Art and Subobjectivity

[reason.on]

RCR, I very much like the first and the last of Hugo's works that you showed. The middle two I am more dubious of, but am not prepared to make a judgment on as of yet.

Jeff,

I understand your hesitation (I will admit to feeling it myself), and fully respect your holding off on making any sort of judgment call.

Btw, of the four I like "Abstract Composition" the least, and am not really sure what I think in terms of it being "art", or even of it requiring much skill in the making. With "Lace Impression", I am more apt to say yes it is "art", and would definitely say it took skill to create. "Rosette" is very interesting, because I agree that it is beautiful to look at, but it is an ink blot, and it seems to me to have least amount of skill involved, and the fewest qualities of "art". I also like "The Planet", a painting which takes on much more meaning and interest, I think, in knowing the title. I'd say, of the four it took the highest level of skill, and has the most qualities of "art".

RCR

Edited January 31, 2007 by R. Christian Ross

[Danneskjold]

Is it my job to provide proof that they don't or yours?

Here is a premise to check. Why would so many skilled artists (ones who do both representational and abstract) devote much of their time creating works that "need no skill," and display them on an equal level of validity? Are they collectively dumb, or collectively partial con artists, or what? No other realm of human activity shows similar behavior on so wide a scale, so it must be a collective thing. It is inconceivable that the individuals who do that all happen to choose the same field by coincidence.

I don't know Michael, how about collectivists? Are they evil, stupid, or mislead? You'll find that the majority of your arguments can be applied to smart people who are collectivists as well as artists who paint said types of abstract art.

[Victor Pross]

MSK wrote: "Here is a premise to check. Why would so many skilled artists (ones who do both representational and abstract) devote much of their time creating works that "need no skill," and display them on an equal level of validity? Are they collectively dumb, or collectively partial con artists, or what? No other realm of human activity shows similar behavior on so wide a scale, so it must be a collective thing. It is inconceivable that the individuals who do that all happen to choose the same field by coincidence.

Or is there another reason? Are the challenges to their skill of a different nature than imitation? And you merely refuse to see it?"

***

The old Argumentum ad populum! So many are doing it! Are they all blind, dumb and wrong!?

Michael,

Representational artists - along with the no-talents - wish to be apart of "artistic aristocracy" as much as anyone---and the motive could be economical or a wish to belong to a "caste" in the artworld. None of your points (or questions) to Jeff addresses the question that is still begging: is abstract painting art? On epistemological grounds, it has been made clear that it is not. Basically, your line of argumentation does not address the issue, and I just took a poll from the flat earth enthusiasts...and they told me so.

Victor

Edited January 31, 2007 by Victor Pross

[Ellen Stuttle]

When I was in college, I heard a story about a clash between Toscanini and Ravel over Bolero where Ravel complained about the tempo and Toscanini said that he conducted Ravel's work much better than Ravel wrote it.

Sounds like Toscanini. ;-)

This recording [a historical 1953 recording by Pedro de Freitas Branco with the Champs Elysées Theatre Orch.] was important in another way in that it was the first high fidelity recording ever made of Boléro following the composer’s using oboe d’amour as called for in the score, and also recognising the composer’s stipulation that there be NO acceleration (the score reads "moderato assai") a long overdue repudiation of Toscanini’s revisionism which had dominated musical taste for decades. Branco witnessed Ravel accosting Toscanini after a performance and criticising the accelerated tempo. Toscanini said, "If I played it any slower it would not be endurable!" and stormed off. Ravel said, to whoever was still listening, "but I intended that it should be unendurable."

And when it's played at that same proper tempo all the way through, I feel that it almost IS unendurable, if I'm paying attention while it's playing. I'll start to feel, Will you be over, already, get done with this!!!!! It will even start setting my nerves on edge and making my hands want to curl if it's going on in the background of my thoughts.

I love the Internet. You can verify the stories from your past on it.

Chuckle.

Ellen

___

[Kevin Haggerty]

I'm so ambivalent about posting in this thread. On the one hand, as an artist living and working among artists for most of my life, and someone who loves reason, I feel I have a stake in this conversation. On the other hand, Objectivists have such a powerful tendency toward strong opinions without a lot of personal investigation (I don't mean knowledge, I mean investigation) or (perhaps more importantly) any sympathy for people who have dedicated their lives to pursuits Objectivists tend not to have any interest in, I fear my insights will be wasted.

