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

[Jonathan]

Newbsie, have you gotten over your misplaced, willful misinterpretations and vilifications of Kant's notion of the Sublime yet? After all of the evidence that has been provided to you in an effort to help you grasp the Rand-brainwashed stupidity of your hateful misjudgments of Kant's aesthetics, are you still, after all this time, stubbornly clinging your dumb position? Even after it has been pointed out to you numerous times that Rand's aesthetic "sense of life" is pure Kantian Sublimity, and that allof her novels contain the Kantian Sublime as their signature aesthetic style?

I would have to say not. My published articles and paid lectures about the connection between Kant’s and Postmodern aesthetics are damn brilliant, and original.

Your articles and lectures on Kant are neither "original" nor "damn brilliant." I've seen several of Rand's other followers approach Kant with the same stupid hostility and make the same dumb misinterpretations. Your method of willfully misinterpreting Kant's notion of the Sublime is common among dull-minded Rand-followers who go out looking to vindicate her uninformed, unsupported, and unsupportable opinion that Kant was the "father of modern art (see his Critique of Judgment)."

Your essay Terrorism and Postmodern Art is a great example of a study in dumb and unaware.

In the essay, while attempting to vilify Kant's notion of the Sublime, you inadvertently and unknowingly admit to your own pride of having experienced the Kantian Sublime in reaction to the 9/11 attacks!!!

Here's what you wrote in that essay:

"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."

You don't understand it, in fact you refuse to understand it, but what you wrote in that quote is exactly what the experience of the Kantian Sublime is! You proudly felt your will to resist this thing of great magnitude and terror which was a "shock" and "beyond comprehension," and you felt that it was time to stand up for your values, or, as Kant said, "regard your estate as exalted above" the terrifying phenomenon. And you did so while imagining that you were rejecting Kant. Dumb.

Also, notice that you didn't address my comments about Rand's "sense of life" and her aesthetic style being prime examples of Kantian Sublimity? Dumb and stubborn! Kant was the father of Rand's art. He was the father of Romantic Realism, not of "modern art" or of postmodern art.

You made a good addition by adding that there were other thinkers and ideas prior to Kant that discussed the awesome terrifying nature of the Sublime, which never detracted from my view.

And yet, despite my "good addition," you haven't amended any of your judgments and vilifications. For some reason -- dumb stubbornness? -- you still blame Kant for originating the concept of the Sublime, and you cling to your false belief that prior to him, the "Sublime" meant what you want it to mean, and that he came along and changed it to something that you want to believe is evil. You still hold the really stupid view that others are bad for enjoying experiencing the Sublime, but that you are not, and that apparently Rand is not. For some irrational reason -- dumb stubbornness? -- your personal experiencing of the Sublime is a very good thing, and Rand's art was great for containing it, but everyone else is to be condemned for enjoying experiencing it, or for including it in their art. That's not "damn brilliant."

You're upset -- and jealous -- that I'm rational and intelligent, and that I do real philosophy where you pose and pretend and parrot Rand. You're angry that I've done philosophy so well, specifically in regard to the issue of Kant and the Sublime, that I've embarrassed you by revealing what a pretender, amateur, and Rand-brainwashed hack you are.

You're way out of your league in the realm of ideas. You should stick to painting. It's the one thing you do well.

You are absolutely right if pressing "send" is your only qualification.

Heh. And what do you believe that your qualifications are? You're obviously not a formal student or scholar of philosophy or of aesthetics. Are you "qualified" because you've been able to convince like-minded ignoramuses to publish your wrongheaded, non-scholarly opinions? People who work for Objectivist organizations are as uninformed and uneducated as you are on the subject of Kant's aesthetics, and they share your Rand-brainwashed prejudice against Kant, and therefore their willingness to publish your views that they want to believe to be true "qualifies" you as an expert worthy of being published? Heh.

J

[Newberry]

Newbsie, have you gotten over your misplaced, willful misinterpretations and vilifications of Kant's notion of the Sublime yet? After all of the evidence that has been provided to you in an effort to help you grasp the Rand-brainwashed stupidity of your hateful misjudgments of Kant's aesthetics, are you still, after all this time, stubbornly clinging your dumb position? Even after it has been pointed out to you numerous times that Rand's aesthetic "sense of life" is pure Kantian Sublimity, and that allof her novels contain the Kantian Sublime as their signature aesthetic style?

I would have to say not. My published articles and paid lectures about the connection between Kant’s and Postmodern aesthetics are damn brilliant, and original.

Your articles and lectures on Kant are neither "original" nor "damn brilliant." I've seen several of Rand's other followers approach Kant with the same stupid hostility and make the same dumb misinterpretations. Your method of willfully misinterpreting Kant's notion of the Sublime is common among dull-minded Rand-followers who go out looking to vindicate her uninformed, unsupported, and unsupportable opinion that Kant was the "father of modern art (see his Critique of Judgment)."

Your essay Terrorism and Postmodern Art is a great example of a study in dumb and unaware.

In the essay, while attempting to vilify Kant's notion of the Sublime, you inadvertently and unknowingly admit to your own pride of having experienced the Kantian Sublime in reaction to the 9/11 attacks!!!

Here's what you wrote in that essay:

"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."

