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

[Jonathan]

No, Brant has not taken a shine to me. Read more carefully, Apey. Brant has said many times that he doesn't like my style of dealing with others. He's even said that he doesn't like me (and not just my style).

He's saying that, despite his objecting to my manner of delivering substance, he nevertheless recognizes that the substance is valid and the reasoning behind it sound.

It's not at all surprising that you would attempt (badly) to mock him for not being ruled by his emotions. He can do what you can't -- remove his emotions form the equation -- so it's only natural that you'd attemp to smear that capability as a vice.

J

[Brant Gaede]

My not liking you generally is on too little data. It's Internet specific. One on one is a black hole. I do not mean outside this Internet give and take.

I imagine you could ream out Picasso if he wrote like an esthetician tryng to objectify anything but techniques. I don''t think he was so unwise.

I hate esthetic fascism. I hate the presumption of effete intellectualism with a club trying to get between an artist and the artist's work--his creativity. I value creativity as such so highly I'm willing to let artists crash and burn by the gross. What they do, what they create, it's all on them. I give them no esthetic welfare whatsoever, not that I'm in much position to do that.

The Objectivist presumption--in The Objectivist ("Metaphysics In Marble" [February-March 1969])--of improving on Michelangelo, Donatello and Botticelli is the primo case in point, but Rodin and his "The Thinker" is a reductio ad absurdum on the whole entereprise. The heavy handed implication is this statue shouldn't even exist.

--Brant

Mary Ann Sures article is well worth reading, however

[william.scherk]

I thought I'd read back to the last time people were conventionally civil to each other, if not to off-site idiots and monsters. Just back a couple pages was a long piece by Jonathan taking issue with Louis Torres taking issue with another writer on art, who gave some lordly opinions in an article from the Wall Street Journal. Torres's opinions appeared in the online comments to the article. It's worth a re-read of what caught Jonathan's eye, just to set the battlefield in mind. People who been here since page one and who have revisited the thread spelunking know how many battles take the exact same shape as Torres' ...

I almost sort of kind of take Torres' point on the narrow ground that there is no 'standard'/good/right/proper emotional gestalt to a painting, and that some folks no doubt feel no 'creepiness' in Andrew Wyeth's body of work, nor in any given painting. But the by-play of Jonathan and Ellen is also instructive. It speaks to the bedrock issues of emotional valuation. Torres is angry and Kamhi is angry. They are angry that shit-that-ain't-art is the corrupt product of a corrupt art establishment. In this particular instance, Torres has narrowed his focus of anger tightly enough to get mad about another person's interpretation of a house on a hill.

Quite fun on a second read.

Here's one painting that Torres and his target (and Jonathan, and Ellen) were at least tangentially discussing. Evening at Kuerner's.




I've wrapped Ellen's comment around a longer excerpt than she quoted:

Here's a wonderfully typical post from Louis Torres that I found from last year in the comments section following a WSJ-online article on Andrew Wyeth, interspersed with my analysis. I think it's the best post of his that I've seen which illustrates/reveals the irrationality, subjectivity, double standards and pompous anger of his -- and Kamhi's -- attitude toward interpreting and judging art.

Bruce Cole (whose writing on art I generally admire) presumes to tell the viewer what to think and feel regarding "the whiteness of the house" in Wyeth's "Evening at Kuerners."

Hahahaha!!! It is absolutely precious that Torres is upset about Bruce Cole's presuming "to tell the viewer what to think and feel" about the Wyeth painting, since that is precisely what Torres and Kamhi do all of the time! They always behave as if what they see, interpret and experience in a work of art, or what they fail to, is the universal, "objective," proper, and only true interpretation and experience! What's sauce for the goose is apparently not sauce for the gander!

[...]

Now, it is very interesting that Torres would dare to cite Rand in his attempt to psychologically smear others as having inferior "senses of life" in regard to their identifying the content of Wyeth's work, especially since Rand herself would have agreed with those whom Torres is attempting to smear!

Additionally, she HATED the old and weathered, she DETESTED the cracked and faded, she LOATHED the humble "folks next door," small villages, and muddy colors, and she declared them to be examples of things that only people who have horrendous "senses of life" would enjoy and find comfort in! Rand would have blown 17 gaskets if she had heard that one of her followers, like Torres, claimed to be using her aesthetic theory when judging such depictions of shabbiness and decay as representing "dignity" and "overall tranquility."

J

I'm not sure, but I think I recall mentions of Mary Ann Sures (then Rukavina) thus describing Wyeth's work in her early-'60s art course.

At any rate, I knew Objectivists who described Wyeth's work in such terms and who had Wyeth prints.

My own reaction to "Evening at Kuerners" is like Torres', not Cole's.

In general, I don't get a "creepy" feeling from Wyeth's work, though I can see why people might.

Ellen

I took a random stab to find a large image of the painting. On the webpage I stole the image from, is a brief blog entry Evening at Kuerners by Andrew Wyeth. That's also where I found a quote from the artist himself on the painting itself. Through that piece of luck I let in the 'outside considerations' and poisoned my objectivity! Or did I? Here I ruin it for everyone else paying attention to Torres and Kamhi and their quixotic attempts to stop the beast.

“There are few studies for this because that was the year that Karl was very ill. Many evenings with the light burning there quite late, I had a foreboding that this might be the end. I’d go over there evening after evening and just watch. I’d hear the water and see that light in Karl’s room, and I’d lie in bed at night thinking about that square house sitting in that valley with the moonlight casting such a strange liquid light on its side. The light in the window, which is pure paper, by the way, seemed to me to be Karl’s flickering soul. For me it’s very emotional picture. I saw Helga for the first time when I was doing this.” — ?- Andrew Wyeth

Jonathan is capable of many moods, modes, styles, tones, and intensities. Piling on Jonathan for piling on Newberry, and opening up a new sniping season can be fun. Still, many voicings are available. I can't criticize for using wildly overblown language because I don't want to give away any rhetorical advantage in my own bag. Some of these issues have been settled in my mind for a while: overblown language, overblown praise, overblown self-promotion, overblown point and counterpoint.

Up to a quite generous point, I want to hear both the zingers and the duds. Sometimes there is a lurch into bitchy and picky and huffy and lurches into sulfurous prose, but there are lurches and swings back to the baseline enough to keep us all hooked. Maybe snitty, angry, sulfurous and stormy periods are what long-term OLers like! It helps pay the bills by providing a product. Slash. Burn. Bomb. Gash. Thrust. Counter-thrust. Ka-boom. Argh. Splatter. March. Trumpet. Slash ...

Anyway, back to what the hell the monsters are peddling as Art, and Kamhi-Torres valiant attempts to slay the beasts, It's a morality play, in so many ways. Big stakes, big money, big corruption, big commodity, cultural/institutional heft. Lots of actors. Lots of ambition, pride, intelligence, skill, cunning, showmanship. It's easy to understand why many folks get agitated, not least critics like Kamhi-Torres, and not least us here.

