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

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Between Dutton and Noë and, yes, some Rand thrown in (not to mention recent advances in psychology and neuroscience), I think I just might be able to arrive at a concept of art that satisfies me.

btw - I want to add The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion by Virginia Postrel to this mix. (Believe me, it's more than visual.)

That's a hell of a great book (albeit, I don't like Virginia's writing style all that much--too much like a butterfly, landing on one flower, then flying off to another, then another, then another and so on).

I know nobody is talking about this, but I'm putting it in to refer to later when I put my new thread together.

Michael

[9thdoctor]

Machiavelli and Kissinger were not politicians, and Ayn Rand's contribution to political theory could be written on the back of a postage stamp

That's awful slippery, since with print small enough you can fit the entire Bible on a postage stamp. But you equivocate (from writing about politics to (original?) contributions to political theory), which seems to be your signature fallacy. Also I notice pettifogging and red herrings abound whenever you string words together. Tedious.

If we were to agree (and we don't) that Machiavelli and Kissinger were not politicians then all I'd have to do is substitute names of people we both agree were politicians and my point would stand. Your original assertion has been countered by analogy, so (at best) you could try explaining why the analogy is faulty. But do so via principle, in such a way that I can't bring up Howard Cosell qua expert on boxing, despite his not being a boxer nor any kind of athlete. Can one be a food critic without being a chef? C'mon, dish up your best rhetorical chops. With a side order of integrity. Defend or retract.

The sun rises and sets on Campbell's condensed soup? Just pour out a can and make a hero's journey about rabbits, a muppet sensei who backward speaks, or talking lions and warthogs. No doubt you could find open meaning in Psycho.

This is incoherent. I brought in Joseph Campbell as a separate example, intending him to be an irrefutable one, then openly abandoned the effort on the grounds that you are liable to dismiss the works he inspired too. Which you promptly did. Campbell and Eco don't have much overlap in their concerns, despite often being experts on the same texts (e.g. Joyce).

I believe in plain speaking. Eco's adulation of incoherent drunks like Joyce and Calder was art crime.

No comment on Calder, but I rank Joyce up there (however incongrously) with Hitchcock and Spielberg. You don't like them? Too bad for you. Enjoy whatever it is you do enjoy. Chandler's ok in my book, though to call Joyce an incoherent drunk and then bring in Chandler is a bit rich. Or maybe you can tell us who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep?

[anthony]

You write how Kant had a positive influence over Rand's work [due to his Sublime].

First, by your supposition, she "wasn't aware of the concept of Kant and the Sublime".

(Personally, I think it would be hard to miss if she read only part of his writings).

But how could she employ Kant's Sublime without knowing of it?

Let's see if you can work that one out for yourself. Think about it. Imagine that it's someone other than Saint Ayn whom were talking about. Could that person be influenced by ideas without knowing who originated them? Think hard! Remember that Obectivist writings assert that philosophy drives history, and that the herds of filthy ignorant people often don't know the names of the philosopher monster demons who led them to destruction.

Okay, if you can't think that hard, here are some pointers:

Might it be that certain ideas work their way into the culture and influence people, without those people knowing who originated the idea? If one person sees an aesthetic effect that she likes, and borrows and expands upon it, is it logically possible that she might not know which past creators and thinkers had influenced that aesthetic effect?

J

Thought about it a moment. Nope.

I knew the "aesthetic effect" from reading widely from a kid. Kant got to them all?

Dramatic effect / technique, no biggie.

"The Sublime"?

Now, that's a big deal - sounds ultra important!

Shakespeare was full of it, might he have learned Sublimity from Kant or earlier sublimist?

(uh.no...).

[Brant Gaede]

Tony, I love it when you go sublimely subtlely sarcastic.

--Brant

sarcasm is my weak point, but I aspire to greater things so I'm working on it

[anthony]

According to an academic (HJ Paton)

"Kant is a systematic thinker, by which I mean that his moral philosophy is an integral part of a coherent system of thought, and is interlaced with his metaphysics, his epistemology, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, political philosophy, etc."

If one takes his word for it, and I don't have Paton's overview so don't know, "systematic", "coherent" and integrated is good, right?

Like Rand's (without the religion part).

But here's what I don't get. Nobody here who supports Kant's aesthetics, has put in a good word for his morality - or indeed can. (btw, If I recall right, he stated "Beauty is morality").

So how do you resolve the two parts of Kant's coherent system? Either there is a severe error of method and an inconsistency between his aesthetics and his morality - or, just maybe, both are in error.