You don't understand it, in fact you refuse to understand it, but what you wrote in that quote is exactly what the experience of the Kantian Sublime is! You proudly felt your will to resist this thing of great magnitude and terror which was a "shock" and "beyond comprehension," and you felt that it was time to stand up for your values, or, as Kant said, "regard your estate as exalted above" the terrifying phenomenon. And you did so while imagining that you were rejecting Kant. Dumb.

Also, notice that you didn't address my comments about Rand's "sense of life" and her aesthetic style being prime examples of Kantian Sublimity? Dumb and stubborn! Kant was the father of Rand's art. He was the father of Romantic Realism, not of "modern art" or of postmodern art.

You made a good addition by adding that there were other thinkers and ideas prior to Kant that discussed the awesome terrifying nature of the Sublime, which never detracted from my view.

And yet, despite my "good addition," you haven't amended any of your judgments and vilifications. For some reason -- dumb stubbornness? -- you still blame Kant for originating the concept of the Sublime, and you cling to your false belief that prior to him, the "Sublime" meant what you want it to mean, and that he came along and changed it to something that you want to believe is evil. You still hold the really stupid view that others are bad for enjoying experiencing the Sublime, but that you are not, and that apparently Rand is not. For some irrational reason -- dumb stubbornness? -- your personal experiencing of the Sublime is a very good thing, and Rand's art was great for containing it, but everyone else is to be condemned for enjoying experiencing it, or for including it in their art. That's not "damn brilliant."

You're upset -- and jealous -- that I'm rational and intelligent, and that I do real philosophy where you pose and pretend and parrot Rand. You're angry that I've done philosophy so well, specifically in regard to the issue of Kant and the Sublime, that I've embarrassed you by revealing what a pretender, amateur, and Rand-brainwashed hack you are.

You're way out of your league in the realm of ideas. You should stick to painting. It's the one thing you do well.

You are absolutely right if pressing "send" is your only qualification.

Heh. And what do you believe that your qualifications are? You're obviously not a formal student or scholar of philosophy or of aesthetics. Are you "qualified" because you've been able to convince like-minded ignoramuses to publish your wrongheaded, non-scholarly opinions? People who work for Objectivist organizations are as uninformed and uneducated as you are on the subject of Kant's aesthetics, and they share your Rand-brainwashed prejudice against Kant, and therefore their willingness to publish your views that they want to believe to be true "qualifies" you as an expert worthy of being published? Heh.

J

Glad you asked. My qualifications are that I am in my fifth decade as a full-time artist, in college I was a fine art major and took Art History, Contemporary Art History, and a few advanced classes in ancient philosophy, like Pre-Socratic Thought. I taught four years at Otis College of Art and Design Foundation courses; Life Drawing (from the bones out), Still Life and Composition, and Painting. For lectures my proposals were accepted over a competitive field of other proposals on aesthetics. I was the Founding Director of the non-profit Foundation for the Advancement of Art, raised $25,000 to host a conference at New York’s Pierre Hotel. (You can buy the DVD’s of the conference here.) The speakers were Philosophers Stephen Hicks, David Kelley, Vision Scientist Jan Koenderink (published by MIT Press), Sculptor Martine Vaugel, and myself. Both Jan and Martine are not objectivist friendly.

I have made the claim that many great postmodern artists, such as Christo, Duchamp, and McCarthy exemplify Kant’s ideals of the sublime. You don’t buy that, fine. So impress me about the aesthetic foundations of Postmodernism. It is way too big of a movement to come about by happenstance.

You also have the odd habit of equating aspects of different arts, like the abstract content of music with abstraction in painting. Or that overcoming horrific obstacles in a novel prove it is an example of Kant’s Sublime; he never states that conquering terrors is sublime. Rather his stance is that “violence to our imaginations” is the end point of the Sublime.

[Brant Gaede]

I love these discussions. I read every word Jonathan writes here on OL. If not for him there'd be only (aesthetic) crap. I'm not saying what he responds to is crap only that crap would be the default if he didn't respond to it the way he does for crap would be the open question. So now we can debate, crap yes or crap no.

-Brant

gotta give credit to where credit is due

but we are talking about MN, and J says he's a very good painter, which can be described as the prime function, not esthetic theorizing and MN knows it or he wouldn't come back for more of the inevitable J, unless, that is, he's a masochist

[Newberry]

That helps, but I don't know for what for I'm not a painter. Taken in its entirety the face as MN did it seems the best part of a painting I don't like. Putting this change in only makes it incongruous. The improvement makes for a nicer face. Nice, however, has nothing to do with the painting's concern with strength and power.

--Brant

Interesting! So you interpret a misshapen face as being strong and powerful because it looks like it has withstood some beatings? Ugly and deformed can equal rugged and durable as opposed to Newberry's contextless, one-size-fits-all interpretation that it must equal a "subhuman soul"? If that's what you're saying, then I think you have a valid point.

The only problem is that I don't think that Newberry actually intended his painting's character's face to look like a punching bag.

Anyway, here's the full original version next to a full version with the face corrected:

Seeing it like this, do you still think that the "nicer face" interferes with what you took to be the painting's theme?

J

This is creepy, not for a few reasons.

One is that J is marking his internet “territory” by pissing on one of my paintings. Another is that by not getting permission to make his marks, he is attempting to dominate me. Good luck with that.