I guess what I am saying is that all the knobs are up to ten already before you open the door to discussion. The soberly-determined facts and the illustrative examples is what I read for, but sometimes I have to pick through wreckage.

Here is a snippet of the WSJ article. a bit sniffy about the show.

"Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In" comprises 60 beautifully displayed works featuring windows. All were painted during four decades (1947-88) around Wyeth's home in Chadds Ford, Pa., and Cushing, Maine, where the artist summered. In both places he befriended neighbors and painted portraits of them and their dwellings.[...]

But Wyeth's tempera paintings are the show's highlights. Not only are they brighter and more complex than the dashed-off watercolors, but more sophisticated compositionally because they have been refined through a series of preparatory drawings.

One of these, "Evening at Kuerners" (1970), depicts a house and outbuilding set in a barren landscape with leafless trees whose spiky, fingerlike branches claw the sky. In this penumbral world only the whiteness of the house, with its illuminated windows, stands out, but in an ominous, sinister way, rather like the Bates's home in "Psycho." The painting evokes a sense of dread also seen in several of the still lifes, including "Untitled" (1983), a disquieting portrayal of a shattered skull on a window ledge. Wyeth's artist son Jamie recognized this emotional substratum when he wrote that his father's art was "terrifying."

Nevertheless, Wyeth's celebrity will attract a large audience to this show. So it's a pity that the National Gallery hasn't made it more accessible to fans with no knowledge of Wyeth other than "Christina's World." The companion book will certainly look impressive on a coffee table, but most visitors aren't going to read its long essays while viewing the show. And even if they do, they will find very little factual material on the works they're seeing, a lacuna that will not be filled by the scanty dog-tag wall labels, which are meager fare for the information-hungry visitor. Regrettably there's not even the usual glossy exhibition guide or audio tour.

Other museums are building rich websites for their shows—the one for the Wyeth exhibition is bare bones—and online catalogs with links so that visitors, including the armchair ones, can get up to speed even before they enter the galleries. And the old-fashioned audio guide and handouts limited to just a few of the exhibited objects are being rapidly replaced by helpful bespoke apps that will deliver lots of useful information to the visitor's mobile devices.

The National Gallery needs to get with the program.

Here is Torres' slightly snippy comment on the sniffy review:

Bruce Cole (whose writing on art I generally admire) presumes to tell the viewer what to think and feel regarding "the whiteness of the house" in Wyeth's "Evening at Kuerners." It "stands out, but in an ominous sinister way," he writes, as if stating an incontrovertible fact. The painting "evokes a sense of dread." In whom? In Mr. Cole, it seems, and in Jamie Wyeth, who is said to find his father’s art 'terrifying.'" Not in me for one. Quite the opposite, in fact. I sense dignity in the house, and an overall tranquility in the painting as a whole.

Ayn Rand argues that the psychological mechanism guiding such emotional responses to art is one's "sense of life." (See Ch. 3, "Art and Sense of Life," in 'What Art Is' for more. At Amazon.com search in the book's page for "the role that sense of life plays," retaining quotes.)

Louis Torres, Co-Editor, Aristos (An Online Review of the Arts), and Co-Author, 'What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand' (Open Court, 2000) - www.aristos.org

And another painting of the place ...

[moralist]

ruff....ruff... grrrrrr...

[Brant Gaede]

What is really the nature of an Objectivist Esthetics?

Formally, in the Objectivist philosophy there is no esthetics. So what am I talking about?

Randian esthetics. Esthetics as revealed in The Fountainhead and differently in Atlas Shrugged. (One can consider her other fiction too, but there's no point in this sketchy post to get that particular.)

In each novel one finds overlapping commonality in spite of significant differences. One can consider them any way one wants to. I'm sticking to the commonality. But if anyone wants one can find two different esthetics too. One is dialogue and the other is visual plus a dynamic sense of motion. Plus the commonality. It all actually overlaps, but in different ratios of intensity.

Randian esthetics are subjective. She expresses her esthetics primarily through her view of man and his existence. We can call it a glorious construct. Our own subjective opinion and agreement.

This is the center layer of a three-layer esthetic cake. The bottom layer goes in (under?) last. The top layer is the objectification of the subjective layer below. This and that. That and this. It's descriptive.

Enter Objectivism: the bottom layer attempting to justify, objectify, moralify, to be-a-fy what's above (and the rest of the esthetic world?). To tell everybody how to do it. Forget it. It's essentially hogwash delivered by various levels of intelligence and worthy interest with Rand at the top. Yes, hogwash can be interesting. In this case it's pretending to be the cake, the whole cake and nothing but the cake.

--Brant

the great schematicist

[Brant Gaede]

ruff....ruff... grrrrrr...

There will be mockers and scoffers.

--Noah

[Newberry]

I thought I'd read back to the last time people were conventionally civil to each other, if not to off-site idiots and monsters. Just back a couple pages was a long piece by Jonathan taking issue with Louis Torres taking issue with another writer on art, who gave some lordly opinions in an article from the Wall Street Journal. Torres's opinions appeared in the online comments to the article. It's worth a re-read of what caught Jonathan's eye, just to set the battlefield in mind. People who been here since page one and who have revisited the thread spelunking know how many battles take the exact same shape as Torres' ...

I almost sort of kind of take Torres' point on the narrow ground that there is no 'standard'/good/right/proper emotional gestalt to a painting, and that some folks no doubt feel no 'creepiness' in Andrew Wyeth's body of work, nor in any given painting. But the by-play of Jonathan and Ellen is also instructive. It speaks to the bedrock issues of emotional valuation. Torres is angry and Kamhi is angry. They are angry that shit-that-ain't-art is the corrupt product of a corrupt art establishment. In this particular instance, Torres has narrowed his focus of anger tightly enough to get mad about another person's interpretation of a house on a hill.

Quite fun on a second read.

Here's one painting that Torres and his target (and Jonathan, and Ellen) were at least tangentially discussing. Evening at Kuerner's.

I've wrapped Ellen's comment around a longer excerpt than she quoted:

Here's a wonderfully typical post from Louis Torres that I found from last year in the comments section following a WSJ-online article on Andrew Wyeth, interspersed with my analysis. I think it's the best post of his that I've seen which illustrates/reveals the irrationality, subjectivity, double standards and pompous anger of his -- and Kamhi's -- attitude toward interpreting and judging art.

Bruce Cole (whose writing on art I generally admire) presumes to tell the viewer what to think and feel regarding "the whiteness of the house" in Wyeth's "Evening at Kuerners."

Hahahaha!!! It is absolutely precious that Torres is upset about Bruce Cole's presuming "to tell the viewer what to think and feel" about the Wyeth painting, since that is precisely what Torres and Kamhi do all of the time! They always behave as if what they see, interpret and experience in a work of art, or what they fail to, is the universal, "objective," proper, and only true interpretation and experience! What's sauce for the goose is apparently not sauce for the gander!

[...]