On top of which, there are so many angles from which to approach the beast! But to get started here, I think I'll limit my thoughts to the issue of "skill" in Abstract Art.

In my experience, good abstract work requires a lot more real skill and a far more sophisticated and individualistic "eye" to pull off, than good figurative work. I liken abstract art to jazz or free verse. Anyone can pick up a sax and start improvising, but not everyone can play like Charlie Parker. And anyone can write

some sentences

and arrange them

haphazardly

down a page

in lines of varying length

without giving the T. S. Eliots of the world anything to worry about.

These forms, jazz and free verse poetry, are superficially unstructured, but that doesn't mean that all jazz and all free verse is crap. Certainly, many many folks without the dicipline to get a real music education or to study the full history of poetic form can ape the acheivements of giants and call themselves "artists." Seems to me that most of Victor's examples of crap are the works of Abstract Art's second handers and posers and psuedo-intellectual wags.

But let's return to the father of Abstract Expressionism, Mr. Jackson Pollock and his infamous masterwork, Lavender Mist:

I'm always very impressed with this work. How anyone can take a good look at it and not see a profoundly subtle, ordering mind at work, is pretty amazing to me. No, really, I'm not being fanciful in the least. To my mind a good piece of Abstract Art creates what I call a profound associative field. And that is extremely difficult to do.

Let me explain. Our minds seek out visual order almost compulsively. Our brains are hardwired to make the visual data we receive comprehensible. Our minds are often so obsessive about creating order that it can be very difficult to simply see what is in front of us. Beginning art students usually have to "unlearn" the mind's symbolic visual language in order to be able to draw accurately what they simply see. Ask a non-artist to draw a human eye, for instance, and you will likely get a familiar image of a circle within an almond shaped elipse. It can take weeks of hard work for the student to be able to lay these compulsive symbols aside, but once he does, a whole world of magnicent complexity and mystery opens up. The whole world is new and unknown and must be drawn to be understood!

So, to my mind, a great work of Abstract Expressionism like Lavender Mist is practically a master class in unprejudiced perception in a single work. Anyone can throw random slashes of paint at a canvas, but it takes an extraordinary eye to keep the image from resolving one way or another. One can stare at a cloud and see a face or an animal, but that's as far as you get with clouds. The associative field of a great piece of Abstract Art can seem nearly infinite--the moment you think you see something in it, the larger context of the work refutes it. There is no face or animal anywere in Lavender Mist--take a good long look at it and try to track the things you almost see in it. Is Lavender Mist flat, or does it express depth? Flat like a map or deep like a foggy morning landscape? Are there objects in the mist? People? Houses? Points of fire? A city? A battle? A line of monks walking slowly up a hill?

And yet, like the beginning art student who doesn't really look at what's in front of him but instead looks for the symbols his brain is preconditioned to seek out, the too-literally minded viewer of Lavender Mist may become frustrated because his mind's attempts to deliniate and classify what he sees come to nothing. His inability to find the familiar and the known may cause him to lash out at the work, to try to domesticate it that way. What crap, he says. Meaningless chicken scratch! A child could do better.

But what such a viewer misses out on, I think, is the opportunity Pollock grants him to experience the viewer's own creative soul. What meaning do we seek to impose on the work? What thoughts and associations, unbidden, arise within our own perceptive field? To look into Lavender Mist and really see the work, is to participate in the Artist's creative process. When we look at Lavender Mist on it's own perceptual terms, we are all artists caught in the moment of creation.

What I find most troubling about this whole discussion, though, is the way it tends to make visual art over as a sub-genre of literature (and literature a sub-genre of philosophy, for that matter); as if the visual in art were merely the illustration of the artist's entirely prosaic thoughts and principles. As if there's nothing worth investigating on purely visual terms, with metaphors that have no relationship to the written word. Why paint an image if you can explain it away in a few paragraphs of text? Why would anyone want to do that?

-Kevin

Edited January 31, 2007 by Kevin Haggerty

[Ellen Stuttle]

[....] Like I said, if you think it takes no skill, I dare you to paint a Kandinsky in his style and come even close to looking like one of his paintings. Try it. It's quite an eye-opener.

Michael,

I grimaced on reading that and thought, Oof, don't set the bar so high! Give him something easier. Then I had the second thought, problem is, I don't think they see the style, and thus they wouldn't realize that they weren't coming close.

