A Few Kant Quotes

[tjohnson]

Art is what we do in our spare time for amusement. If you build a structure for shelter it has survival value but as soon as you start making it ornate it is for human fancy, not survival. If someone wants to spend their days throwing paint at a canvas and someone else wants to give them money for it because it gives them pleasure then who are we to say it isn't art or it's crappy art, etc.

[Matus1976]

"If Kant had never existed, we still would have non-objective art. It is the natural result of an evolution that is inherent in the human character" needs considerably more than a dismissive handwave to back up.

I second that, sure people would have been making crap like that anyway, but Kant seemed to have laid the philosophical ground work for that nonsense to actually be accepted and revered as "Art", without his influence, people would be making it, but no one would be hanging it on walls in frames and charging admission to it.

Matus, I'm not sure in what sense you're seconding that.

I seconded the notion that Dragonfly's rebuttal was seriously lacking that 'it needs considerably more than a dismissive handwave' and your point about non-western art never adopting the modes of post modernism was a strong one. These quotes from Kant speak enough, you have a person considered by many to be absolutely brilliant extolling the greatness of an entirely internalized 'feeling' that comes from art as 'sublime' but only when it is explicitly something that both the artist and the art admirer are unable to objectively identify. Kant's influence has permeated popular culture since his writing, has anyone else created such a powerful and eloquent defense of non-objective art? It's unreasonable to disassociate the influence of one of the worlds most influential philosophers from one of the things that he emphasized more than any other philosopher ever has and to not attributes the rise in that thing in the culture most admiring of him to that influence. I've never heard such explicit defenses of feelings disassociated from reason and no where is that more prevalent in the mainstream then in 'non-objective' art.

Dragonfly insists on a year by year dissertation on every single influence in every human mind Kant's writings had to prove he had an influence on the modern rise of non-objective art, as if we need to have a complete picture of the memetic history of these ideas in order to reasonable suspect their casual relationship, a completely unreasonable criteria. It's likely enough that it's not worth the effort to investigate, Dragonfly's refutations are attacks on standard for implied casual relationships, not on the evidence which supports it.

I didn't call non-objective art "crap." (Neither did Dragonfly of course.)

I did, and would again. Art, if the word has any significant meaning beyond stuff hung on a wall, would mean non-objective abstract post modern art is not art, because no useful meaning of that word can include both those and the great works of art. But of course, Dragonfly can use "art" in any way he pleases, even if the way he uses it ultimately means nothing.

My point is that Dragonfly's bold assertion as to why we have non-objective art -- and as to the irrelevance of Kant to the development of the type -- is far from adequate to demonstrate the substance of the assertion.

That is what I was seconding

[Newberry]

Art is what we do in our spare time for amusement.

This contradicts all of my experience as an artist, and the hundreds of artists I know and have known, to the one. Of course, if someone makes arts and crafts, for example my mom does things like petiquing furniture has a hobby, but she is not an artist.

If you build a structure for shelter it has survival value but as soon as you start making it ornate it is for human fancy, not survival.

The only architect that would do that is a hack.

I personally know three really good architects, and their aesthetic guides the whole of structure--through their building, they feel that they are helping their clients live better, richer, and more fulfilling lives.

If someone wants to spend their days throwing paint at a canvas and someone else wants to give them money for it because it gives them pleasure then who are we to say it isn't art...

Because identification is a key to knowledge about something. You write this as if art is anything anyone wants it do be. How do you justify that?

[Newberry]

I seconded the notion that Dragonfly's rebuttal was seriously lacking that 'it needs considerably more than a dismissive handwave' and your point about non-western art never adopting the modes of post modernism was a strong one. These quotes from Kant speak enough, you have a person considered by many to be absolutely brilliant extolling the greatness of an entirely internalized 'feeling' that comes from art as 'sublime' but only when it is explicitly something that both the artist and the art admirer are unable to objectively identify. Kant's influence has permeated popular culture since his writing, has anyone else created such a powerful and eloquent defense of non-objective art? It's unreasonable to disassociate the influence of one of the worlds most influential philosophers from one of the things that he emphasized more than any other philosopher ever has and to not attributes the rise in that thing in the culture most admiring of him to that influence. I've never heard such explicit defenses of feelings disassociated from reason and no where is that more prevalent in the mainstream then in 'non-objective' art.

