Parrish The Thought

[Jonathan]

I came across Rand's publicly declared opinion again today of Maxfield Parrish's art, which was that it was "trash." My opinion of Rand is that she could be a pretty angry, hateful bitch when it came to art, but, even having that opinion of her, her dismissal of Parrish doesn't sound right to me.

I mean, as far as talent and originality, he was light-years beyond Capuletti, whom Rand praised effusively. Parrish's paintings were never about what would normally piss Rand off: the "folks next door," the "average" or "defeat and despair." In fact, his images were usually of great beauty, heroism, romantic adventures, playful imagination, etc. I would've thought that they were much closer to matching what Rand claimed to admire in art than what I usually do, and I like Parrish.

So, what I'm wondering is, is it possible that she wasn't familiar with his work, or that she confused his name with someone else's, like Max Beckmann, Max Weber, Jackson Pollock or someone else who painted in a cubist or modernist style ("Maxfield Parrish" does have a rather uppity, modernist sound to it -- more like a name that Rand would've given to a villain in one of her novels than to a hero)?

Or am I grasping at straws?

J

[Chris Grieb]

Jonathan;

Interesting thought. I am afraid that Ayn Rand knew who she was being asked about.

It is worth noting that Diane Durant in lectures she gave at ARI conferences talks very favorably of Parrish.

[Ross Barlow]

I also like much of the work of Maxfield Parrish. I especially like the Classical landscapes with joyous, passionate and intelligent young women in the foreground. He seemed to capture sunlit mountains well, giving me a feeling of Greece.

I do not know how much of Parrish’s work that Rand was familiar with. He did a tremendous number of works over many decades, so it would have been hard to miss. But he did do quite a big variety of themes, much of it in children’s stories, calendars, advertising and magazines. Much of it was cartoonish and silly, and if this was what Rand called “trash,” then I see where she was coming from (although I still find most of that variety to often be charming). Parrish himself said that he was sick of doing many of the types of art that were always demanded of him.

.

-Ross Barlow.

[Brant Gaede]

That AR didn't like this artist was her own, personal opinion. She really didn't explain why, so it's an opinion that doesn't travel. Instead of asking the ARs of the world their opinions, it probably has a higher payoff to understand and honor our own.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jonathan,

I am only going to speculate, so please do not take this as written in stone, but I think the following is more plausible than Rand confusing the name, given her short and sweet answer about Parrish during the Q&A. I think her answer was the culmination of lots of discussions with someone (or a small few) before that lecture and her answer "trash" was meant to end the argument for once and for all.

I can easily see Rand having made a negative pronouncement about Parrish during a discussion, then the person (or persons) disagreeing with her and this becoming a problem.

Allan and Joan Blumenthal reported in The Passion of Ayn Rand by Barbara Branden that she would not back off a position about art once she took it and would often call several days later to keep trying to convince them they were wrong. If she was engaged in an ongoing discussion with someone who disagreed with her, I can see how this could explain the abruptness of her answer.

I remember when I used to post on SoloHQ, often someone would post a quote relative to an ongoing discussion where they were unable to get their point across. Obviously the quote would be favorable to their position. Since the SoloHQ quote feature highlighted the quote as a headline for a while, this was a form of forcing the argument. With this in mind, I can see the person (or persons) trying to force the issue with Rand by asking her about it in public.

And I can even see her objection to Parrish. I am projecting, so please do not take this to mean my own position. Rand held that, at least in the sense of psycho-epistemology, style was the most important element in a painting. See the following quote (The Romantic Manifesto, "Art and Cognition," p, 49):

As I have mentioned in "Art and Sense of Life," all the other elements of painting, such as theme, subject, composition, are involved in projecting an artist's view of existence, but for this present discussion, style is the most important element: it demonstrates in what manner an art confined to a single sense modality, using exclusively visual means, can express and affect the total of man's consciousness.

Since Parrish has an almost comic-book style (the better comic books and pre-airbrushing), Rand might have objected to this as a poor realism technique since it is crude compared to, say, Vermeer or Dali. Then when a crude underdeveloped cognitive technique (so to speak) is combined with a heroic subject, this could be seen as saying that the heroic is not possible as a reality, but only as a childish projection.