Now, it is very interesting that Torres would dare to cite Rand in his attempt to psychologically smear others as having inferior "senses of life" in regard to their identifying the content of Wyeth's work, especially since Rand herself would have agreed with those whom Torres is attempting to smear!

Additionally, she HATED the old and weathered, she DETESTED the cracked and faded, she LOATHED the humble "folks next door," small villages, and muddy colors, and she declared them to be examples of things that only people who have horrendous "senses of life" would enjoy and find comfort in! Rand would have blown 17 gaskets if she had heard that one of her followers, like Torres, claimed to be using her aesthetic theory when judging such depictions of shabbiness and decay as representing "dignity" and "overall tranquility."

J

I'm not sure, but I think I recall mentions of Mary Ann Sures (then Rukavina) thus describing Wyeth's work in her early-'60s art course.

At any rate, I knew Objectivists who described Wyeth's work in such terms and who had Wyeth prints.

My own reaction to "Evening at Kuerners" is like Torres', not Cole's.

In general, I don't get a "creepy" feeling from Wyeth's work, though I can see why people might.

Ellen

I took a random stab to find a large image of the painting. On the webpage I stole the image from, is a brief blog entry Evening at Kuerners by Andrew Wyeth. That's also where I found a quote from the artist himself on the painting itself. Through that piece of luck I let in the 'outside considerations' and poisoned my objectivity! Or did I? Here I ruin it for everyone else paying attention to Torres and Kamhi and their quixotic attempts to stop the beast.

“There are few studies for this because that was the year that Karl was very ill. Many evenings with the light burning there quite late, I had a foreboding that this might be the end. I’d go over there evening after evening and just watch. I’d hear the water and see that light in Karl’s room, and I’d lie in bed at night thinking about that square house sitting in that valley with the moonlight casting such a strange liquid light on its side. The light in the window, which is pure paper, by the way, seemed to me to be Karl’s flickering soul. For me it’s very emotional picture. I saw Helga for the first time when I was doing this.” — ?- Andrew Wyeth

Jonathan is capable of many moods, modes, styles, tones, and intensities. Piling on Jonathan for piling on Newberry, and opening up a new sniping season can be fun. Still, many voicings are available. I can't criticize for using wildly overblown language because I don't want to give away any rhetorical advantage in my own bag. Some of these issues have been settled in my mind for a while: overblown language, overblown praise, overblown self-promotion, overblown point and counterpoint.

Up to a quite generous point, I want to hear both the zingers and the duds. Sometimes there is a lurch into bitchy and picky and huffy and lurches into sulfurous prose, but there are lurches and swings back to the baseline enough to keep us all hooked. Maybe snitty, angry, sulfurous and stormy periods are what long-term OLers like! It helps pay the bills by providing a product. Slash. Burn. Bomb. Gash. Thrust. Counter-thrust. Ka-boom. Argh. Splatter. March. Trumpet. Slash ...

Anyway, back to what the hell the monsters are peddling as Art, and Kamhi-Torres valiant attempts to slay the beasts, It's a morality play, in so many ways. Big stakes, big money, big corruption, big commodity, cultural/institutional heft. Lots of actors. Lots of ambition, pride, intelligence, skill, cunning, showmanship. It's easy to understand why many folks get agitated, not least critics like Kamhi-Torres, and not least us here.

I guess what I am saying is that all the knobs are up to ten already before you open the door to discussion. The soberly-determined facts and the illustrative examples is what I read for, but sometimes I have to pick through wreckage.

Here is a snippet of the WSJ article. a bit sniffy about the show.

"Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In" comprises 60 beautifully displayed works featuring windows. All were painted during four decades (1947-88) around Wyeth's home in Chadds Ford, Pa., and Cushing, Maine, where the artist summered. In both places he befriended neighbors and painted portraits of them and their dwellings.[...]

But Wyeth's tempera paintings are the show's highlights. Not only are they brighter and more complex than the dashed-off watercolors, but more sophisticated compositionally because they have been refined through a series of preparatory drawings.

One of these, "Evening at Kuerners" (1970), depicts a house and outbuilding set in a barren landscape with leafless trees whose spiky, fingerlike branches claw the sky. In this penumbral world only the whiteness of the house, with its illuminated windows, stands out, but in an ominous, sinister way, rather like the Bates's home in "Psycho." The painting evokes a sense of dread also seen in several of the still lifes, including "Untitled" (1983), a disquieting portrayal of a shattered skull on a window ledge. Wyeth's artist son Jamie recognized this emotional substratum when he wrote that his father's art was "terrifying."

Nevertheless, Wyeth's celebrity will attract a large audience to this show. So it's a pity that the National Gallery hasn't made it more accessible to fans with no knowledge of Wyeth other than "Christina's World." The companion book will certainly look impressive on a coffee table, but most visitors aren't going to read its long essays while viewing the show. And even if they do, they will find very little factual material on the works they're seeing, a lacuna that will not be filled by the scanty dog-tag wall labels, which are meager fare for the information-hungry visitor. Regrettably there's not even the usual glossy exhibition guide or audio tour.

Other museums are building rich websites for their shows—the one for the Wyeth exhibition is bare bones—and online catalogs with links so that visitors, including the armchair ones, can get up to speed even before they enter the galleries. And the old-fashioned audio guide and handouts limited to just a few of the exhibited objects are being rapidly replaced by helpful bespoke apps that will deliver lots of useful information to the visitor's mobile devices.

The National Gallery needs to get with the program.

Here is Torres' slightly snippy comment on the sniffy review:

Bruce Cole (whose writing on art I generally admire) presumes to tell the viewer what to think and feel regarding "the whiteness of the house" in Wyeth's "Evening at Kuerners." It "stands out, but in an ominous sinister way," he writes, as if stating an incontrovertible fact. The painting "evokes a sense of dread." In whom? In Mr. Cole, it seems, and in Jamie Wyeth, who is said to find his father’s art 'terrifying.'" Not in me for one. Quite the opposite, in fact. I sense dignity in the house, and an overall tranquility in the painting as a whole.

Ayn Rand argues that the psychological mechanism guiding such emotional responses to art is one's "sense of life." (See Ch. 3, "Art and Sense of Life," in 'What Art Is' for more. At Amazon.com search in the book's page for "the role that sense of life plays," retaining quotes.)

Louis Torres, Co-Editor, Aristos (An Online Review of the Arts), and Co-Author, 'What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand' (Open Court, 2000) - www.aristos.org

And another painting of the place ...

Very nice post William. Quite sensitive. Wonderful quote by Wyeth. I guess you would like the work of Karen Kaapcke, she is facebook friend, majored in philosophy and quit to communicate in painting. Her posts are always wonderful and thoughtful - as if she is having a dialog with the painting, and asking it to tell her what is working. We sometimes exchange respectful comments. She even did a painting called Not Icarus, and I think she “quoted” the arm and hand in my Icarus. But as you pointed out there are some artists over the top, and I am one of them. The funny thing is that my thoughts and feelings in art are about 20 times more intense then my wildest written thoughts. So where you might like things more subtle I would like to make them more operatic. And that is why, for all of us, suggesting how others should paint is a waste of time – that thought tends it get mixed up here when lesser bright people equate criticism with suggestions on how artists should paint.