A story: A dear friend of Larry's and mine is a superb pianist; he's now emeritus at the Hartt School, after teaching there for 50 years. He never wanted to pursue a concert career, didn't like the thought of the lifestyle and the politicing, but he's of the caliber to have had such a career. (Side tidbit to you: Occasionally he travels to give recitals, especially to...Brazil.)

Some years ago he gave a recital which few pianists dare to attempt: ALL the Chopin Etudes in one performance.

Outside during the intermission, I happened to start talking with someone who I soon learned was my friend's brother-in-law. The brother-in-law was just mouthing off to a convenient listener; he didn't know -- and I was too entertained to tell him -- that I was a friend of Watson's (Watson Morrison is the pianist's name). The brother-in-law, who had had an accident years before and lost an arm, was telling me about how good a pianist HE, the brother-in-law, had once been. He'd played jazz and pop music. He then opined, "But this stuff Will [Watson's knickname] plays. That's nothing. It's just up and down the keyboard, la da da, no music to it."

He was being serious. He didn't hear the "music to it."

Ellen

___

[Victor Pross]

Jeff,

Can you manage this? Even I could do it...and I'm a caricaturist! :turned:

-Victor

P.S.

Kevin, that was a very thoughtful post...I would like to respond to it when I find the time.

[Danneskjold]

I might not be able to replicate it exactly. I would be able to do something similar.

[Victor Pross]

I might not be able to replicate it exactly. I would be able to do something similar.

No? You wouldn't be able to replicate it exactly? Well, it looks like MSK and Ellen have made their point--abstract painting is art after all!!

Really, I just don't follow some of the arguements here at all--or understand how the presenter of these arguments feels they are making a point. Oh well....

[Ellen Stuttle]

What I find most troubling about this whole discussion, though, is the way it tends to make visual art over as a sub-genre of literature (and literature a sub-genre of philosophy, for that matter); as if the visual in art were merely the illustration of the artist's entirely prosaic thoughts and principles. As if there's nothing worth investigating on purely visual terms, with metaphors that have no relationship to the written word.

I hope you aren't including all of us as doing that. To the extent people accept the Objectivist theory of esthetics, doing that is probably going to be inevitable at some point. But I do not accept the Objectivist theory, and Jonathan I think basically doesn't. At minimum he sees how problematic it is applied to the visual arts, including architecture, and to music. (I think it's also problematic applied to literature, although on the surface it seems a more plausible fit there.) Nor does Dragonfly accept the O'ist theory, and I don't think RCR does.

What a wonderful discussion of Lavender Mist. I'm really glad you posted that, even if you felt ambivalent about doing so -- and even though you're likely to be criticized for extolling as virtues in the painting what Objectivists will consider sins.

Btw, re this:

And anyone can write

some sentences

and arrange them

haphazardly

down a page

in lines of varying length

without giving the T. S. Eliots of the world anything to worry about.

True, what you wrote isn't competition for Eliot. But, no, not anyone could arrange even the words you did arrange with as nice a rhythm as you used.

Regards,

Ellen

___

[Danneskjold]

Eh, I'm just really bad at tracing things. Besides that I couldn't draw anything that bad. If I did I would throw it out and retry. Yesterday I was drawing something that was supposed to be a crappy drawing of a make-believe baby based on traits that were determined through flipping a coin. I spent thirty minutes trying to make the different sides of the face symmetrical. I demand things of myself, I demand more than that.

[Victor Pross]

Eh, I'm just really bad at tracing things. Besides that I couldn't draw anything that bad. If I did I would throw it out and retry. Yesterday I was drawing something that was supposed to be a crappy drawing of a make-believe baby based on traits that were determined through flipping a coin. I spent thirty minutes trying to make the different sides of the face symmetrical. I demand things of myself, I demand more than that.

Well, you have my respect for setting your standards higher than what Kandinsky set for himself.

[Danneskjold]

When I break up my

sentences

like this. It makes it so

that my artistic level

is higher than if I had just written

it normally. Because, after

all, this is

far more artistic.

I have no real problem with free verse,

I just don't see why

all of a sudden

this is art. I guess it goes

back to discursive vs. presentational

form. Like what

Ellen said.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I grimaced on reading that and thought, Oof, don't set the bar so high! Give him something easier. Then I had the second thought, problem is, I don't think they see the style, and thus they wouldn't realize that they weren't coming close.