I can easily see this as one line of thinking based on her published views, and even extending it to include the psycho-epistemology of Parrish himself, the viewer, and their entire sense of life of wanting to project a reality where the heroic was unattainable, being merely a cheap and discardable leftover from childhood.

Hey! This is fun!

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

So, what I'm wondering is, is it possible that she wasn't familiar with his work, or that she confused his name with someone else's, like Max Beckmann, Max Weber, Jackson Pollock or someone else who painted in a cubist or modernist style ("Maxfield Parrish" does have a rather uppity, modernist sound to it -- more like a name that Rand would've given to a villain in one of her novels than to a hero)?

Or am I grasping at straws?

You're grasping at straws. ;-) She knew who Maxfield Parrish was, and disliked his work -- for the same sort of reasons as she disliked "The Sound of Music." When Allan Gotthelf and Harry Bingswanger published a review about the benevolence of that movie in a mimeographed "magazine" they put out for a time (IREC, I think it was called; there's discussion about it somewhere on this site), she objected that such fairytale sort of stuff wasn't benevolent, and they retracted the review. Likewise, Parrish she thought of as showing a fairy-taleish world (and with androgyne figures often; some of his figures, it's a little hard to discern if they're male or female). "Romantic realism," remember, was her "thing."

A lot of people had assumed, though, that she would like Parrish. There's a comment by Henry Scuoteguazza quoted in The Ayn Rand Cult which I find amusing about the aftermath of her FHF verdict:

The Ayn Rand Cult

Copyright ©1999 by Carus Publishing Company

pg. 126

Scuoteguazza observes that because the Objectivist ethics so extols romantic art, all too many Objectivists stifle their real preferences to avoid being labelled irrational and, at least publicly, play it safe by sticking to officially-approved works. Result: "a dismaying uniformity of artistic tastes among Objectivists." In the early 1970s many Objectivists thought they'd found a kindred artistic spirit in the paintings of Maxfield Parrish. At a Ford Hall Forum "someone asked Ayn Rand for her assessment of his work, to which she curtly replied, 'Trash!' One could almost hear the bonfires raging across the country."

I knew several O'ists who promptly divested their walls of Parrish prints -- though the "bonfires" might be a bit of an exaggeration. ;-)

E-

___

Edited September 10, 2007 by Ellen Stuttle

[Neil Parille]

Ellen,

What did "IREC" stand for? I've never heard of the magazine.

What a bunch of "uncompromising individualists."

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen,

What did "IREC" stand for? I've never heard of the magazine.

What a bunch of "uncompromising individualists."

I have to scoot at the moment, but you could probably find it if you search the list for those initials and Phil Coates' posts. He said what the letters stand for. (I've forgotten again.) I'll look later if someone else doesn't meanwhile find it.

E-

___

[Neil Parille]

I did a search and it was something like "Identity - Reason - Egoism - Capitalism."

It would be interesting to nail down the details of all this given the claims of Valliant and others concerning Rand's supposed tolerance of esthetic disagreements.

[Chris Grieb]

The magazine was called IREC Review. I for Identity, R for Reason, E for Egoism, C for Capitalism. I am sorry to say I don't have any more copies from my subscription.

I liked The Sound of Music. I saw it several times. I quizzed Harry about and was told that Barbara Branden had expressed disapproval. Mary Ann Sures also did like mainly because of the nuns.

Edited September 10, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I liked The Sound of Music. I saw it several times. I quizzed Harry about and was told that Barbara Branden had expressed disapproval. Mary Ann Sures also did like mainly because of the nuns.

Chris,

LOLOLOLOLOL...

I have nothing in particular to say about this. Sometimes you make one of those priceless comments that knock me off my seat laughing. I just wanted to highlight it.

Michael

[Jonathan]

Thanks for the replies, everyone. Very interesting.

One thing that I don't remember ever seeing discussed in O'land is children and their responses to art. Do the same O'rules that apply to adults apply equally to tots? Would it reveal something dark and twisted about a child's "sense of life" if he loved the works of not only trashy old Parrish, but Hans Christian Andersen, Maurice Sendak or Randolph Caldecott, and maintained a fondness for them his entire life? Did Rand or any of her followers who hoped to change the world by promoting properly rational aesthetic tastes ever expound on the dangers posed to the human race by comprachicos like, say, Beatrix Potter, Dr. Seuss or Lewis Carroll? Was A. A. Milne's work garbage, Walt Disney's rubbish, and L. Frank Baum's junk, and any child who disagreed was already a philosophically corrupt determinist? If Rand were alive today, would she be haranguing parents to keep their children away from the false benevolence of the Harry Potter books?