Her image below.

You wrote:

Through that piece of luck I let in the 'outside considerations' and poisoned my objectivity! Or did I?

The "outside considerations" issue seems to be a hot button, I don't know why. The stories behind the works, the culture, and the time make for enlightening experiences in art. The "outside considerations" thing always meant for me that it was one of the elements that went into judging whether the work is good or not. But I don't think it is meant for lay people, lol, it’s like listening to a lot writers joke about grammar.... Judging works is a normal occurrence in art classes; they gather round to critique the final or day's work. No biggie.

[Newberry]

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

Over the last several years I have only responded to you to defend my perspective from your attacks. But I haven't responded to your thoughts in general because I think you are an idiot. You misunderstand the argument from authority issue. I haven’t seen you argue well, or defend your stances in reasonable ways, and you keep playing gotcha. So then I look to see if you just don’t communicate well, but hopefully you have more substance somewhere in your works, career, publishing, CD’s etc. I conclude that you are not good with ideas and you have almost zero else to offer other than a couple of photo realistic illustrative renderings, that you did years ago.

Your scheme is to attack honorable, professional, and reputable people who happen to like objectivism. Their reaction is “WTF, this guy can’t be this stupid, let me clarify the issue more.” You then disregard any facts, good faith explanations, works, etc because it doesn’t fit in with your narrative. Those people, like Roger Bissel, they stop addressing you not because, as you believe you showed them the errors of their ways, they bail because you’re an insufferable pest.

Let’s recap: you don’t reason, you have no professional substance, you are not for anything, and you think objectivism is bad.

[moralist]

ruff....ruff... grrrrrr...

There will be mockers and scoffers.

--Noah

I already built my own ark... so I get to mock all I want.

Greg

[Ellen Stuttle]

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

The only "grudge" is what an incredible waste of time it is to try to sludge through your posts and what an impediment your posts in general have become over the years from the standpoint of any real discussion.

However, I don't expect you to let go of your distorting and cavorting.

I do expect to post on some actual issues, but not in the immediate future. Maybe starting in mid-December or January.

Ellen

[Brant Gaede]

If MN would simply state his understanding of Kant's idea of the Sublime that is also correct and why correct, that would cut J off at the knees.

--Brant

but not his fingers on his keyboard for the other biggie is an artist's use of or used by or contaminated by or ruined by the authority of "Objectivist Esthetics"--or how those esthetics are such a great contribution to an artist's work, etc.

[Brant Gaede]

What is really the nature of an Objectivist Esthetics?

Formally, in the Objectivist philosophy there is no esthetics. So what am I talking about?

Randian esthetics. Esthetics as revealed in The Fountainhead and differently in Atlas Shrugged. (One can consider her other fiction too, but there's no point in this sketchy post to get that particular.)

In each novel one finds overlapping commonality in spite of significant differences. One can consider them any way one wants to. I'm sticking to the commonality. But if anyone wants one can find two different esthetics too. One is dialogue and the other is visual plus a dynamic sense of motion. Plus the commonality. It all actually overlaps, but in different ratios of intensity.

Randian esthetics are subjective. She expresses her esthetics primarily through her view of man and his existence. We can call it a glorious construct. Our own subjective opinion and agreement.

This is the center layer of a three-layer esthetic cake. The bottom layer goes in (under?) last. The top layer is the objectification of the subjective layer below. This and that. That and this. It's descriptive.

Enter Objectivism: the bottom layer attempting to justify, objectify, moralify, to be-a-fy what's above (and the rest of the esthetic world?). To tell everybody how to do it. Forget it. It's essentially hogwash delivered by various levels of intelligence and worthy interest with Rand at the top. Yes, hogwash can be interesting. In this case it's pretending to be the cake, the whole cake and nothing but the cake.

--Brant

the great schematicist

I'm quoting myself so MN doesn't bury my brillance under William's quoted monstrously long posts.

--Brant

is that why he did it?--the shame, the shame (if true--if not true it should be for the sake of my ego)

[Brant Gaede]

I agree that Jonathan is an idiot, I just don't know why. That's because everybody is an idiot about something if not a lot of things.

--Brant

I'm an idiot--an idiot and you're welcome to tell me why (my asking proves it, but I could use additional input [like posting on a thread over a thousand posts too long contributing to the bloat (Ellen started it all, BTW, way back when)])

[Jonathan]

Over the last several years I have only responded to you to defend my perspective from your attacks.

No, you haven't. You haven't "defended" anything. You offer no actual intellectual defense of your stupid positions. Instead, you just whine that you're a poor little victim who is being unfairly attacked by people who aren't as important and credentialed as you imagine yourself to be. You never offer any actual substance in response to criticism.

But I haven't responded to your thoughts in general because I think you are an idiot.

You haven't responded to my criticisms of your childishly wrongheaded position because you have nothing to back it up. Your position is not rationally defendable. It's hateful, reality-denying, Rand-brainwashed nonsense. If you could defend it with substance, you would have done so long ago when I first started laughing it. You've got nothing. Nothing but hateful emotions and playing victim.

Let's review the details of your recent display of unimaginable idiocy:

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

I replied to that idiocy by giving three examples from Kant's writings in which he specifically states what you said he doesn't. Two of the examples came from quotes that you had posted, but which you idiotically hadn't comprehended.

You then doubled down on your idiocy by complaining about the size and color of the type font that I used, and you just blatantly "evaded" and "blanked out" (as Rand would say) the reality that I had confronted you with. You idiotically tried to pretend that my refuting your lie about Kant's position didn't happen.

And now here you are, still not addressing any substance, but pouting instead, and name-calling, and emoting. Zero rationality. Zero objectivity. Zero honesty. Zero intelligence.

I have to ask again, why are you here? Why have you latched onto Objectvism when you're so opposed to reality, and so hatefully opposed to practicing the cognitive method that Rand advocated? You're the exact opposite of what she thought people should be.

You misunderstand the argument from authority issue.

In what way did I misunderstand it?!!! Do you have any substance to back up your statement, or am I just supposed to bow to your implied authority on the subject?!!! Heh.

I havent seen you argue well, or defend your stances in reasonable ways, and you keep playing gotcha.

Newbsie, when someone destroys your idiotic positions by presenting overwhelming evidence which you can't counter with anything but your emotions, that's what it means to "argue well." When you tell a falsehood about Kant by asserting that he never said X, and then your opponent in the discussion presents three quotes from Kant in which he says X, that's not an example of his merely "playing gotcha" which can be brushed aside as not being relevant to your position. Its an example of his having demolished the core of your irrational hatred of Kant.