Some thoughtless teachers do this to students by marking it without okays. Empathic art teachers will establish and ask students and artists if they can draw or paint on the works – it is honoring their private spaces. J is off to a wrong start by being creepy, thoughtless, and a jerk.

Let us look at the “corrections.” Parts of her face were smoothed over, and the highlights were eliminated. I get it smooth face with no bright highlights. Now, if you squint at the two, the face on the left comes more forward draping over the edge of the mattress, and with a more substantial form. On the right the face becomes flatter, sinks back into space, impossibly sharing the same space as the curve of the mattress. J’s idea of improvements are to smooth out features and sacrifice form, light, and space - the very things that make vision and powerful visual communication possible.

[Brant Gaede]

As a consumer, not an esthetician, I'm only concerned with the artist's last and completed effort. I like it or I don't. I'd buy it if I could or I wouldn't. And just liking it doesn't mean buying it just because I have the means.

--Brant

MN has certainly done work I'd like to own

[Newberry]

I love these discussions. I read every word Jonathan writes here on OL. If not for him there'd be only (aesthetic) crap. I'm not saying what he responds to is crap only that crap would be the default if he didn't respond to it the way he does for crap would be the open question. So now we can debate, crap yes or crap no.

-Brant

gotta give credit to where credit is due

but we are talking about MN, and J says he's a very good painter, which can be described as the prime function, not esthetic theorizing and MN knows it or he wouldn't come back for more of the inevitable J, unless, that is, he's a masochist

Brant, no, I am not a masochist. I had blocked J and I hadn’t seen these colorful comments by him till now. Just like with painting, I like to try new approaches. J is a con artist and a bully. You might consider checking your investment in him, and if you like the idea of evolving.

[Newberry]

As a consumer, not an esthetician, I'm only concerned with the artist's last and completed effort. I like it or I don't. I'd buy it if I could or I wouldn't. And just liking it doesn't mean buying it just because I have the means.

--Brant

MN has certainly done work I'd like to own

: ) Thanks.

[anthony]

Your essay Terrorism and Postmodern Art

Glad I read this quite excellent article. Partly, it emphasizes the influence of art, even post-modernism. Art usually mirrors the morality of a society, and society will often become a mirror of its art.

In the S. African scene, in its general movement to Socialism, politics rules all. This politicization of a society is represented by "Art as Political Statement" - as slavish and authoritarian as it gets. The State is obviously the main funder of art here. You pay the piper, you get your tune.

[Brant Gaede]

It's hard for me to evaluate someone as a bully as I'm impervious to bullying. I'm almost as impervious to being conned, but I don't see that in J. regardless. He's not selling his own esthetic theories here. I have no idea what they are.

--Brant

I write as Clark Kent, but my real identity . . .

[Ellen Stuttle]

Js idea of improvements [...].

would be diminishments, imo.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

I read every word Jonathan writes here on OL.

By no means for the first time, I wonder what you find of value in Jonathan's posts. As I said on the "Lazy Fair" thread recently:

[i evaluate Jonathan's] activities (these days) [as] mostly unproductive, an interfering nuisance from the standpoint of substantive discussion. ([...] the more he's specialized in his Objectivish-bashing clowning the less of any interest, or of validity, I've come to see in his posts.)

It's gotten so that, far from wanting to read his every word, I've become inclined to skip his posts as likely to contain more and more and more distortion and misdirection.

For instance, look at this sentence - and it's just one sentence - as an example of the sort of cognitive hashes Jonathan cooks up by the cyber-ream (I've excerpted the quote from Newberry's #1545:

But, would Kamhi and her universal "average viewer" be able to objectively identify its subject and meaning without having access to "outside considerations"?

Problems:

He utilizes Rand's "outside considerations" statement by wrenching it from its context and employing it with a meaning and for a purpose which isn't what Rand was talking about. (The "outside considerations" statement comes from her brief, footnote-like discussion of procedural standards for making aesthetic judgments. It doesn't pertain to criteria for demarcating art from non-art. Her context entails that a work being evaluated for technical merit has pre-qualified as belonging in the category "art.")

He conflates Rand's "outside considerations" with Kamhi's criterion of cultural intelligibility for classification as "art" (in the "fine arts" sense), thus thoroughly distorting Kamhi's meaning. (Of course - duh - "outside considerations" are operative in an art work's being culturally intelligible - more generally, in its being intelligible at all. For instance, without prior knowledge of human form, one couldn't recognize a depiction of a human figure.)

Furthermore, he distorts Kamhi's designation "ordinary people" or "ordinary person" into some kind of statistical "average viewer," thus smuggling in just the sort of snob dismissal of "philistines" to which she objects. What Kamhi means in speaking of "ordinary" viewers, or of "the public" is simply all those who aren't part of the "art world" of persons professionally engaged in art. Most of the posters on this thread are "ordinary people" in Kamhi's meaning, but we don't exhibit some kind of statistical conglomerate aesthetic reactions.

How is someone supposed to answer the question he concocts from his out-of-context and distorted use of sources?

I think that anyone who tries to answer is falling into a trap - whether deliberately set or not, I don't know. That is, I don't know if Jonathan thinks that he's accurately reflecting his sources. He seems to be so allergic to Kamhi, he can't read straight anything she writes. But he manages to distort every source he references which I've read - including Kandinsky.