J

[Barbara Branden]

I quizzed Harry about and was told that Barbara Branden had expressed disapproval.

No, she didn't. I have it on good authority.

Barbara

[Brant Gaede]

I quizzed Harry about and was told that Barbara Branden had expressed disapproval.

No, she didn't. I have it on good authority.

Barbara

Well, authority vrs authority! I guess it's a draw!

--Brant

[Chris Grieb]

Barbara; I am remembering a very brief conversation that happened forty years ago. The business about Mary Ann Sures being horrified at the nuns I was there.

Let me emphasis that these two conversations happened at different times.

[Jonathan]

Over on SOLOP, Pigero's "Riveting Rand" post from 2006 has popped up. I hadn't seen it before, and I think that this is hilarious: Pigero quotes Rand's opinion of Maxfield Parrish's art, and he says that it's one of his favorite answers that Rand gives in Ayn Rand Answers—the Best of her Q & A. Pigero quotes from the book:

Q: What do you think of the works of the artist Maxwell [

sic

] Parrish?

A: Trash.

And then Pigero comments:

It was not just the spectacle of a brilliant, nimble mind in action that transported me to Atlantis—it was the magnificent spirit that animated it. In an age of weasel-words, hand-wringing and touchy-feely political correctness, Rand’s sizzling-hot, unapologetic, in-your-face candour in pursuit of reason, freedom, the best within, and life as it might be and ought to be is more than simply refreshing, more than a mood-lifter, more than an inspiration—it’s a lifeline, especially for those like Steven Mallory in The Fountainhead who allow themselves to be ground down by it all. It’s a reminder that when we hear the caterwaulers’ headbanging, see the poseurs’ splotches and splurges, read the nihilist philosophers telling us philosophy cannot provide answers—we don’t have to take any of them seriously. They are “trash”—and this woman is a hero.

Heh. Do you get the impression, as I do, that Pigero hasn't a clue who Maxfield Parrish was, or what type of art he created?

First off, the man's name was Maxfield Parrish, not "Maxwell" Parrish. It's spelled correctly in Ayn Rand Answers. Jesus, that's like someone commenting on Rand's views on Norman Rockwell but calling him Norman Rockfield. It's a pretty strong indicator that he's probably not very familiar with the artist.

Secondly, Pigero apparently believes that old "Maxwell" was a nihilist who painted in wild "splotches and splurges" which were the visual equivalent of "headbanging caterwauling," and that he was deserving of Rand's condemnation. Pigero thinks that it's a refreshing, mood-lifting lifeline to hear Rand dismissing Parrish's work as "trash" in the name of "reason, freedom, the best within, and life as it might and ought to be."

Just think of all of the real-life Steven Mallorys who will stop allowing themselves to be ground down by it all when they hear Rand's uplifting words about "Maxwell's" art! They'll join Pigero in being inspired by the magnificent spirit and heroism that Rand exhibits in daring to stand up to the "Maxwell's" dark nihilism. Through Rand, they'll rediscovered that they don't have to take evil visions like "Maxwell's" seriously, damn it!

What a twit.

J

[Chris Grieb]

I quizzed Harry about and was told that Barbara Branden had expressed disapproval.

No, she didn't. I have it on good authority.

Barbara

Barbara; I had forgotten this tread till today but the thought occurred to me that Harry may have just given me an authority figure.

On the question of the nuns I think Mrs. Sures believed that the nuns were depicted as benevolent figures and that nuns aren't in real life.

[Reidy]

Re #12: Seymour Peikoff spoke favorably of the Potter books on his radio show, so Anna Rand might well have liked them.

[Robert Campbell]

I don't agree with MSK about Maxfield Parrish having a comic-book style. What I've seen of his was way too refined for that. Even his mentor, J. C. Leyendecker, who did the Arrow shirt ads, could not be described that way.

Ellen Stuttle's point about the fairy-tale ambience and the androgynous figures makes more sense to me.

In that review, Lindsay Perigo not only commends Ayn Rand for issuing a one-word dismissal of Maxfield Parrish (of whom I'm reasonably sure he knows nothing).