Dragonfly insists on a year by year dissertation on every single influence in every human mind Kant's writings had to prove he had an influence on the modern rise of non-objective art, as if we need to have a complete picture of the memetic history of these ideas in order to reasonable suspect their casual relationship, a completely unreasonable criteria. It's likely enough that it's not worth the effort to investigate, Dragonfly's refutations are attacks on standard for implied casual relationships, not on the evidence which supports it.

Excellent post.

[tjohnson]

I personally know three really good architects, and their aesthetic guides the whole of structure--through their building, they feel that they are helping their clients live better, richer, and more fulfilling lives.

I'm not disputing that art adds richness and fullness to our lives, I am suggesting that we can't pretend to know what gives richness and fullness to someone else's life.

[Newberry]

I personally know three really good architects, and their aesthetic guides the whole of structure--through their building, they feel that they are helping their clients live better, richer, and more fulfilling lives.

I'm not disputing that art adds richness and fullness to our lives, I am suggesting that we can't pretend to know what gives richness and fullness to someone else's life.

Look, you start out talking about art and architecture being amusements and fancy decoration, now you switch to that it "adds richness and fullness to our lives." I think you did a quick back peddle. So far I think you have a superficial view of art.

Of course, no one knows what other people will love or not. A lot depends on past experience, knowledge, exposure. Perhaps this is what you are trying to say?

BTW, an architect will watch how people move and react throughout their spaces. They anticipate the needs of the people before these people are aware that their is a need.

Edited July 23, 2008 by Newberry

[tjohnson]

Who's to say amusement doesn't add richness and fullness to our lives? Anticipating need in building structure would not really be art, as far as I'm concerned.

[Newberry]

Art is what we do in our spare time for amusement.

You are amusing. ;)

[Ellen Stuttle]

My point is that Dragonfly's bold assertion as to why we have non-objective art -- and as to the irrelevance of Kant to the development of the type -- is far from adequate to demonstrate the substance of the assertion.

I think that in the actual, factual historical development Kant has to have been relevant to the history of abstract art, considering the historic sequence Kant->Hegel->Marx in the history of philosophy and the known significance of Marx to some of the pioneers of abstract art, and I don't know how one could demonstrate what the development of art history would have been if it had been different from what it was.

And that is just the point: if you don't know what the development of art history would have been if Kant had not lived, you cannot show that there is a causal connection between Kant's writings and abstract art.

Dragonfly, please review the sequence of your initial claim and my response to you and then my response to Matus. I made no statement whatsoever to the effect that there is a causal connection of the sort you're talking about between Kant's writings and abstract art. I objected to your statement that, paraphrasing, it would all have been the same if Kant had never lived. Kant did live, and his work had a lot of influence -- note, influence -- on the history of thought. My point was that there is no way you could demonstrate the truth of the assertion which you made. I even agree with your comment in your first reply to me (post #164) that it's a mistake to think "that philosophy determines the evolution of art and science." I think that the relationships are multi-factored and multi-directional and that there aren't any "laws" of the relationships. You're arguing against the Objectivist thesis, not against anything I said or even think.

Ellen

___

[Dragonfly]

Dragonfly, please review the sequence of your initial claim and my response to you and then my response to Matus. I made no statement whatsoever to the effect that there is a causal connection of the sort you're talking about between Kant's writings and abstract art. I objected to your statement that, paraphrasing, it would all have been the same if Kant had never lived.

It would not "all have been the same" if Kant had never lived, I never said that, I only said: "If Kant had never existed, we still would have non-objective art", which is something quite different. Denying that is implying that there exists a causal connection between Kant and the existence of abstract art.

Kant did live, and his work had a lot of influence -- note, influence -- on the history of thought. My point was that there is no way you could demonstrate the truth of the assertion which you made.