I suggest that if a thinker almost completely ignores or leap-frogs existence, identity, identification and consciousness in his aesthetics, instead positing (as I see it) a sort of 'identification' by way of feelings or percepts, then it starts wrong and stays wrong. How can he identify man and a proper morality after that error?

[Jonathan]

According to an academic (HJ Paton)

"Kant is a systematic thinker, by which I mean that his moral philosophy is an integral part of a coherent system of thought, and is interlaced with his metaphysics, his epistemology, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, political philosophy, etc."

If one takes his word for it, and I don't have Paton's overview so don't know, "systematic", "coherent" and integrated is good, right?

Like Rand's (without the religion part).

Oh, so Rand's philosophy is integrated and interlaced? If one part of it is contradictory or wrong, then all parts of it are infected, due to being interlaced, and therefore also contradictory or wrong?

Hmmm. Rand defined art as a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value judgments, and stated in no uncertain terms that it cannot serve a utilitarian purpose -- it can serve no purpose other than contemplation. She then blatantly contradicted herself by classifying architecture as an art form despite stating that it "does not re-create reality" and that it serves utilitarian purposes.

Therefore by Tony's "reasoning," Rand's entire philosophy is contradictory, incoherent, disintegrated and wrong.

But here's what I don't get. Nobody here who supports Kant's aesthetics, has put in a good word for his morality - or indeed can. (If I recall right, he wrote "Beauty is morality").

Who has been "supporting" Kant's aesthetics? We've been identifying one aspect of many that he addressed in his aesthetics, and more broadly, one aspect of historical aesthetics in general. This issue isn't primarily about Kant, but about the Sublime, the idea of which existed long before Kant. Kant only becomes an issue because Objectivist morons insist on making him the issue by acting as if he invented the concept! We keep discussing the Sublime and what it has always meant, and you keep ignoring that reality in favor of trying to blame Kant for a concept that you refuse to understand and insist on vilifying.

As for Kant's ethics, why in the hell would anyone want to discuss such a complex subject with someone like you who can't even grasp the simple concept of the Sublime after years of having it explained to you? Heh.

So how do you resolve the two parts of Kant's coherent system? Either there is a severe error of method and an inconsistency between his aesthetics and his morality - or, just maybe, both are in error.

How do you resolve Rand's contradictions in the field of aesthetics? "Just maybe everything she ever wrote is in error"?

J

[Brant Gaede]

The cultural aspects of Objectivism, which are not necessarily pre-Objectivism Randian, are both a hodgepodge and interlaced. The esthetics, insofar as I personally understand them, are not interlaced but are much more sophisticated and interesting than anything I have read out of Michum Newberry. Visually, he went de facto farcical with his human figures. Who did that better than he? No, wait, don't tell us. There is enough depravity around to spread more about. ("Depravity" was Rand's favorite word for her non-Objectivist art art evaluations. I think she only used "Trash" once in public.)

--Brant

[Selene]

Ninth,

Machiavelli and Kissinger were not politicians, and Ayn Rand's contribution to political theory could be written on the back of a postage stamp,...

Wolf, before this gets into the "normal" pong type of "argument," be clear here and define:

politician

A...

[Jonathan]

Look where this crap is leading you, conflating terms like awe and fearsome with a cogent discussion of art.

The goal of Kant's mental masturbation wasn't intended to persuade. The payoff was subliminal, a stimulus below the threshold of understanding; perceived by and affecting someone's mind without their being aware of it -- a eunuch's bluff, no different than Toohey's honeyed voice at a public meeting -- the purpose of which is to baffle and terrify.

http://www.metamodernism.com/2013/12/18/levitated-mass/

Ah, I get it. It took me a while. You're parodying Newbsie.

J

WolfAlan,

In all seriousness, I'm wondering if you read and comprehended the material at the link that you posted.

Did you notice that Kant's "old-fashioned" notion of the Sublime is contrasted against the postmodern work in question, and against postmodernism in general? The writers' position, correctly, is that Kantian Sublimity evokes both fear and a feeling of pleasure leading to transcendence. In opposition to that, they state that postmodernism is built on ultimate failure with no transcendence.

Did you notice all of that, or did your Newberrian contemptuousness get in the way? Heh.