He also commends her for slamming Milton Friedman to the mat (she said that if she were going to watch anything on PBS, she'd prefer the circus to Free to Chose).

That she and Dr. Friedman had some fundamental disagreements we all recognize. But he was generous to her in interviews. She never reciprocated.

Robert Campbell

[Selene]

Folks:

When I see a thread of this kind, I am not shocked that philosophical movements, religions and other mass movements, in general, spend generations

devouring the meaning of a "single sentence" or utterance of the respective fountainheads of the movements.

And we can all see the results of that in Shiites and Sunnis, African blacks and American blacks, Protestants and Catholics believers and non believers and

Objectivists just can't seem to look in the mirror and put down the past.

It really saddens me because these ideas should not fail.

Does it somehow matter whether Ayn was human, or that, she was a nasty bitchy lady with warts and blemishes?

No, it doesn't.

Adam

[Dragonfly]

I think that if Parrish would have thrown in a few skyscrapers in the background it would have been Objectivistically OK. Blue sea, blue sky, rocks in the foreground, nude woman with head tilting backwards, skyscrapers in the distance: it would have been the perfect Objectivist painting!

[Selene]

I think that if Parrish would have thrown in a few skyscrapers in the background it would have been Objectivistically OK. Blue sea, blue sky, rocks in the foreground, nude woman with head tilting backwards, skyscrapers in the distance: it would have been the perfect Objectivist painting!

Dragonfly:

Or as I would see it, she is planning the city she is going to build and she is open, and unashamed to be.

Adam

[Brant Gaede]

I think that if Parrish would have thrown in a few skyscrapers in the background it would have been Objectivistically OK. Blue sea, blue sky, rocks in the foreground, nude woman with head tilting backwards, skyscrapers in the distance: it would have been the perfect Objectivist painting!

For me Parrish turned out a lot of high quality kitsch. Others may view him differently. I enjoy looking at it, but not for very long. The main reason I sort of like it is the pretty unworldly sense and peace of it all.

--Brant

[Philip Coates]

I definitely like this piece by Parrish. (There is something lacking that prevents me from -loving- it, but I haven't yet identified what exactly). Wasn't it used as a logo for some kind of liquor or drink? Schweppes? I haven't liked what I've seen of his in the past, but this will make me revisit him, now that we have the internet. In other cases, I've seen an artist who I've not liked. But years later realized I will like some of his work. [same applies to literature, to poets, etc...see the currently going on "Great Literature" thread where a lot of us are contributing on topics like this.]

There are a lot of young Objectivist artists in recent years who do the 'nude naked on a skyscraper' or standing on a rock. Capuletti was better in general, more romantic. One thing a number of Oist-leaning artists have trouble with is faces. Sometimes it's as if they simply don't know or can't capture what the face of a human being looks like, in all its subtlety or nuance. Or they think harsh or stern or ascetic or wooden or pursed lips always conveys determination or strength of character. (Or simply throwing the head back conveys exaltation.)

It doesn't.

This face by Parrish is a good one. It's probably the best thing in the painting, I think. But the feeling of peace and serenity and a benign world is there, too.

Edited September 29, 2009 by Philip Coates

[anonrobt]

I definitely like this piece by Parrish. (There is something lacking that prevents me from -loving- it, but I haven't yet identified what exactly). Wasn't it used as a logo for some kind of liquor or drink? Schweppes? I haven't liked what I've seen of his in the past, but this will make me revisit him, now that we have the internet. In other cases, I've seen an artist who I've not liked. But years later realized I will like some of his work. [same applies to literature, to poets, etc...see the currently going on "Great Literature" thread where a lot of us are contributing on topics like this.]

There are a lot of young Objectivist artists in recent years who do the 'nude naked on a skyscraper' or standing on a rock. Capuletti was better in general, more romantic. One thing a number of Oist-leaning artists have trouble with is faces. Sometimes it's as if they simply don't know or can't capture what the face of a human being looks like, in all its subtlety or nuance. Or they think harsh or stern or ascetic or wooden or pursed lips always conveys determination or strength of character. (Or simply throwing the head back conveys exaltation.)

It doesn't.

This face by Parrish is a good one. It's probably the best thing in the painting, I think. But the feeling of peace and serenity and a benign world is there, too.

It was his daughter Jean who posed for this [she also was one of the 'Daybreak' posers]...