Ellen

[Jonathan]

Glad you asked. My qualifications are that I am in my fifth decade as a full-time artist, in college I was a fine art major and took Art History, Contemporary Art History, and a few advanced classes in ancient philosophy, like Pre-Socratic Thought. I taught four years at Otis College of Art and Design Foundation courses; Life Drawing (from the bones out), Still Life and Composition, and Painting. For lectures my proposals were accepted over a competitive field of other proposals on aesthetics. I was the Founding Director of the non-profit Foundation for the Advancement of Art, raised $25,000 to host a conference at New York’s Pierre Hotel. (You can buy the DVD’s of the conference here.) The speakers were Philosophers Stephen Hicks, David Kelley, Vision Scientist Jan Koenderink (published by MIT Press), Sculptor Martine Vaugel, and myself. Both Jan and Martine are not objectivist friendly.

In other words, you're not qualified.

The reason that you've had your freshman, bush-league philosophical opinions and emotings published by others, or presented as lectures at their events, is not because you're a scholar or because you've met even the lowest of academic or intellectual standards, but because you've made friends with other Rand-followers whose organizations were willing to publish your opinions or give you a podium despite your lack of credentials or philosophical rigor. It wasn't merit. It wasn't what you knew. It was whom you knew, and whom you agreed with about being Rand's little helpers together.

And hosting your own seminar isn't a qualification. Anyone can put on a show and invite one's friends to scratch one's back after having scratched theirs.

More importantly, none of the people whom you've listed above have brought any critical thinking whatsoever to any of the philosophical or historical ideas that you've published or lectured on. They don't have the relevant backgrounds, and aren't interested in learning about the philosophical/aesthetic subjects on which you opine. They come from the same Rand-distorted perspective that you do, and they simply trust your philosophical-rookie misinterpretations, smears and manglings because you come to the predetermined conclusions that they want you to. They have no interest in verifying if you've gotten anything right about the history of art or aesthetics.

I have made the claim that many great postmodern artists, such as Christo, Duchamp, and McCarthy exemplify Kant’s ideals of the sublime.

You're backing away from the position that you've advocated for years.

You haven't merely claimed that "many postmodernist artists exemplify Kant's ideals of the sublime," but that Kant's notion of the Sublime was the "ideological birthplace" of all of the "postmodern aesthetic" movement in art, and that Kant was therefore responsible for -- was the philosophical cause of -- the opening of "the floodgates" of what you call the "nihilistic revolution" of postmodern art.

Incidentally, even your current phrasing of terms is tainted by your Rand-distorted perspective. In the quote above, you refer to "Kant's ideals of the sublime." Kant didn't have "ideals" in regard to the sublime, but only ideas. He was simply identifying, describing and defining the Sublime, where you, looking through your Rand Goggles, seem to believe that he must have been advocating some normative position or other as an "ideal." He wasn't.

You don’t buy that, fine.

Oh, but I do buy the new position that you're taking above, and, in fact, I've taken it myself! I've said many times that some postmodernist artists do indeed employ the Sublime in their art, just as some artists from every age, school or genre have, and just as Rand did. Again, your claim in the past has not been merely that some postmodernists have created art using the Sublime, but that Kant's notion of the Sublime is evil and was the cause of the entire postmodernist movement.

I'm glad, however, that you appear to be changing your mind, due to my patiently having schooled you on the subject for years, but the rational thing for you to do now would be to admit that you're taking a much more moderate and reasonable position which bears no resemblance to your frantic and nutty past essays on the issue of Kant and the Sublime.

So impress me about the aesthetic foundations of Postmodernism. It is way too big of a movement to come about by happenstance.

Arbitrary assertion. Illogical. Non sequitur.

I think you're still being Rand's little helper in believing that philosophy leads, and everything follows, and therefore that there just must be a single philosophical villain whom you can blame for everything that you don't like (while not understanding it). The range of ideas in postmodernism in art is very wide and complex, and has had multiple influences and causes. The same is true of almost every period or school of art.

You also have the odd habit of equating aspects of different arts, like the abstract content of music with abstraction in painting.

That only seems odd to you because you're a Rand-follower, and almost all of your "knowledge" comes from her, including her erroneous and self-contradictory opinions on subjects about which she knew little or nothing.

Are you a musician, Newbsie? Do you have an educational and professional background in music? Or are you now ignorantly talking about music from the perspective of a painter?

Or that overcoming horrific obstacles in a novel prove it is an example of Kant’s Sublime; he never states that conquering terrors is sublime.

Heh. Do you ever comprehend what you read, or are your Rand Goggles so blurry and distorted that you only see what you want to see?

Dum-dum, here are some quotes from Kant that you yourself have posted in the past here on OL:

From here (with my bolding, coloring and type size increase added so that you might finally see what you've been refusing to see for so many years):

Every affection of the STRENUOUS TYPE (such, that is, as excites the consciousness of our power of overcoming every resistance [animus strenuus]) is aesthetically sublime, e.g., anger, even desperation (the rage of forlorn hope but not faint-hearted despair). [Emphasis in the original]

The Critique of Judgement by Immanuel Kant, translated by James Creed Meredith

From here (again with my bolding, coloring and type size increase added):

War itself, provided it is conducted with order and a sacred respect for the rights of civilians, has something sublime about it, and gives nations that carry it on in such a manner a stamp of mind only the more sublime the more numerous the dangers to which they are exposed, and which they are able to meet with fortitude.

