice versa.

The issue is DEPTH of emotion and interest. Kamhi's personal lack of depth of emotional response and lack of interest in abstract art is her basis for asserting that it is not art, and that others must be pretending to have deep emotional responses and interest. It doesn't stimulate her deeply, and she asserts that it therefore doesn't stimulate anyone deeply.

I'm not yet seeing that she's trying to interfere with your enjoyment of abstract art. I think that what her thesis pertains to is the desirability of conceptual clarity and the consequences of its lack. And so far I think you're taking personal umbrage where there isn't any reason to feel offense.

That's weird. I see her as taking personal umbrage. An actual thesis of the desirability of conceptual clarity wouldn't begin with the childish position that anyone who claims to experience what Kamhi does not must be pretending. An interest in conceptual clarity would not start by attempting to sneak in Kamhi's aesthetic limitations as universal, but would explore the reality that different people have different sensitivities, tastes and levels of response to different media, genres, forms and styles. A dedication to conceptual clarity would include addressing how the author might recognize and measure her own biases and limitations so as not to taint the pursuit of clarity.

I wonder: Do you have any criteria for classifying works as "art" beyond their being labeled as such by whoever made them, or by an art collector or museum curator or art critic?

Ellen

Yes, I have criteria. But it involves learning quite a lot about any work in question. I would say that it would probably be a lot like being a judge or jury at a trial.

And I have zero interest in telling others that they are wrong to label something a work of art. Innocent until proven guilty. If someone says that something rises to the level of art to them, then fine, I'll accept that they're telling the truth until I have reason to belive otherwise. I'll accept that their claims of depth of response are just as valid as Kamhi's.

J

[anthony]

Ellen, Kamhi is clear as crystal -

Kamhi is indeed clear as crystal: She is attempting to establish her own aesthetic limitations as the standard for all of mankind. She requires art to be "intelligible and emotionally meaningful." To whom? How does Kamhi determine what is "intelligible and emotionally meaningful"? If she doesn't get it or respond to it emotionally, then she believes that it is unintelligible and meaningless for the entire human race, even if others get it and responds to it emotionally. In fact, when other people get it and respond to it emotionally, Kamhi petulantly claims that the are only pretending to!

but the art-ocrats won't approve.

Kamhi is the "art-ocrat." She has dedicated her entire life to telling other people what is not art based on her own personal lack of aesthetic response. Other people are not telling Kamhi what is not art. See how that works, Tony? Those who are not being the bossy-pantses can't accurately be called "art-ocrats."

J

I haven't read all that Ellen has transposed, but it seems quite simple: It all concerns identity and identification.

By Kamhi, but also by viewers of art.

If one sees no referents to existence and reality in a picture, our visual centre is confused, the certainty of making an identification is compromised and our percepts remain unformed. No percept, no concept. Man seeks out reality and his reality in all things (it is his nature) and therefore looks for what he can 'relate' to in a painting, which means any sign of life, or of nature or existence.

Kamhi is taking on the task of digging us out of increasing subjectivity, recovering definition, and delineating clear boundaries.

Good for her.

When anything is art, then what is art?

Answer, "everything".

An arrangement of colours and lines can be pleasurable to the subconscious I think and maybe evoke emotions. An image or object may be a pleasing design, or excellent craftsmanship or attractive illustration. What's wrong (or inferior) with calling those, "illustration" or "craft"?

Why and when did art become "Art is whatever you feel it is"? About the same time - not so coincidentally- as standards of merit, self-esteem and achievement of the individual began being downplayed by the envy and resentment of others. Now, as it happens, everyone deserves a prize for competing in the race: After all, why should the winner be any superior to his fellows, and cause others to feel left out - or second-rate? Not fair.

I do I admit attach significance to morality and art, and do see a connection between collectivism-statism and the declining standards of identification of what art IS (and what it isn't).

[Jonathan]

Kamhi cannot imagine and will not believe that others can experience in abstract visual forms what she experiences in abstract aural forms!

There's a difference between "abstract" aural forms and "abstract" painting and sculpture in that musical forms are systematically identifiable whereas whatever form is seen in abstract painting and sculpture is projective - similar to seeing figures in the stars in the sky.

That's false. The colors and forms in abstract paintings and sculptures are systematically identifiable. Things such as proportional relationships, color coordination, contrast and balance are systematically identifiable in abstract works. Pollock's work is often cited as reliably making use of the golden mean, for example. And keep in mind that Pollock's work does not represent the limit of abstract styles. Others' styles are quite overtly geometrical and systematic.

It occurs to me that I may have misunderstood your meaning in the above.

Do you mean that all music is instantly identifiable as music by almost all people, where not all abstract art is? And are you therefore saying that you've somehow arrived at the notion that a requirement of art is that it must be instantly identifiable as art without relying on placards or other outside considerations which explain that it's art?