See Victor's post above with the Kandinsky painting and his and Jeff's ensuing mocking comments. Right on the money and true to form.

Some years ago he gave a recital which few pianists dare to attempt: ALL the Chopin Etudes in one performance.

Outside during the intermission, I happened to start talking with someone who I soon learned was my friend's brother-in-law. The brother-in-law was just mouthing off to a convenient listener; he didn't know -- and I was too entertained to tell him -- that I was a friend of Watson's (Watson Morrison is the pianist's name). The brother-in-law, who had had an accident years before and lost an arm, was telling me about how good a pianist HE, the brother-in-law, had once been. He'd played jazz and pop music. He then opined, "But this stuff Will [Watson's knickname] plays. That's nothing. It's just up and down the keyboard, la da da, no music to it."

He was being serious. He didn't hear the "music to it."

Ellen, this comment is actually for Jeff. I knew a lady in Brazil who hated sports. She said (about soccer, the passion of Brazil), "I don't know why people like that silly game. It's just a bunch of men high on testosterone chasing a ball in the grass. Anyone can do it. Take away the testosterone and it means nothing." I asked her if this applied to other sports that used a ball, like baseball, basketball and USA football, rugby, etc. She said, "Yes. It's all stupid macho crap. There's no real talent involved."

Then I asked her if she knew the rules, and said that maybe if she knew about some of the strategy involved... She interrupted to say she didn't know the rules and she never wanted to get near that crap. She had better things to do. She hated the time it consumed in the lives of her friends and she would outlaw it if she could. The lives of her friends and loved ones were much too valuable to be wasted on watching useless showoffs who do nothing important in life chase a ball around the grass.

I'm not making this up. Nothing I was able to say made her even consider the skill, aesthetic pleasure, admiration for human achievement, pleasure derived from the sense of competition under man-made rules, etc., that are in involved in spectator sports. Nothing. (I don't know about sports without balls, or even simple entertainment. I became too discouraged to continue.)

Just a thought...

What I find most troubling about this whole discussion, though, is the way it tends to make visual art over as a sub-genre of literature (and literature a sub-genre of philosophy, for that matter); as if the visual in art were merely the illustration of the artist's entirely prosaic thoughts and principles. As if there's nothing worth investigating on purely visual terms, with metaphors that have no relationship to the written word. Why paint an image if you can explain it away in a few paragraphs of text? Why would anyone want to do that?

Kevin, your entire post was one hell of a post and absolutely spot on. And I probably don't need to say to you, there are other internal experiences that abstract art allows a person to bring to his own awareness (which, when appreciated as such, are spiritual fuel of the first order).

About this last observation above, it goes beyond the written word. Traditional Objectivists object to abstract art because it is not a visual sub-set of photography. They insist on paintings being stylized photographs, with stylization (essentially the artist's decision on how to focus on pre-chosen aspects of the photo's subject) being the factor that makes it art.

This attitude comes straight from Rand, although she doesn't present it in those words. The photography/painting connection is so strong in her aesthetic view that I suspect (and I admit I am speculating) it was a contributing factor in her saying that photography is not art.

Michael

[Danneskjold]

I wonder if that lady could hit an eighty-five mile per hour fastball.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I wonder if that lady could hit an eighty-five mile per hour fastball.

Jeff,

She saw no value in it and she didn't care. That was enough for her to prove to herself that no talent was involved. Just testosterone.

Michael

[Victor Pross]

MSK wrote: "About this last observation above, it goes beyond the written word. Traditional Objectivists object to abstract art because it is not a visual sub-set of photography. They insist on paintings being stylized photographs, with stylization (essentially the artist's decision on how to focus on pre-chosen aspects of the photo's subject) being the factor that makes it art."

This is the long winded way of saying: intelligible.

MSK again: "This attitude comes straight from Rand, although she doesn't present it in those words. The photography/painting connection is so strong in her aesthetic view that I suspect (and I admit I am speculating) it was a contributing factor in her saying that photography is not art."

No, this does not "come from Rand". This is a very strange remark. Michael, representational painting has a long, long lustrous history behind it…and it is defended (it needs to be) in many intellectual circles in the artworld that have nothing to do with Objectivism.

Oy!

Victor

[sjw]

Really, I just don't follow some of the arguements here at all--or understand how the presenter of these arguments feels they are making a point. Oh well....