And here's a quote from Kant that I've quoted and cited and posted multiple times, but which you never seem to learn from (once again with my bolding, coloring and type size increase added):

"Everything that provokes this feeling in us, including the might of nature which challenges our strength, is then, though improperly, called sublime, and it is only under presupposition of this idea within us, and in relation to it, that we are capable of attaining to the idea of the sublimity of that being which inspires deep respect in us, not by the mere display of its might in nature, but more by the faculty which is planted in us of estimating that might without fear, and of regarding our estate as exalted above it."

Rather his stance is that “violence to our imaginations” is the end point of the Sublime.

No, that is not his stance. What happened is that you stopped reading and thinking when you came to the words "violence to our imaginations," because that's what you wanted to believe was Kant's position, and you skipped the parts about our rising to the challenge in response to the object of magnitude or terror. In other words, you went looking for something over which you could condemn Kant and vindicate Rand, and, stupidly, you didn't take the time to actually understand anything. You plucked a few phrases that you didn't like from the larger context which you had no interest in understanding. As I've said many times, you approached the reading of Kant with immense hostility and haste, and so much so that you didn't even read and comprehend the quotes of his that you've posted here on OL.

J

[Jonathan]

This is creepy, not for a few reasons.

One is that J is marking his internet “territory” by pissing on one of my paintings.

I'm not pissing, but just joining in and following your criticizing of artists. I figure that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I know you don't like getting what you give, but that's just too bad, precious. Deal with it. Bill Scherk has admonished you in the past for your dishing out what you can't take. Typical bully transition to victim.

Anyway, let's remember the context. You had looked down your nose at Bill's art, and at the art of others who are much more talented, successful and famous than you are, and then Bill responded to your pissing on other artists by pointing out that some of your art has some amateurish errors. He was right, and I added some objective visual analysis to back him up.

Compared to you, I took the high road. Rather than just giving subjective preferences and being snarkily critical of other artists, as you had, I offered an objective demonstration of correcting poor facial anatomy, proportions, and skin coloring and texture.

Now, as for marking territory, what's got you so upset is that I've disregarded what you thought were the boundaries of your territory. Before I came along to online O-land, almost everyone believed, out of ignorance, anything that you said about the philosophy of aesthetics and art history. You weren't used to being questioned or criticized, and you resented my doing so. You especially hate being shown to have been not just wrong, but at a freshman level.

You were used to pissing on other artists and being applauded for it by other Rand's-little-helpers who don't think critically about anything. I showed up and put an end to your bullying. Bullies never like being taken down. Typical of bullies, you cry that you're a victim.

Another is that by not getting permission to make his marks, he is attempting to dominate me. Good luck with that. Some thoughtless teachers do this to students by marking it without okays. Empathic art teachers will establish and ask students and artists if they can draw or paint on the works – it is honoring their private spaces. J is off to a wrong start by being creepy, thoughtless, and a jerk.

Heh. You should review your own posts all over the internet and in your tutorials before whining about others marking digital copies of your work for educational purposes. Heh. It seriously never occurs to you to practice what you preach, does it?!!! Hahaha!!!

Remember what I said earlier about my holding up a mirror to you? Look in the fucking mirror, Newbsie!

Let us look at the “corrections.” Parts of her face were smoothed over, and the highlights were eliminated. I get it smooth face with no bright highlights...J’s idea of improvements are to smooth out features and sacrifice form, light, and space - the very things that make vision and powerful visual communication possible.

You need to look closer. I corrected the face's structural malformations and erroneous proportions. Go farther back on the thread and look for the inverted alternating GIF animation that I posted, and you'll be able see the objectively measureable corrections that you're not seeing now.

J

[Jonathan]

I read every word Jonathan writes here on OL.

By no means for the first time, I wonder what you find of value in Jonathan's posts. As I said on the "Lazy Fair" thread recently:

[i evaluate Jonathan's] activities (these days) [as] mostly unproductive, an interfering nuisance from the standpoint of substantive discussion. ([...] the more he's specialized in his Objectivish-bashing clowning the less of any interest, or of validity, I've come to see in his posts.)

It's gotten so that, far from wanting to read his every word, I've become inclined to skip his posts as likely to contain more and more and more distortion and misdirection.

Heh. When are you going to let go of your grudge?

For instance, look at this sentence - and it's just one sentence - as an example of the sort of cognitive hashes Jonathan cooks up by the cyber-ream (I've excerpted the quote from Newberry's #1545:

But, would Kamhi and her universal "average viewer" be able to objectively identify its subject and meaning without having access to "outside considerations"?

Problems:

He utilizes Rand's "outside considerations" statement by wrenching it from its context and employing it with a meaning and for a purpose which isn't what Rand was talking about. (The "outside considerations" statement comes from her brief, footnote-like discussion of procedural standards for making aesthetic judgments. It doesn't pertain to criteria for demarcating art from non-art. Her context entails that a work being evaluated for technical merit has pre-qualified as belonging in the category "art.")