If so, I see no valid reason to impose such a requirement. In fact, the consistent application of such a requirement would mean that quite a lot of literature would cease to be art. Without being informed that a work of literature is a novel -- without its saying "novel" on the cover, and without its being placed in the fiction sections of book stores and libraries -- most people would not be able to tell if if was fictional or if it was a reporting of real events.

Also, the Objectivist view is that the purpose of art is to present a re-creation of reality, and to present it so that the reader or viewer experiences it "as if it were real." It would therefore be rather odd, and contradictory, for Objectivism to hold the position that art is supposed to seem real, but that it is not art if it seems real!

J

[Jonathan]

I haven't read all that Ellen has transposed, but it seems quite simple: It all concerns identity and identification.

By Kamhi, but also by viewers of art.

Which viewers? Not the viewers who experience what Kamhi does not. She arbitrarily asserts that they are pretending to experience in art what they say they experience. Why does Kamhi need to deny the reality of other viewers' aesthetic responses?

If one sees no referents to existence and reality in a picture, our visual centre is confused...

Speak for yourself. My visual centre is not confused. My centre is also not confused when I listen to music, which "offers no referents to existence and reality." I experience abstract visual art much in the same way that others, including Objectivishistics, say that they experience music. The fact that you don't, and that Kamhi doesn't, doesn't nullify my experiences, or those of others.

...the certainty of making an identification is compromised and our percepts remain unformed.

The fact that that is the limit of your experience doesn't make it true of everyone.

No percept, no concept. Man seeks out reality and his reality in all things (it is his nature) and therefore looks for what he can 'relate' to in a painting, which means any sign of life, or of nature or existence.

I've given examples many times in the past of my perceiving the content of abstract paintings, and objectively describing their attributes and the reasons for their effects on me and others, and the resulting concepts and meanings. Here's one set of comparison examples:

The first gives me the feeling of energy, determination and action. It's meaning is that mankind should be strong and bold, and pursue his passions. The specific angularity and proportions of the shapes is what conveys motion and rising to me, the dramatic contrasts and bold colors suggest passion, heat, pressure and struggle, and the bulk of the forms and the roughness of the textures give me the feeling of strength and rugged durability. I see it as a very physically masculine painting. It's extroverted, dominant, serious and aggressive. It's like Atlas pushing upward.

The second image gives me the feeling of serenity. It's meaning is that peace and gentleness are important human qualities. The colors are subdued and calming. There is practically no drama or contrast -- the forms are delicate and faint, and they convey a soothing gentleness, playfulness and weightlessness. The image is like a visual whisper. I see it as a very physically feminine painting. It's withdrawn and introverted, and anything but aggressive. It's like a mother caressing a child.

Kamhi is taking on the task of digging us out of increasing subjectivity, recovering definition, and delineating clear boundaries.

No, she's actually just trying to impose her own subjectivity on everyone -- her own personal aesthetic limitations. She is doing nothing but arbitrarily asserting that she is the limit of aesthetic sensitivity, and that anyone who claims to experience what she does not is pretending.

Why and when did art become "Art is whatever you feel it is"?

Heh. You think that at some point in the past, everyone agreed on what art was?!!! Hahahaha!!!

Anyway, Kamhi's position is that art is whatever she, and only she, feels it is. If she feels nothing where others feel great depth, she declares that it is not art for anyone. There's really no difference in "Art is whatever you feel it is" and Kamhi's approach except that Kamhi doesn't wish to respect others and accept their emotional responses as being as valid as hers.

About the same time - not so coincidentally- as standards of merit, self-esteem and achievement of the individual began being downplayed by the envy and resentment of others. Now, as it happens, everyone deserves a prize for competing in the race: After all, why should the winner be any superior to his fellows, and cause others to feel left out - or second-rate? Not fair.

Bullshit. Those events were nowhere near the same time. You're just making shit up.

J

[Jonathan]

Here are some questions which remain unanswered by haters of abstract art:

In the first quote of Linda Mann above, note that she says she expresses her theme by "choosing beautiful objects to paint" (and doing so with a careful, precise style). The ones I saw all contain either well-proportioned man-made objects or healthy specimens of fruits and vegetables.

So, if Linda Mann were to choose colorful, well-proportioned, man-made stone tiles as the "beautiful objects" that she wanted to paint in a still life, and if she were to selectively cut them and arrange them in a manner which pleased her, like this...



...and if she were to then create a painting of them like this...



...the painting would qualify as art according to your criteria, right?


If she were to explain that the theme of the painting is that the world is real, orderly and fascinating and that man is capable of understanding and enjoying it, and that she expressed this theme by choosing beautiful objects to paint, and by creating a composition that is purposeful and intriguing, and that she carefully rendered the objects and romantically enhanced their colors and textures, you'd agree that she succeeded, right?

J