It is not me who is making a claim - the claim was in fact that without Kant we would not have had non-objective/abstract art, I merely denied the validity of that claim with my statement, that's all I said. The null hypothesis is that there is no causal connection. The person who makes that claim has to prove it, and as I've said before, merely finding some similarity in Kant's work and in the ideas of some artists is no proof at all.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Dragonfly, please review the sequence of your initial claim and my response to you and then my response to Matus. I made no statement whatsoever to the effect that there is a causal connection of the sort you're talking about between Kant's writings and abstract art. I objected to your statement that, paraphrasing, it would all have been the same if Kant had never lived.

It would not "all have been the same" if Kant had never lived, I never said that, I only said: "If Kant had never existed, we still would have non-objective art", which is something quite different. Denying that is implying that there exists a causal connection between Kant and the existence of abstract art.

LOL. Kant has nothing on you in sheer tortuousness! I didn't deny that we'd have had non-objective art if Kant had never existed. I haven't the foggiest what would have happened if Kant hadn't existed. You, however, made a positive claim as to what would have happened.

Kant did live, and his work had a lot of influence -- note, influence -- on the history of thought. My point was that there is no way you could demonstrate the truth of the assertion which you made.

It is not me who is making a claim - the claim was in fact that without Kant we would not have had non-objective/abstract art, I merely denied the validity of that claim with my statement, that's all I said.

No, it isn't all you said. You made a contrary positive claim. You made a claim of knowing what would have been. And what I said is that I see no way you could demonstrate the truth of your positive claim. If you think you can demonstrate the truth of it, please do so.

Ellen

___

[Dragonfly]

LOL. Kant has nothing on you in sheer tortuousness! I didn't deny that we'd have had non-objective art if Kant had never existed.

You should read better. I never said that you did deny that, it was Newberry who said that, and my post was a reply to his post. So if you jump in, you should read first what it all is about, before you start putting words in my mouth.

No, it isn't all you said. You made a contrary positive claim. You made a claim of knowing what would have been. And what I said is that I see no way you could demonstrate the truth of your positive claim. If you think you can demonstrate the truth of it, please do so.

No, I denied a positive claim that has not been proven - that I formulated the denial in positive terms is not relevant. If you claim that a teapot is orbiting Pluto, I don't accept that claim while there is no evidence for it. That I formulate my denial as "there is no teapot orbiting Pluto" doesn't make my denial a positive claim, it's merely an affirmation of the null hypothesis.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jim,

Shoot me a message if you made a new account because you forgot you password. I'll get you straightened out. If you made a new account for reasons of your own, though, no problem.

Michael

[Matus1976]

It is not me who is making a claim - the claim was in fact that without Kant we would not have had non-objective/abstract art, I merely denied the validity of that claim with my statement, that's all I said. The null hypothesis is that there is no causal connection. The person who makes that claim has to prove it, and as I've said before, merely finding some similarity in Kant's work and in the ideas of some artists is no proof at all.

The claim was not that we would not have non-objective art, we certainly would except it most likely would not be accepted as 'art' and would be in the trash heaps where it belongs. Kant did not invent non objective art, he merely philosophically justified it and is responsible to a great degree today for it's mainstream acceptance.

[Newberry]

Ellen:

LOL. Kant has nothing on you in sheer tortuousness!

Kant's influence goes far and wide.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

What a mistake it is to lay abstract art at the feet of Kant's influence. All anyone has to do is look at history and see that it develped in parallel with psychology. If one needed to cite intellectual influences, I would be more inclined to point to William James or Freud or people like that.

This is partially due to a perspective I have been harboring about art for a long time, but has only started taking a verbal form more recently.

But before I get into that, I have discerned a logical sleight-of-hand in Objectivist writing when judging art. It is clever, but not accurate. Here is the error I see.

Part of the purpose of Romantic art (in the Objectivist meaning of Romance) is to present life as it could and should be according to a selective recreation of reality. Then even though other schools of art are recognized as having different purposes, they are all judged by the "life as it could and should be" standard. I submit that this is only one message art can provide and it is not even the primary one.

Claiming that it is the primary one is akin to saying that words should only be used to express concretes. Words can express concretes just as art can project life as it could and should be, but those are not the only things words or art do.

When cavemen first painted pictures of animals on cave walls, I cannot (without laughing) imagine them presenting what life could and should be. What drove them? In the perspective of art I have been harboring, it would be something like:

"Look at what I saw! Whaddya think?"