False. Rand requires that art must be intelligible in order to qualify as art, by which she means that it must present identifiable subjects and meanings, and that viewers be able to identify those subjects and meanings "exclusively by identifying the evidence contained in the work and allowing no other, outside considerations." Works which do not present such intelligible subjects and meanings "cease to be art" according to Rand.

He conflates Rand's "outside considerations" with Kamhi's criterion of cultural intelligibility for classification as "art" (in the "fine arts" sense), thus thoroughly distorting Kamhi's meaning. (Of course - duh - "outside considerations" are operative in an art work's being culturally intelligible - more generally, in its being intelligible at all. For instance, without prior knowledge of human form, one couldn't recognize a depiction of a human figure.)

False. I'm not conflating anything. In the comment of mine about Kamhi that you quote, my use of "outside considerations" simply means a verbal explanation on a placard next to a painting. In your grudging, pissy, electron-chasing mood, you're just arbitrarily deciding that you want it to mean something else so that you can bitch at me for taking a position that I haven't.

The point of the comment, and similar such comments that I've made, is that Kamhi has never tested "ordinary people" or "ordinary persons" or "average viewers" for how they respond to any work of art, and therefore doesn't know which works qualify as art by even her own criteria. She simply assumes that "ordinary people" will get what she requires them to get out of the work that she wants to classify as art.

Furthermore, he distorts Kamhi's designation "ordinary people" or "ordinary person" into some kind of statistical "average viewer," thus smuggling in just the sort of snob dismissal of "philistines" to which she objects. What Kamhi means in speaking of "ordinary" viewers, or of "the public" is simply all those who aren't part of the "art world" of persons professionally engaged in art. Most of the posters on this thread are "ordinary people" in Kamhi's meaning, but we don't exhibit some kind of statistical conglomerate aesthetic reactions.

False. What Kamhi means by "ordinary people," "ordinary persons," and "average viewers" is not "those who aren't a part of the 'art world.'" What she means is herself and only those who share her personal aesthetic limitations. There are plenty of people who are not "part of the 'art world'" who have deep aesthetic experiences in response to the art which Kamhi claims that "ordinary people" don't respond to. All that she is doing is trying to reinforce her 'argument from personal incredulity' by creating a congregation of the personally incredulous and declaring them to represent "the public" while arbitrarily ignoring and denying the legitimacy of the aesthetic responses of those who experience more than she can in the art forms that she rejects.

How is someone supposed to answer the question he concocts from his out-of-context and distorted use of sources?

Your electron-chasing and petty grudge-holding will never be a substitute to answering my substantive criticisms with substance.

I think that anyone who tries to answer is falling into a trap - whether deliberately set or not, I don't know. That is, I don't know if Jonathan thinks that he's accurately reflecting his sources. He seems to be so allergic to Kamhi, he can't read straight anything she writes. But he manages to distort every source he references which I've read - including Kandinsky.

No, Ellen, you're the one who distorts things. Remember when we started commenting on this thread? You were reading bits and pieces of Kamhi's book and jumping around all over the place? You were then reporting conclusions that you were coming to, and announcing that you were not seeing what I was saying because you were skipping around. You had made up your mind ahead of time.

And I think you did it to lash out at me. After all, in your very first post on this thread you attempted to take a shot at me, and you did so with a blurry-brained misrepresentation of my position, which has been typical of you lately while you've been in your grudge mode.

As for Kandinsky, you went into that one with a predetermined outcome too. You wanted to believe what you wanted to believe. And, again, in the way that you announced that you were reading Kandinsky, and in the way that you primped and preened about your interpretations of him, it was almost as if you thought that your willfully misinterpreting him would somehow hurt me like I've apparently hurt you.

Whatever slight or sting you feel that I've inflicted on you, Ellen, get over it already.

J

[Jonathan]

I love these discussions. I read every word Jonathan writes here on OL. If not for him there'd be only (aesthetic) crap. I'm not saying what he responds to is crap only that crap would be the default if he didn't respond to it the way he does for crap would be the open question. So now we can debate, crap yes or crap no.

-Brant

gotta give credit to where credit is due

but we are talking about MN, and J says he's a very good painter, which can be described as the prime function, not esthetic theorizing and MN knows it or he wouldn't come back for more of the inevitable J, unless, that is, he's a masochist

Brant, no, I am not a masochist. I had blocked J and I hadn’t seen these colorful comments by him till now. Just like with painting, I like to try new approaches. J is a con artist and a bully. You might consider checking your investment in him, and if you like the idea of evolving.

Evolving is great! But it includes recognizing and admitting one's errors, rather than throwing tantrums about those who revealed one's errors, and playing victim.

I'm not conning or bullying anyone. I stand up against bullying. Rand's. Yours. Pigero's. Cresswell's. Rowlands', and that of a whole bunch of other Rand's-little-helpers.

J

[Brant Gaede]

War itself, provided it is conducted with order and a sacred respect for the rights of civilians, has something sublime about it, and gives nations that carry it on in such a manner a stamp of mind only the more sublime the more numerous the dangers to which they are exposed, and which they are able to meet with fortitude.

Somebody doesn't know anything about war. Nada. Zip.

--Brant

fortunately for him

[Jonathan]

Who are you referring to? Who do you think doesn't know anything about war? Kant?