Victor it's just Peter Keating over and over: "It must be profound, since I don't understand it!" Except worse, because they pretend to, and they get all snooty when you call it like it is. A bunch of students of Ellsworth Toohey, that's what they are. "As if there's nothing worth investigating on purely visual terms, with metaphors that have no relationship to the written word."--Kant's noumenal world. As if conceptualizing--using one's Reason--was some sort of crude blunt instrument, as if emotions are much finer and more able to grasp the truth.

I hate to say it, but these people need a dose of Linz, respectible words this garbage does not deserve. It is absolutely INCREDIBLE that these people feel some association with Objectivism on ANY level whatever. Their minds and souls are absolutely and utterly cast in the spirit of religion, and there is no redeeming them from it, they wallow in it with pride.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Victor,

Please read more carefully. I was discussing the attitude of traditional Objectivists, not the world in general. The attitude of traditional Objectivists about nearly everything came from Rand.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Shayne,

I presume you think of your own consciousness as something that is outside of reality to make that statement. And if you ever need a dose of irrational tribalism in the name of reason, please be my guest. I pass.

Onward! The world awaits you!

Michael

[Danneskjold]

As far as the subtleties of Pollock and that painting. I'm inclined to believe that because people are looking for patterns they are making themselves find one. I don't see anything in it.

[Ellen Stuttle]

When I break up my

sentences

like this. It makes it so

that my artistic level

is higher than if I had just written

it normally. Because, after

all, this is

far more artistic.

I have no real problem with free verse,

I just don't see why

all of a sudden

this is art. I guess it goes

back to discursive vs. presentational

form. Like what

Ellen said.

LOL. At least you're better at grammar than is typical of students in highschool these days (though you did make a couple errors). But what you wrote isn't competition for Kevin's little free-verse example. What you wrote is just prose with multiple hard-breaks inserted. What Kevin did has an actual rhythm to it. Possibly he didn't even realize he was putting a rhythm to it; he might have just done that "instinctively" from long practice at writing.

Ellen

___

[Ellen Stuttle]

Shayne's spiel in post #543 reminds me of the old days when I told some Objectivist friends that Shostakovich's compositions are music.

Deja-vu.

Ellen

___

[Danneskjold]

When I break up my

sentences

like this. It makes it so

that my artistic level

is higher than if I had just written

it normally. Because, after

all, this is

far more artistic.

I have no real problem with free verse,

I just don't see why

all of a sudden

this is art. I guess it goes

back to discursive vs. presentational

form. Like what

Ellen said.

LOL. At least you're better at grammar than is typical of students in highschool these days (though you did make a couple errors). But what you wrote isn't competition for Kevin's little free-verse example. What you wrote is just prose with multiple hard-breaks inserted. What Kevin did has an actual rhythm to it. Possibly he didn't even realize he was putting a rhythm to it; he might have just done that "instinctively" from long practice at writing.

Ellen

___

Eh, grammar wasn't my primary concern. Besides that, I decided to use syncopation instead of a rhythem, therefore my work is of no less quality than Kevin's . It took no skill whatsoever (the reason this is not hypocrisy is because the skill was in the point made). So, you consider it lesser because it is more abstract in its rhythem? B)

[Victor Pross]

Really, I just don't follow some of the arguements here at all--or understand how the presenter of these arguments feels they are making a point. Oh well....

Victor it's just Peter Keating over and over: "It must be profound, since I don't understand it!" Except worse, because they pretend to, and they get all snooty when you call it like it is. A bunch of students of Ellsworth Toohey, that's what they are. "As if there's nothing worth investigating on purely visual terms, with metaphors that have no relationship to the written word."--Kant's noumenal world. As if conceptualizing--using one's Reason--was some sort of crude blunt instrument, as if emotions are much finer and more able to grasp the truth.

I hate to say it, but these people need a dose of Linz, respectible words this garbage does not deserve. It is absolutely INCREDIBLE that these people feel some association with Objectivism on ANY level whatever. Their minds and souls are absolutely and utterly cast in the spirit of religion, and there is no redeeming them from it, they wallow in it with pride.

Ellen declares: “I think that I would call them art, even if they are by animals…”

Animals creating art!

Shayne, after reading this statement…I’m afraid I’m going to have to agree with you about the whole Toohey membership thing.

How could I ever mock or make satire of this?? It is beyond satire—beyond mocking!

-Victor

Edited January 31, 2007 by Victor Pross