That rings more true to me about what drives an artist than presenting an overall view of life. As people love to embellish what they see when they communicate it (and just look at what a story is at the end of any gossip chain where it has been passed on from person to person as proof), this same sentiment in art becomes:

"Look at what I imagined! Whaddya think?"

This (both cases) contains two elements: (1) Putting something the artist observed or imagined that impressed him on display in some concrete form, and (2) Putting it on display so it can be pondered and commented on by other people.

So long as man in history only looked outward to the world for value, letting God or the gods (and demons) be responsible for the inside of his mind part, art reflected observed or imagined external concretes. It is what we call representational in the plastic arts. When man started introspecting about his own mental processes, and this became important to him for any number of reasons, I don't see why that urge to put something he observes or imagines and finds important on display would evaporate. Yet in traditional Objectivist writing, this is not even on the table when abstract art is discussed.

The reason abstract art is abstract (and I am speaking about good abstract art, not garbage) is that what the artist observes in his mind (his mental process per se) is abstract. His cognitive and evaluative process are abstract and they come with a lot of innate programming that develops through growth that is also abstract when you try to grasp the form of it (or attribute a form to it). What does an urge look like, or a "Eureka!" integration, or the feeling of love or triumph or hatred? The abstract artist is actually presenting a representation of these existents in the best way he can find to do it. He is capturing the essence of what he observes (or later imagines) in a manner similar to how cavemen captured the form of the animals they painted. Notice that a caveman painting does not look like a photograph.

If a concept in Objectivist epistemology can be treated as an entity, why cannot other mental processes be treated as entities? And, much more serious, why is this "mental entity" process only granted as validly representing reality during concept formation and not art?

Some good reasons need to be forthcoming, or this is a purely arbitrary standard and needs revising.

If I were to judge the world only from the inside out, I actually would say that those forms in abstract art do not exist so the artist must be stark-raving nuts or a charlatan (or death worshipper or whatever). Once I look inside myself and start introspecting on my mood swings, brilliant moments of clarity and insight, daydreaming, strong automatic drives that surge and abate, adherence to a goal-directed path, the process of choosing (volition), even my rational construction of concepts and use of logic, I am observing a whole bunch of things that exist. Just because they don't have a physical shape other than fleeting forms and they only exist in my mind, that doesn't mean they don't exist at all.

If I hold an eternal fascination with all I observe (and it is a lovely universe we live in) and I am an artist, do you know what I am going to do? I am going to observe those inner states, be fascinated with what I observe, try to put my observations into a form that can be displayed and say to the world:

"Look at what I saw! Whaddya think?"

If I am really enthusiastic, I am going to embellish them, put something together to express this embellishment and say:

"Look at what I imagined! Whaddya think?"

This is why a great abstract artist can be a great representational artist as well. All he is doing is presenting what he observes or imagines on looking out to the world and on looking inside his own mind.

This urge applies to all the other arts as well. It has nothing to do with philosophy at the root (just like the urge to communicate by language has nothing to do with philosophy at the root).

Philosophy comes later. To be frank, philosophy is built on and derives from these things. It does not determine them.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

Good and perceptive post, Michael. I might have a quibble with some details, but I don't know yet how I could formulate them better.

[tjohnson]

The reason abstract art is abstract (and I am speaking about good abstract art, not garbage) is that what the artist observes in his mind (his mental process per se) is abstract.

What is the criteria for calling a piece of art garbage? One man's treasure is another man's garbage.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

GS,

The meat of my discussion was cognitive, not normative. But offhand, I would say good art depicts something observed or imagined well and uses some kind of disciplined technique to do it. Bad art is not intelligible to anyone except for the most forced rationalizing and/or displays poor technical skill.

Just like with language. A good sentence communicates a thought and has a minimum of grammar (or colloquial habits). A poor sentence or phrase does not communicate any intelligible thought and/or uses convoluted grammar.

That's a good start.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

What is the criteria for calling a piece of art garbage? One man's treasure is another man's garbage.

That's right. More than once I've seen that an artwork that in my opinion was complete garbage was admired by other people whose opinion I wouldn't just dismiss as that of an uninformed layman or someone parroting the latest fashion. But I feel no need to convince them that they're wrong, I just shrug, concluding that we seem to use different criteria. Live and let live.