And why are you commenting on the subject of "knowing something about war" when that's not the issue at hand here? The issue is national pride, resolve and fortitude in the face of war. Are you saying that you've never witnessed or heard of populations rising and demonstrating fortitude in response to war being waged against their nations?

J

[Brant Gaede]

I was referring to the first part of the sentence--the qualifier--the part about "order" and "a sacred respect of the rights of civilians." I am not referring--maybe I should have truncated the quotation--to the US rising up in a fury after Pearl Harbor or anything else respecting the Kantian notion of the Sublime. I didn't but do now note that that notion applied to war gets thinner and thinner the closer you get to combat. It's a horribly dirty job, especially if you are on the ground. You do need the homefront support, however, where it's at its strongest.

To restate my position on this thread: I avoid most of the substance on esthetics qua esthetics. I have learned a few things about that and what you are more broadly addressing respecting Objectivism and the wrong kind of use and touting of the philosophy. Your value to me is how you use your mind getting inside this stuff and rooting around in it and tossing it out showing it for what it is. If people can't stand up to you they stay away, go away and/or even call it "bullying." I know better. You're consistently you being you and real bulllying requires all the wrong kind of energy. You would drain yourself flat.

On the surface, however, you are intimidating, but Objectivism is not a tea party. Objectivism as a tea party is what is mostly wrong with it.

Esthetics in Objectivism, real and imagined, gets to people as in no other way, likely because--I do not know of course--they came to Rand through her novels. But there is nobody around here to really contend with you on your level of knowledge or logical rigor. Some try.

Nobody gets into an argument on substance with George H. Smith. Political philosophy and its history are within his areas of expertise and it's at the highest level of competence. He could be a professor's professor and shame on those profs who do not read and consider him, especially now. But political philosophy in Objectivism is nobody's emotional and hot-blooded issue. Only esthetics, so they come at you and to little avail. (Ellen may be an exception, at least in significant part, but it's obvious she hasn't enough time and energy to keep up with your output.)

You do get way too personal, but at my age I don't care much about that sort of thing any more. The "victims" will have to take care of themselves.

--Brant

[Newberry]

Newberry, on 14 Oct 2015 - 9:25 PM, said:

Another is that by not getting permission to make his marks, he is attempting to dominate me. Good luck with that. Some thoughtless teachers do this to students by marking it without okays. Empathic art teachers will establish and ask students and artists if they can draw or paint on the works – it is honoring their private spaces. J is off to a wrong start by being creepy, thoughtless, and a jerk.

Heh. You should review your own posts all over the internet and in your tutorials before whining about others marking digital copies of your work for educational purposes. Heh. It seriously never occurs to you to practice what you preach, does it?!!! Hahaha!!!

This is the perfect example of how you twist things around, and I think in a troll-like way. I marked areas on masterpieces to show how great the artists solved a problem, not "correcting" them, obviously honoring them. You pretentiously masquerade as expert, which Ellen so eloquently pointed out how you, either intentionally or from ignorance, misrepresent others. Your manner has nothing to do with ideas or showing better alternatives, it’s a gotcha game without any big picture.

For the body of your rants above it is tiresome to read old arguments that shed no new light on the issues. Get over it.

Brant made an interesting observation “I have learned a few things about that and what you are more broadly addressing respecting Objectivism and the wrong kind of use and touting of the philosophy. Your value to me is how you use your mind getting inside this stuff and rooting around in it and tossing it out showing it for what it is.“

And J stated: “I'm not conning or bullying anyone. I stand up against bullying. Rand's. Yours. Pigero's. Cresswell's. Rowlands', and that of a whole bunch of other Rand's-little-helpers.”

The thing here is that J doesn’t have the big picture of what he is for. Ranting against others in anger, and rage, lol bold and red highlights for heaven's sake, J hasn't done the real work of creating a large body of work, of having teaching credentials, and publishing, to back up his stances.

Posted Yesterday, 12:25 PM

Newberry, on 14 Oct 2015 - 8:35 PM, said:

Glad you asked. My qualifications are that I am in my fifth decade as a full-time artist, in college I was a fine art major and took Art History, Contemporary Art History, and a few advanced classes in ancient philosophy, like Pre-Socratic Thought. I taught four years at Otis College of Art and Design Foundation courses; Life Drawing (from the bones out), Still Life and Composition, and Painting. For lectures my proposals were accepted over a competitive field of other proposals on aesthetics. I was the Founding Director of the non-profit Foundation for the Advancement of Art, raised $25,000 to host a conference at New York’s Pierre Hotel. (You can buy the DVD’s of the conference here.) The speakers were Philosophers Stephen Hicks, David Kelley, Vision Scientist Jan Koenderink (published by MIT Press), Sculptor Martine Vaugel, and myself. Both Jan and Martine are not objectivist friendly.

In other words, you're not qualified.

And? As far as I know after all these years is that you are a hack designer. Maybe design business cards at Kinkos?

Anyway art is a complex, personal, and cultural subject. And it is key to evolving as humans. I would like to see the discussion drive towards how art as evolved your understanding, made you see things in a new way, and how it has expanded your heart.

[Selene]

Wow...Objectivists have hearts?

 

Who knew!

 

Next we are going to find out they have one of those soul things...

 

 

[Jonathan]

The thing here is that J doesn’t have the big picture of what he is for.