So then I look to see if you just dont communicate well, but hopefully you have more substance somewhere in your works, career, publishing, CDs etc. I conclude that you are not good with ideas and you have almost zero else to offer other than a couple of photo realistic illustrative renderings, that you did years ago.

Yeah, when you can't respond with substance, Newbsie, you resort to the common, dull-minded tactic of distractions. I revealed your foolishness in not comprehending Kant's simple, very clearly stated and easy-to-understand position, and rather that having the integrity to admit to your error, you're throwing up the distractions of attempting to appeal to your imagined authority.

Your scheme is to attack honorable, professional, and reputable people who happen to like objectivism. Their reaction is WTF, this guy cant be this stupid, let me clarify the issue more. You then disregard any facts, good faith explanations, works, etc because it doesnt fit in with your narrative.

Bullshit. I'm not the one who disregards facts. In fact, you're still in the act of disregarding the facts that I presented to you about Kant's position. You said something about him that is untrue. I proved you wrong. Now you're squealing and whining and vilifying. That's not "honorable." Your behavior isn't that of a "professional" or "reputable" thinker.

Those people, like Roger Bissel, they stop addressing you not because, as you believe you showed them the errors of their ways, they bail because youre an insufferable pest.

They bail because they can't back up their bullshit with substance. They attack and attempt to belittle those with whom they disagree, and then, just like you, they cry and flounce when they're shown to have taken false positions, if not hateful ones. They introduce snark and ridicule but then whine when others respond with just a little bit in return.

You're not "honorable, professional, reputable" people. You're Rand's little helper hacks. You're poseurs and pretenders. You're more interested in believing that you've earned some sort of respect or reverence and are beyond criticism.

Lets recap: you dont reason, you have no professional substance, you are not for anything, and you think objectivism is bad.

I reason so well that you can't address the devastating blow that I delivered to your false position. My substance is so potent that you're evading it and coming up with as many distractions as you can. I'm very much "for" something: reality! I think that Objectivism is very good, and so much so that I apply it to the highly irrational aspects of Rand's aesthetics, as well as to your stupid, hateful, willfully ignorant, comically amateurish misrepresentations of Kant's aesthetics.

You're the one who thinks that Objectvism is bad. You reject it all, except for Rand's mistaken, uninformed opinion about Kant's aesthetics. You're opposed to my presenting evidence and proof. You believe that your "credentials" make you right rather than the substance of your arguments. You're very anti-Objectivist in practice.

J

[Jonathan]

I agree that Jonathan is an idiot, I just don't know why. That's because everybody is an idiot about something if not a lot of things.

--Brant

I'm an idiot--an idiot and you're welcome to tell me why (my asking proves it, but I could use additional input [like posting on a thread over a thousand posts too long contributing to the bloat (Ellen started it all, BTW, way back when)])

I'm an idiot when it comes to math. I suck at it, big time.

I suppose what I should do though, is pose as an expert at it here on OL.

J

[Newberry]

If MN would simply state his understanding of Kant's idea of the Sublime that is also correct and why correct, that would cut J off at the knees.

--Brant

but not his fingers on his keyboard for the other biggie is an artist's use of or used by or contaminated by or ruined by the authority of "Objectivist Esthetics"--or how those esthetics are such a great contribution to an artist's work, etc.

I like the first part of your statement, but “correct" isn't exactly how the humanities work. You need at least two people that are on a similar path, that understand concepts in a similar way, and function on more or less the same level; for the sense of certainty to surface, though it is never in stone. J cut himself off at the knees long before I ever knew him, he needs to shut up, express himself through works, and then get back to us in about 7 years. He might then earn some respect that he so ridiculously demands now.

[Jonathan]

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

The only "grudge" is what an incredible waste of time it is to try to sludge through your posts and what an impediment your posts in general have become over the years from the standpoint of any real discussion.

However, I don't expect you to let go of your distorting and cavorting.

I do expect to post on some actual issues, but not in the immediate future. Maybe starting in mid-December or January.

Ellen

Great! Once again you're announcing that you're going to break out some "actual" issues. You do a lot of that. Announcing, that is. Not much follow up though.

You did bring up an issue which I reminded you about here:

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=15228&p=234226

...you had very quickly abandoned it when it didn't have the effect or potency that you apparently thought it would. Still no answers to my questions/criticisms. Is it no longer an "actual" issue?

J

[Jonathan]

The "outside considerations" issue seems to be a hot button, I don't know why.

Is that the end of your curiosity on the subject?

Try thinking! Where did the "outside considerations" issue come from? What does it mean? Is it a logical criterion to place on art, or is it really just an arbitrary requirement that Rand imposed for irrational reasons? These are the types of questions that serious, respected thinkers ask themselves and attempt to answer.

J

[Jonathan]

If MN would simply state his understanding of Kant's idea of the Sublime that is also correct and why correct, that would cut J off at the knees.

--Brant

but not his fingers on his keyboard for the other biggie is an artist's use of or used by or contaminated by or ruined by the authority of "Objectivist Esthetics"--or how those esthetics are such a great contribution to an artist's work, etc.

I like the first part of your statement, but correct" isn't exactly how the humanities work. You need at least two people that are on a similar path, that understand concepts in a similar way, and function on more or less the same level; for the sense of certainty to surface, though it is never in stone. J cut himself off at the knees long before I ever knew him, he needs to shut up, express himself through works, and then get back to us in about 7 years. He might then earn some respect that he so ridiculously demands now.

I'm not the one who is demanding respect that hasn't been earned. I'm offering proof to back up my arguments. You're still not addressing that proof, but evading it. Instead, you're posing and pretending. You're acting as if you're something that you're not. You're an average artist who occasionally rises to the level of being pretty good, but who also occasionally sinks to the level of being very amateurish. As a thinker, critic and commentator, you're very subjective, irrational, unscholarly and unaware, and that's when you're at your best. At your worst you're hateful, petty, dishonest, hypocritical, comically self-important, and extremely stupid and stubborn.

But let me see if I understand the nonsense that you're trying to sell now. Instead of correcting your lies and Rand-brainwashed misinterpretations of Kant's aesthetics, I should "shut up" because my trying to get the revered Grand Master Newberry to recognize simple reality and to admit to his freshman-level errors is disrespectful? I need to "express myself through works" for 7 years, and my doing so will earn me the right to be in the presence of Grand Master Newberry? And my 7 year apprenticeship will somehow change the reality that Kant said what Grand Master Newberry claims he did not?

J

[Jonathan]

I thought I'd read back to the last time people were conventionally civil to each other, if not to off-site idiots and monsters. Just back a couple pages was a long piece by Jonathan taking issue with Louis Torres taking issue with another writer on art, who gave some lordly opinions in an article from the Wall Street Journal. Torres's opinions appeared in the online comments to the article. It's worth a re-read of what caught Jonathan's eye, just to set the battlefield in mind. People who been here since page one and who have revisited the thread spelunking know how many battles take the exact same shape as Torres' ...