J

[Jonathan]

The cultural aspects of Objectivism, which are not necessarily pre-Objectivism Randian, are both a hodgepodge and interlaced. The esthetics, insofar as I personally understand them, are not interlaced but are much more sophisticated and interesting than anything I have read out of Michum Newberry. Visually, he went de facto farcical with his human figures. Who did that better than he? No, wait, don't tell us. There is enough depravity around to spread more about. ("Depravity" was Rand's favorite word for her non-Objectivist art art evaluations. I think she only used "Trash" once in public.)

--Brant

A few of the artists at Cordair rival Newbsie in the category of external writhing contortion and/or leaping about through empty space presented as expressions/explosions of internal Objecti-joy-passion-proper-sense-of-life-blessed-be-Saint-Ayn. I won't provide links out of respecting your wish to not spread further depravity.

Speaking of Rand's use of "trash," do you remember when Pigero applauded that opinion which was aimed at Maxfield Parrish's work? Heh. He clearly didn't know who Parrish was, but of course assumed that Rand was coming from the position of advocating "reason, freedom, the best within, and life as it might be and ought to be" when pissing on Parrish. He categorized Parrish as a nihilist who painted in wild "splotches and splurges." Pigero was one of the leading Objecti-tards of his generation, along with Newbsie, Cresswell and Rowlands. Giants. Geniuses.

J

[Brant Gaede]

Maxfield Parish is high quality kitsch to me. It suggests turning the page to the next thing. The models are young so the next thing is what the young would naturally do next--if they could. Maybe they already did. Very 1920s. The pictures seem languid, usually, but full of implied dynamism. I can think of at least two prints I'd like to have, but wonder about the quality of what would be sent me. "Daybreak" is my hands-down favorite and not kitsch.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

Certainly some of Parrish's work can be treacly, but "nihilistic," opposed to reason and resentful of "the best within"? No.

Ayn's special little helpers just love to hate, and, more than anything else, they love reviving her irrational hatreds.

J

[Wolf DeVoon]

In all seriousness, I'm wondering if you read and comprehended the material at the link that you posted.

I know how to read. I also know how to write.

Art The Garbage Collector

Ernest Hemingway, suicide. Scott Fitzgerald, alcoholic dead at age 44. Herman Melville, pauper. O Henry, convict and wastrel. Sylvia Plath, suicide. Virginia Woolf, suicide. Speaking for myself, the pressure of excellence is so severe as a novelist that I have many times struggled with anger, insanely violent and suicidal impulses.

And now I will tell a little story.

About a hundred years ago when digital referred exclusively to fingers and radio tubes got hot, I was at my desk in another fellow's office, slowly considering the nicest possible way to ghostwrite a speech. The chairman of a grocery chain had to explain why his empire was underperforming by a factor of thirty and that everything would be better next quarter, when the phone rang. Back in those days, telephones had bells and curlicue cords that ended in a handset heavy enough to kill an intruder if he happened to intrude within three or four feet of the desk.

My girlfriend was crying, in a desperate state, convinced she was having a heart attack. I sighed, turned off the switch on my noisy Selectric II, and inquired with suitable patience and sympathy whatever was wrong, dear? "I can't breathe," she gasped. "My chest is pounding. I've been trying to write a script and I can't do anything without getting confused and I keep making mistakes and wasting paper and I can't do this! Do you think I'm having a heart attack?"

"No, darling," I affirmed. "You're having an art attack."

"Oh, no!" she wailed, as if that was worse. "What's an art attack?"

I thereupon improvised the following nonsense, because I wanted this interruption ended as quickly as possible. I'm capable of many heroisms, but ghostwriting a pack of lies for a grocery store magnate is not the sort of thing I can do in fits and spurts. Connected, logical-sounding horsefeathers are a delicate chore.

I said "Okay, let me see if I understand the situation. You type a few words or a couple lines, and then it all looks like garbage, right?"

"Yes!" she bawled. "I'm writing garbage! I can't even spell correctly!"

"Look honey, you need to understand what Art is. Art is leaning over your shoulder, watching everything you do. You're self-conscious and upset and hyperventilating because Art keeps telling you that you're writing garbage, right?"

"Uh... yeah, I guess so, metaphorically or something."

"Okay. Pay attention. This is important. Art is a garbage collector. He's a big fat guy wearing a smelly old T-shirt that has holes in it, he's smoking the stub of a cigar, and he has no aesthetic judgment or sympathy. He's there bugging you and making you miserable be-cause he's thinks you're a writer and that all writers write garbage. All he wants is the garbage. Put a fresh piece of paper in the machine, type a bunch of garbage, gibberish, anything, then rip it out, ball it up and throw it over your shoulder to Art. He'll have some garbage and he'll go away and leave you alone, so you can relax and write."