I'm for reality. You've been opposing reality, and that's why you and I have problems.

Ranting against others in anger, and rage, lol bold and red highlights for heaven's sake, J hasn't done the real work of creating a large body of work, of having teaching credentials, and publishing, to back up his stances.

Heh.

The point of the letters being large and red wasn't to express anger, but to make them as large and noticeable as possible for you. The idea here isn't for you to have feelings about the colors of the words, but to comprehend what the words mean.

And the way that intelligent discussion works -- and, in fact, the way that Objectivism works -- is not to cite one's "large body of work," and one's teaching and publishing credentials, but to address the arguments at hand. One's credentials don't "back up one's stances." Whoever has the most credentials isn't automatically right and doesn't win the argument. If they did, Kant would win hands down against you, and even against Rand.

When you were collecting your "credentials," did you ever take any courses in logic? It seems that you didn't, so you may want to familiarize yourself with the fallacy of "argument from authority."

As far as I know after all these years is that you are a hack designer. Maybe design business cards at Kinkos?

If I'm a business card-designing hack or a significantly better artist than you are, do you actually think that it would have any bearing either way on which of us is right about Kant's views on the Sublime? Do you seriously believe that if you're a better artist than I am, then you're right about everything? And if I'm a better artist than you are, then I'm right about everything?

Why are you here if you think so irrationally? What interest do you have in Objectivism if you think that citing your "credentials" is in any way relevant?

Anyway art is a complex, personal, and cultural subject. And it is key to evolving as humans. I would like to see the discussion drive towards how art as evolved your understanding, made you see things in a new way, and how it has expanded your heart.

In other words, let's change the subject because you refuse to recognize and admit to your errors?

Posing as a guru who is going to guide us in "evolving as humans" isn't a very bright move coming from someone who is in the middle of demonstrating how pigheadedly resistant he is to evolving.

J

[moralist]

Jonathan writes:

Anyway art is a complex, personal, and cultural subject. And it is key to evolving as humans.

Doing what's right is how you evolve as a human.

(you have at least become Brant's little pitbull though... )

Greg

[Jonathan]

I was referring to the first part of the sentence--the qualifier--the part about "order" and "a sacred respect of the rights of civilians." I am not referring--maybe I should have truncated the quotation--to the US rising up in a fury after Pearl Harbor or anything else respecting the Kantian notion of the Sublime. I didn't but do now note that that notion applied to war gets thinner and thinner the closer you get to combat. It's a horribly dirty job, especially if you are on the ground. You do need the homefront support, however, where it's at its strongest.

To restate my position on this thread: I avoid most of the substance on esthetics qua esthetics. I have learned a few things about that and what you are more broadly addressing respecting Objectivism and the wrong kind of use and touting of the philosophy. Your value to me is how you use your mind getting inside this stuff and rooting around in it and tossing it out showing it for what it is. If people can't stand up to you they stay away, go away and/or even call it "bullying." I know better. You're consistently you being you and real bulllying requires all the wrong kind of energy. You would drain yourself flat.

On the surface, however, you are intimidating, but Objectivism is not a tea party. Objectivism as a tea party is what is mostly wrong with it.

Esthetics in Objectivism, real and imagined, gets to people as in no other way, likely because--I do not know of course--they came to Rand through her novels. But there is nobody around here to really contend with you on your level of knowledge or logical rigor. Some try.

Nobody gets into an argument on substance with George H. Smith. Political philosophy and its history are within his areas of expertise and it's at the highest level of competence. He could be a professor's professor and shame on those profs who do not read and consider him, especially now. But political philosophy in Objectivism is nobody's emotional and hot-blooded issue. Only esthetics, so they come at you and to little avail. (Ellen may be an exception, at least in significant part, but it's obvious she hasn't enough time and energy to keep up with your output.)

You do get way too personal, but at my age I don't care much about that sort of thing any more. The "victims" will have to take care of themselves.

--Brant

Thanks for your perspective, Brant. I understand where you're coming from, but, in the context of O-land, I disagree that I get too personal. I simply respond in kind. The problem is that the people whose ideas I criticize pose as if they haven't gotten personal in their snarkfests disguised as philosophical scholarship. Read Kamhi, and make note of the unwarranted and very personal assumptions and judgments that she makes of other people based only on her inability to experience in art what they do. Read Bissell or Newbsie or Pigero and make note of their attitudes toward those who interpret a work of art differently than they do. It's bullying. It's attempted intimidation. They all want a barroom brawl until they run into someone who isn't intimidated, but who intellectually kicks their asses. Then they suddenly want a tea party and are outraged at how uncouth their opponent is.

J

[Jonathan]

Jonathan writes:

Anyway art is a complex, personal, and cultural subject. And it is key to evolving as humans.

Doing what's right is how you evolve as a human.

(you have at least become Brant's little pitbull though... )

Greg

Apey, I didn't write what you quoted. Newbsie did.

Anyway, I agree that doing what's right is how one evolves as a human. I'm encouraging Newbsie to evolve and do what's right by recognizing and admitting his errors about Kant's notion of the Sublime. He's having a tough time working up the courage to overcome his stubbornness and vanity.

J

[moralist]

Sorry for the misquote, Jonathan...

but you still make a cute little pitbull,

and Brant has taken a real shine to you.

Greg