I almost sort of kind of take Torres' point on the narrow ground that there is no 'standard'/good/right/proper emotional gestalt to a painting, and that some folks no doubt feel no 'creepiness' in Andrew Wyeth's body of work, nor in any given painting. But the by-play of Jonathan and Ellen is also instructive. It speaks to the bedrock issues of emotional valuation. Torres is angry and Kamhi is angry. They are angry that shit-that-ain't-art is the corrupt product of a corrupt art establishment. In this particular instance, Torres has narrowed his focus of anger tightly enough to get mad about another person's interpretation of a house on a hill.

Quite fun on a second read.

Here's one painting that Torres and his target (and Jonathan, and Ellen) were at least tangentially discussing. Evening at Kuerner's.

I've wrapped Ellen's comment around a longer excerpt than she quoted:

Here's a wonderfully typical post from Louis Torres that I found from last year in the comments section following a WSJ-online article on Andrew Wyeth, interspersed with my analysis. I think it's the best post of his that I've seen which illustrates/reveals the irrationality, subjectivity, double standards and pompous anger of his -- and Kamhi's -- attitude toward interpreting and judging art.

Bruce Cole (whose writing on art I generally admire) presumes to tell the viewer what to think and feel regarding "the whiteness of the house" in Wyeth's "Evening at Kuerners."

Hahahaha!!! It is absolutely precious that Torres is upset about Bruce Cole's presuming "to tell the viewer what to think and feel" about the Wyeth painting, since that is precisely what Torres and Kamhi do all of the time! They always behave as if what they see, interpret and experience in a work of art, or what they fail to, is the universal, "objective," proper, and only true interpretation and experience! What's sauce for the goose is apparently not sauce for the gander!

[...]

Now, it is very interesting that Torres would dare to cite Rand in his attempt to psychologically smear others as having inferior "senses of life" in regard to their identifying the content of Wyeth's work, especially since Rand herself would have agreed with those whom Torres is attempting to smear!

Additionally, she HATED the old and weathered, she DETESTED the cracked and faded, she LOATHED the humble "folks next door," small villages, and muddy colors, and she declared them to be examples of things that only people who have horrendous "senses of life" would enjoy and find comfort in! Rand would have blown 17 gaskets if she had heard that one of her followers, like Torres, claimed to be using her aesthetic theory when judging such depictions of shabbiness and decay as representing "dignity" and "overall tranquility."

J

I'm not sure, but I think I recall mentions of Mary Ann Sures (then Rukavina) thus describing Wyeth's work in her early-'60s art course.

At any rate, I knew Objectivists who described Wyeth's work in such terms and who had Wyeth prints.

My own reaction to "Evening at Kuerners" is like Torres', not Cole's.

In general, I don't get a "creepy" feeling from Wyeth's work, though I can see why people might.

Ellen

I took a random stab to find a large image of the painting. On the webpage I stole the image from, is a brief blog entry Evening at Kuerners by Andrew Wyeth. That's also where I found a quote from the artist himself on the painting itself. Through that piece of luck I let in the 'outside considerations' and poisoned my objectivity! Or did I? Here I ruin it for everyone else paying attention to Torres and Kamhi and their quixotic attempts to stop the beast.

There are few studies for this because that was the year that Karl was very ill. Many evenings with the light burning there quite late, I had a foreboding that this might be the end. Id go over there evening after evening and just watch. Id hear the water and see that light in Karls room, and Id lie in bed at night thinking about that square house sitting in that valley with the moonlight casting such a strange liquid light on its side. The light in the window, which is pure paper, by the way, seemed to me to be Karls flickering soul. For me its very emotional picture. I saw Helga for the first time when I was doing this. ?- Andrew Wyeth

Jonathan is capable of many moods, modes, styles, tones, and intensities. Piling on Jonathan for piling on Newberry, and opening up a new sniping season can be fun. Still, many voicings are available. I can't criticize for using wildly overblown language because I don't want to give away any rhetorical advantage in my own bag. Some of these issues have been settled in my mind for a while: overblown language, overblown praise, overblown self-promotion, overblown point and counterpoint.

Up to a quite generous point, I want to hear both the zingers and the duds. Sometimes there is a lurch into bitchy and picky and huffy and lurches into sulfurous prose, but there are lurches and swings back to the baseline enough to keep us all hooked. Maybe snitty, angry, sulfurous and stormy periods are what long-term OLers like! It helps pay the bills by providing a product. Slash. Burn. Bomb. Gash. Thrust. Counter-thrust. Ka-boom. Argh. Splatter. March. Trumpet. Slash ...

Anyway, back to what the hell the monsters are peddling as Art, and Kamhi-Torres valiant attempts to slay the beasts, It's a morality play, in so many ways. Big stakes, big money, big corruption, big commodity, cultural/institutional heft. Lots of actors. Lots of ambition, pride, intelligence, skill, cunning, showmanship. It's easy to understand why many folks get agitated, not least critics like Kamhi-Torres, and not least us here.

I guess what I am saying is that all the knobs are up to ten already before you open the door to discussion. The soberly-determined facts and the illustrative examples is what I read for, but sometimes I have to pick through wreckage.

Here is a snippet of the WSJ article. a bit sniffy about the show.

"Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In" comprises 60 beautifully displayed works featuring windows. All were painted during four decades (1947-88) around Wyeth's home in Chadds Ford, Pa., and Cushing, Maine, where the artist summered. In both places he befriended neighbors and painted portraits of them and their dwellings.[...]

But Wyeth's tempera paintings are the show's highlights. Not only are they brighter and more complex than the dashed-off watercolors, but more sophisticated compositionally because they have been refined through a series of preparatory drawings.

One of these, "Evening at Kuerners" (1970), depicts a house and outbuilding set in a barren landscape with leafless trees whose spiky, fingerlike branches claw the sky. In this penumbral world only the whiteness of the house, with its illuminated windows, stands out, but in an ominous, sinister way, rather like the Bates's home in "Psycho." The painting evokes a sense of dread also seen in several of the still lifes, including "Untitled" (1983), a disquieting portrayal of a shattered skull on a window ledge. Wyeth's artist son Jamie recognized this emotional substratum when he wrote that his father's art was "terrifying."

Nevertheless, Wyeth's celebrity will attract a large audience to this show. So it's a pity that the National Gallery hasn't made it more accessible to fans with no knowledge of Wyeth other than "Christina's World." The companion book will certainly look impressive on a coffee table, but most visitors aren't going to read its long essays while viewing the show. And even if they do, they will find very little factual material on the works they're seeing, a lacuna that will not be filled by the scanty dog-tag wall labels, which are meager fare for the information-hungry visitor. Regrettably there's not even the usual glossy exhibition guide or audio tour.

Other museums are building rich websites for their showsthe one for the Wyeth exhibition is bare bonesand online catalogs with links so that visitors, including the armchair ones, can get up to speed even before they enter the galleries. And the old-fashioned audio guide and handouts limited to just a few of the exhibited objects are being rapidly replaced by helpful bespoke apps that will deliver lots of useful information to the visitor's mobile devices.