She did as I asked, somewhat skeptically, typed some awful crap with abundant misspellings, ripped it from her typewriter, balled it up and tossed it over her shoulder. Art the Garbage Collector was duly assuaged and left the apartment. She was very appreciative and had a nice new comedy script for me to giggle at over dinner that evening.

Cut to Hollywood a dozen years later. My girlfriend was given an important introduction to one of Tinsel Town's oldest, most respected and successful television distributors, the late Arthur Greenfield. She came back from Greenfield's Wilshire Boulevard office looking like a dazed survivor. I asked how it went?

"You're not going to believe this," she said solemnly. "The secretary was at lunch and his office door was open. He said: 'Come on in, sweetie! I been expectin ya.' I walked into his office. He had enormous floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on both walls, like a library, thousands of reels of videotape masters: Lassie, My Three Sons, the old Max Fleischer Popeye series, What's My Line, Charlie's Angels, almost every off-network series I've ever heard of. Art Greenfield was sitting behind a big desk, smoking a cigar. He had a T-shirt with holes in it. He waved his hand at the shelves and said -- you're not gonna believe this, Wolf -- he said: 'See all this? Garbage! All garbage!'

"I met Art," she whispered with awe. "You were right. He's a garbage collector."

[Jonathan]

In all seriousness, I'm wondering if you read and comprehended the material at the link that you posted.

I know how to read. I also know how to write.

Art The Garbage Collector

Ernest Hemingway, suicide. Scott Fitzgerald, alcoholic dead at age 44. Herman Melville, pauper. O Henry, convict and wastrel. Sylvia Plath, suicide. Virginia Woolf, suicide. Speaking for myself, the pressure of excellence is so severe as a novelist that I have many times struggled with anger, insanely violent and suicidal impulses.

And now I will tell a little story...

You should think about posting some examples of your knowing how to write.

J

[ThatGuy]

To update the word "sublime", then, would not just be unnecessary (since "exaltation", or "ecstatic/ecstasy" would do just fine)...actually, it wouldn't even be an UPDATE; it's not expanding or adding (since it's already subsumed under a larger concept as a type of exaltation, maybe?)...it would actually be doing a dis-service by destroying the differentiation between those words/concepts. It would not be the equivalent of Rand reclaiming "selfish", or putting the religous concept of an "anthem" into a secular context (nothing is lost in that way), whereas the particular concept invoked in the sublime (the contradictary state of "the fear that delights" would be lost.

LOST.

Not just a concept lost, but an emotion REPRESSED, because someone interprets it as "philosophically creepy."

Writers subsequent to Kant came up with their own variations on the concept. It's not like he had the last word. Schiller, Hugo, and Schopenhauer are a few names to look up. Concepts are supposed to be open-ended.

So I wouldn't worry about some anti-Newspeak thoughtcrime, a banned concept of the Sublime, as though Kant's work is to be consigned to the flames when the Revolutionary Objectivist Total Freedom Liberators (ROTFL) seize control and de-nationalize the libraries. And put the collected writings of Newberry in their place. Redacted, as needed, to eliminate traces of Kant's actual ideas as might be reconstructed from his presentation (not that such redaction would take much effort).

Well, I'm not seeing Michael Newberry burning down any libraries in Alexandria, so I'm not so worried. ;) Just taking the idea to its conclusion, in principle...

But a more limited, immediate, concern is the latter part of that, the emotional repression, in light of the claims about such repression found/promoted in and by Objectivism/Objectivists...even if the libraries aren't burning en mass, it's just as bad if a light is being hidden under a bushel on the individual level because of a concept being "updated" in a way that erases the concept (instead of choosing an alternative concept.)

(And, in theory, if the concept were erased by zealots redacting the Kantian influence, it would no doubt simply rise again under a new name, when some aspiring artist or philosopher encountered a forbidden "terror that delights"...)

[Wolf DeVoon]

if the concept were erased by zealots redacting the Kantian influence, it would no doubt simply rise again under a new name, when some aspiring artist or philosopher encountered a forbidden "terror that delights"

Nowadays it's called horror. http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-time-line-of-hollywood-horror-since-the-exorcist-1446047331?tesla=y

[Brant Gaede]

For horror that's just horrible. The art in horror is you don't see the horror except, maybe, at the or to the end. They made better black and white B horror movies in the 1950s than the top of the line crap they pump out today.