The National Gallery needs to get with the program.

Here is Torres' slightly snippy comment on the sniffy review:

Bruce Cole (whose writing on art I generally admire) presumes to tell the viewer what to think and feel regarding "the whiteness of the house" in Wyeth's "Evening at Kuerners." It "stands out, but in an ominous sinister way," he writes, as if stating an incontrovertible fact. The painting "evokes a sense of dread." In whom? In Mr. Cole, it seems, and in Jamie Wyeth, who is said to find his fathers art 'terrifying.'" Not in me for one. Quite the opposite, in fact. I sense dignity in the house, and an overall tranquility in the painting as a whole.

Ayn Rand argues that the psychological mechanism guiding such emotional responses to art is one's "sense of life." (See Ch. 3, "Art and Sense of Life," in 'What Art Is' for more. At Amazon.com search in the book's page for "the role that sense of life plays," retaining quotes.)

Louis Torres, Co-Editor, Aristos (An Online Review of the Arts), and Co-Author, 'What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand' (Open Court, 2000) - www.aristos.org

And another painting of the place ...

I wonder what Torres sees, and what he does not, in Wyeth's work. I mean what details? What makes him see an overall "dignity" and "tranquility"?

Does he see the rustic, worn and dirty state of the scene?

What do rutted, dirt roads suggest about the standard of living? What do the details of the scenes suggest about the type of work that the people do? What do the details suggest about their levels of education, success, disposable income, luxury, etc.?

Does Torres see that windows in Wyeth's houses are sparse and small? What does that one fact reveal about the inhabitants and their living conditions? What does it suggest about their economic state, about their financial prospects and expectations?

Do these details add up to "tranquility"? Or does one get tranquility out of Wyeth's work only if one hasn't noticed, contemplated and felt the significance of such details?

J

[9thdoctor]

Newberry: there's a bad sentence or two on your website, here:

http://www.newberryart.com/collections/giclees

Yet, the original may already be in a collection or might be too expense for some of us to collect. The giclees are great way to own an image you love.

Expensive, not expense, no? And are great way? Are a great way.

BTW, where are your writings on Kant? I don't think I've ever seen them. I've taken part in some discussions on OO (maybe here too) about Kant's esthetics with Jonathan, and found that he knows what he's talking about, after reading Critique of Judgement and some (non-Objectivist) commentaries on the topic. The worst I can say is that he's relentless to a fault, but I can even sympathize with that, knowing that whenever Phil Coates resurfaces here I'll be greeting him with this:

There's a backstory, as you can imagine.

[anthony]

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Immanuel Kant and Aesthetics

"Fine Art and Genius"

Thus far, Kant's main focus for the discussion of beauty and the sublime has been nature. He now turns to fine art. Kant assumes that the cognition involved in judging fine art, is similar to the cognition involved in judging natural beauty. Accordingly, the problem that is new to fine art is not how it is judged by a viewer, but how it is created. The solution revolves around two new concepts: the "genius" and "aesthetic ideas".

[...]

[in IKant's words]:

"Genius is the talent (natural endowment) that gives the rule to art. Since talent is an innate productive ability of the artist and as such belongs itself to nature, we could also put it this way: Genius is the innate predisposition (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art". (sect. 46)

Wow. Nobody can say there is any intersection between Kant and Rand.

Natural beauty--art {viewed similarly?] Not how it's judged, how it's created [not both?].

Genius belongs itself to nature [hmm...]

[william.scherk]

I can't criticize for using wildly overblown language because I don't want to give away any rhetorical advantage in my own bag. Some of these issues have been settled in my mind for a while: overblown language, overblown praise, overblown self-promotion, overblown point and counterpoint.

Up to a quite generous point, I want to hear both the zingers and the duds. Sometimes there is a lurch into bitchy and picky and huffy and lurches into sulfurous prose, but there are lurches and swings back to the baseline enough to keep us all hooked. Maybe snitty, angry, sulfurous and stormy periods are what long-term OLers like!

I guess you would like the work of Karen Kaapcke, she is facebook friend, majored in philosophy and quit to communicate in painting. Her posts are always wonderful and thoughtful - as if she is having a dialog with the painting, and asking it to tell her what is working. We sometimes exchange respectful comments.

She seems like a well-trained professional artist, with each week full of making and marketing. I am left cold by her most recent works (see her Weebly page for a great sampling) -- they are muddy and stiff and without depth. I am glad you have a Facebook friend in Karen Kaapcke, though. It is always pleasant to receive respect. You have revoked my privileges to view your Facebook pages, so all I can say is More Smoke Series, Please -- let`s talk about art while talking about people talking about people bitching about art.

She even did a painting called Not Icarus, and I think she “quoted” the arm and hand in my Icarus.

This one?

But as you pointed out there are some artists over the top, and I am one of them. The funny thing is that my thoughts and feelings in art are about 20 times more intense then my wildest written thoughts. So where you might like things more subtle I would like to make them more operatic. And that is why, for all of us, suggesting how others should paint is a waste of time – that thought tends it get mixed up here when lesser bright people equate criticism with suggestions on how artists should paint.

I would love to see you paint free of constraints, and love to see you break out in wild, operatic abandon. Your gestural instinct is, I think, brilliant, fresh and full of life. I can only imagine what you are capable of when you discard the studies and allow your impulses to design and execute a canvas or drawing.

As for suggestions made to artists, one can welcome all suggestions but have a shitcan at hand, ready for the ugly, mean and stupid remarks.

More important, from my point of view, are suggestions made to viewers, suggestions that they are doing it wrong, that they are savages or drones, impoverished or deluded, unintelligent or un-schooled. I love the fresh cognitions of the innocent, and in a very narrow way, I agree with Rand that esthetic judgment (is it technically-accomplished, is it intelligible, does it purvey a `sense of life?) can be separable from ranking a piece of art's goodness or badness as a moral offering.

It is always interesting to read your critical comments on particular artworks and artists. The self-promotion you indulge in sometimes is part and parcel of being an independent artist, without dealers, contracts, galleries getting in between you and the consumer.

My points about overblown praise and overblown prose are just a reminder that there is plenty of bullshit in the art world, and there is plenty of bullshit cast about by the also-rans and spectators.

The "outside considerations" issue seems to be a hot button, I don't know why. The stories behind the works, the culture, and the time make for enlightening experiences in art. The "outside considerations" thing always meant for me that it was one of the elements that went into judging whether the work is good or not. But I don't think it is meant for lay people, lol, it’s like listening to a lot writers joke about grammar.... Judging works is a normal occurrence in art classes; they gather round to critique the final or day's work. No biggie.

The òutside considerations thing is just Rand being Rand (and me being puckish about Torres finger-wagging huff):

In essence, an objective evaluation requires that one identify the artist’s theme, the abstract meaning of his work (exclusively by identifying the evidence contained in the work and allowing no other, outside considerations)

Your aside about judging artworks as good or bad -- that this judgment should be for the professionals or the guilds seems not only bizarre from a Randian point of view, but also bizarre from a psychological point of view.