--Brant

I could be wrong for I simply don't watch them anymore

Predator (1987) was very well done

[Wolf DeVoon]

For horror that's just horrible.

My mistake. I meant shock and awe.

[Brant Gaede]

I actually knew someone who thought The Blair Witch Project was real--that a camera was found with all that footage, but I knew you can't do what was done all in the camera. All I could think of was there are fools in the woods. It did ramp up nicely toward the end.

"Shock & Awe" my ass. That was the fourth of July for most of those on the ground compared to the city levelling fire-bombing of WWII.

--Brant

[anthony]

Interesting writing style in your short story, Wolf. I've seen it in your other writing. It's either a true account with some added flourishes or pure fiction with authenticity, I lean to the first. Very nice play on "Art" - an O. Henry twist in the tail.

[Jonathan]

if the concept were erased by zealots redacting the Kantian influence, it would no doubt simply rise again under a new name, when some aspiring artist or philosopher encountered a forbidden "terror that delights"

Nowadays it's called horror. http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-time-line-of-hollywood-horror-since-the-exorcist-1446047331?tesla=y

No, nowadays it's not called horror. It's called Romantic Realism.

WolfAlanNewbsie#2, you should consider actually reading and learning about the concept of the Sublime. Any and every entity which might cause fear isn't sufficient to stimulate it. Violence, gore, and startling someone wouldn't qualify.

Freddy Krueger doesn't fit the historical concept.

What does fit the concept are Rand's novels. They're the best examples in existence of the Sublime in literature, because they combine the mathematical and the dynamical Sublime, and they don't just present phenomena which stimulate readers' will to rise above, but they also show the characters transcending the overwhelming magnitudes and threatening forces.

J

[Jonathan]

For horror that's just horrible.

My mistake. I meant shock and awe.

What did that shock and awe make you experience, WolfAlanNewbsie#2?

Did it make you feel your will to resist it, and to oppose it?

Our dumb friend Newbsie once wrote an essay in which he explained that after the shock and incomprehension of the 9/11attacks, he felt his fortitude swelling. He doesn't get it, but that experience -- that REACTION -- is what is known as the Sublime. See, the way it works is that the mind-bogglingly large and threatening phenomena are not the Sublime. Our feeling of rising above them is. The phenomena are not what we value. Our courageous response is. Get it? It's not that hard.

J

[anthony]

Repression, my arse. Emotions have identity. Not being aware that emotions have causality from facts of reality, or that as importantly, they reflect to one what one's conscious premises are, and therefore an individual should often introspect (identify) the type and source of his emotions: that's repression -- and foreign to O'ism.

Accepting an unexamined combination of emotions as an arbitrary 'given' and 'subjective', that sounds more like Kant.

Don't be fooled, for Teutonic, controlling, anal-retentiveness, Kant takes the cake.

[Jonathan]

[

(And, in theory, if the concept were erased by zealots redacting the Kantian influence, it would no doubt simply rise again under a new name, when some aspiring artist or philosopher encountered a forbidden "terror that delights"...)

Great post, but I have just a tiny nitpick. If we were to redact only the Kantian influence, we'd still have the historical concept that existed before Kant, which would still leave us with the "terror that delights." Removing Kant's input merely removes his clarity on the cause of the transcendence in response to the stimuli. Blaming Kant, and therefore removing only his input, is irrational and accomplishes nothing toward Newbsie's goal of vindicating Rand and purifying the word Sublime of whatever Newbsie imagines is wrong with it.

But you're right on the money about the concept rising again no matter what it is called. When someone in the future, purified Newbsian world identifies the experience of feeling his will to resist the great magnitudes and threatening forces in Rand's novels, what new word should he attach to the concept since "Sublime" has been forbidden? When someone reads Newsie's old essay on his having experienced his will to resist the destructive force and magnitude of the 9/11 attacks, what new word should be chosen to replace "Sublime" to signify the concept?

J

[Jonathan]

Repression, my arse. Emotions have identity. Not being aware that emotions have causality from facts of reality, or that as importantly, they reflect to one what one's conscious premises are, and therefore an individual should often introspect (identify) the type and source of his emotions: that's repression -- and foreign to O'ism.

Accepting an unexamined combination of emotions as an arbitrary 'given' and 'subjective', that sounds more like Kant.

Don't be fooled, for Teutonic, controlling, anal-retentiveness, Kant takes the cake.

You're very emotional and illogical when it comes to Kant. What caused that? Answer: Ayn Rand and your emotional investment in her.

J