I don`t mean that guild-trained eyes and minds cannot offer brilliant criticism, but that criticism stands and falls on its internal logic, not on its holder`s guild-status. This is why I am cynical about your art-critic activities. They sometimes exceed your native competence in language and analysis and logic. Your attempts to lecture get things wrong. They are not always of a rank with your own work as an artist. They are at times second-rate.

But, anyway, from my point of view they are not the most important thing about you. Remove every last word you have ever written about art, and your art remains as vibrant and exciting and life-enhancing as it was without the words.

As with the technical critique of some of your contortionist figures, an innocent eye can reveal error. To see that the Emperor looks stupid in hipster garb is to be untainted by what the experts in fine garments and fear say. I don`t blame you a bit for dismissing all Newberry critiques in public -- but at the same time you do use means such as OL to promote your own self, and to tout your excellence. Which means you open the door to praise and to criticism. The more overblown and ridiculous, the more pointed and persistent the criticism.

Can you expand on your aversion to lay-people`s opinion? I might be misunderstanding the scope of your opinion, or its rootedness in your personal experience. If you want to take issue with any aspect of my writing, I`d be happy to hear it, be it monstrously lengthy or awkward or unfocused or deceptive or confused or whatever. I have a shitcan ready.

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?

Your scheme is to attack honorable, professional, and reputable people who happen to like objectivism. Their reaction is “WTF, this guy can’t be this stupid, let me clarify the issue more.” You then disregard any facts, good faith explanations, works, etc because it doesn’t fit in with your narrative. Those people, like Roger Bissel, they stop addressing you not because, as you believe you showed them the errors of their ways, they bail because you’re an insufferable pest.

Let`s strip away the overblown rhetoric of Jonathan and the nasty accusations from each side -- the personalizing, the insult, the heightened emotionality of the long-running face-off. Okay? Done.

The only thing that sticks out for me is your absent reaction to critique of your contortionist paintings, particularly the poor broken-legged, hip-displaced, painfully suffering woman on the bed above. I couldn`t really care less about the current iteration of bickering -- it is rooted much much earlier in the thread. It sprung from your arrogance and from Jonathan`s whoa there.

I know you are probably sick of having your paintings judged by lunatics, bitches, also-rans, hysterics or what have you, but from my point of view, I cannot take your criticism seriously when it does not conform to my eyes.

For example, that you cannot see the poor anatomy in the painting above boggles my mind. Surely you see the problems. Surely you wish for a better rendering of legs and arms and hips. Surely you see the defects. Surely you at least understand why someone would bring up this issue of anatomical surety, setting aside what can be seen as insanely personalized attacks.

That said, I love love love the smoky techniques of your latter-day works, and I love love love love love the one Smoke series depicted above. I don`t give a fuck if you call it neo-Sublime or if you call it Whack. The outside considerations melt away.

I think it is time for a draw-off between me, you, and Jonathan. We can suggest a subject and a simple medium and get to work for a day, and then bring it to our peers for cool dissection or operatic bloodletting.

Barring that, is there anything more boring than people bitching about people bitching about people bitching -- about art? Please put up images to discuss, then bring in Kamhi, then get discussion back on the rails.

-- all my ranting and kvetching can be put in perspective, by hearing the great kvetcher herself in full flow, from the Psycho-Epistemology of Art:

While, in other fields of knowledge, men have outgrown the practice of seeking the guidance of mystic oracles whose qualification for the job was unintelligibility, in the field of esthetics this practice has remained in full force and is becoming more crudely obvious today. Just as savages took the phenomena of nature for granted, as an irreducible primary not to be questioned or analyzed, as the exclusive domain of unknowable demons—so today’s epistemological savages take art for granted, as an irreducible primary not to be questioned or analyzed, as the exclusive domain of a special kind of unknowable demons: their emotions. The only difference is that the prehistorical savages’ error was innocent.

Edited October 19, 2015 by william.scherk

[Newberry]

Newberry: there's a bad sentence or two on your website, here:

http://www.newberryart.com/collections/giclees

Yet, the original may already be in a collection or might be too expense for some of us to collect. The giclees are great way to own an image you love.

Expensive, not expense, no? And are great way? Are a great way.

BTW, where are your writings on Kant? I don't think I've ever seen them. I've taken part in some discussions on OO (maybe here too) about Kant's esthetics with Jonathan, and found that he knows what he's talking about, after reading Critique of Judgement and some (non-Objectivist) commentaries on the topic. The worst I can say is that he's relentless to a fault, but I can even sympathize with that, knowing that whenever Phil Coates resurfaces here I'll be greeting him with this:

There's a backstory, as you can imagine.

Thanks Doc, for the suggestion, I made changes to that, and if you come across any other mistakes please let me know, I appreciate it.

I am remodeling my websites, and some of the articles are buried. Though you can google “Michael Newberry on Kant” and quite few things come up in the search. I suggest the Pandora’s Box series.

And one of the more popular threads here: A Few Kant Quotes: http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=5855&page=1

The main point about Kant, from this artist’s perspective, is the Sublime is made up when we experience “violence to our imaginations” through even a “formlessness” of means. In my articles I made several connections between Kant’s concepts of the Sublime to the themes, works, and methods of postmodern artists.

With regards to J, he is con like Madoff, but of the spirit. Most of his fans/victims don’t really investigate what kind of mental input they accept, there is a sucker born every day.

Phil, ummmm.

[Newberry]

She even did a painting called Not Icarus, and I think she “quoted” the arm and hand in my Icarus.

This one?

Yes that was it.

William your post is kind of lengthy and covering a lot of ground. Be nice and I will fb friend you.

Your critique of Counterpose I don't see it, she is one of my favorite paintings - and if you don't have the ability to give me a "lightbulb" experience then I don't register it. Taking advice one doesn't understand is a dead end.

The "outside considerations" thing I still don't consider a biggie. It is just pointing out stuff that is going on in painting. And it is ridiculous to say a painting is good because it came from a European white man in the 17th century, no? Or something like that.

Can you expand on your aversion to lay-people`s opinion?

You seem to like the buddy thing going on with critical feedback, but painting is a solitary personal thing for me. It is about the process and discoveries, struggles, attempts, realizations - why would anyone want to have that interfered with by an outsider? I understand that with actors, musicians etc, they have to work together and collaborate.

BTW, you made some beautiful compliments on my work and I appreciate them, I am not subtle about enjoying the awe thing. I tell my dog she is genius every time she figures something out, sometimes a little slow for my liking, but she enjoys the praise.

Interesting how you want to bridge rifts here, I could say it is a nice idea, but I don't think it is. I am on quest to share with people with similar beliefs systems as my own, which is to grow, evolve, and expand. I am not into fakes, and it is refreshing to call a spade a spade.