[BaalChatzaf]

What is the criteria for calling a piece of art garbage? One man's treasure is another man's garbage.

That's right. More than once I've seen that an artwork that in my opinion was complete garbage was admired by other people whose opinion I wouldn't just dismiss as that of an uninformed layman or someone parroting the latest fashion. But I feel no need to convince them that they're wrong, I just shrug, concluding that we seem to use different criteria. Live and let live.

De gustabus non disputandem est.

[tjohnson]

GS,

The meat of my discussion was cognitive, not normative. But offhand, I would say good art depicts something observed or imagined well and uses some kind of disciplined technique to do it. Bad art is not intelligible to anyone except for the most forced rationalizing and/or displays poor technical skill.

Just like with language. A good sentence communicates a thought and has a minimum of grammar (or colloquial habits). A poor sentence or phrase does not communicate any intelligible thought and/or uses convoluted grammar.

That's a good start.

Michael

Well that might be true if the art was intended to communicate something, but what if it was just for fun?

[Newberry]

All anyone has to do is look at history and see that it develped in parallel with psychology. If one needed to cite intellectual influences, I would be more inclined to point to William James or Freud or people like that.

There are many approaches to citing influences. Stephen Hicks recently gave a talk, Capitalism and Art, and he cited several connections between politics and art, even brining up Pollock's politics and family connections to communism. I would find it interesting to read more specific connections between Freud's statements and how you think they fit into abstract art.

Then even though other schools of art are recognized as having different purposes, they are all judged by the "life as it could and should be" standard.

I don't know any serious objectivist art commentator that judges the quality of an art work based on its content. I could be reading you wrong on this.

When cavemen first painted pictures of animals on cave walls, I cannot (without laughing) imagine them presenting what life could and should be. What drove them? In the perspective of art I have been harboring, it would be something like:

"Look at what I saw! Whaddya think?"

We will never know. Perhaps they were painting what their future dinner ought to be. ;)

That rings more true to me about what drives an artist than presenting an overall view of life.

I have never understood art, or Rand's aesthetics to mean a prescription. What I understand is that by simply making something from a blank canvas or cave wall, an artist shows you their world at that moment in time. If this is so, it simply is in the nature of art.

So long as man in history only looked outward to the world for value, letting God or the gods (and demons) be responsible for the inside of his mind part, art reflected observed or imagined external concretes. It is what we call representational in the plastic arts. When man started introspecting about his own mental processes, and this became important to him for any number of reasons, I don't see why that urge to put something he observes or imagines and finds important on display would evaporate. Yet in traditional Objectivist writing, this is not even on the table when abstract art is discussed.

Not following you well here. Are you connecting abstract art with introspection? Would you have a problem if introspection was not integrated to living on earth? If one only looks within, and never looks outward, is that a life? Is looking with in only a series of colors, floating shapes? Do your dreams have people and recognizable things? Or are they only unidentifiable images?

If a concept in Objectivist epistemology can be treated as an entity, why cannot other mental processes be treated as entities? And, much more serious, why is this "mental entity" process only granted as validly representing reality during concept formation and not art?

One could focus on one part of introspection, of reality, or senses (what does red taste like?) But, I do think that is compartmenalised approach. You miss that representational art involves a lot more than copying reality.

Some good reasons need to be forthcoming, or this is a purely arbitrary standard and needs revising.

!

If I were to judge the world only from the inside out, I actually would say that those forms in abstract art do not exist so the artist must be stark-raving nuts or a charlatan (or death worshipper or whatever). Once I look inside myself and start introspecting on my mood swings, brilliant moments of clarity and insight, daydreaming, strong automatic drives that surge and abate, adherence to a goal-directed path, the process of choosing (volition), even my rational construction of concepts and use of logic, I am observing a whole bunch of things that exist. Just because they don't have a physical shape other than fleeting forms and they only exist in my mind, that doesn't mean they don't exist at all.

Of course they are real things going on in your head. But if one only looks there, it is subjectivism.

This is why a great abstract artist can be a great representational artist as well.

If you follow this line of reasoning then concepts have no meaning.

[james lee shay]

Jim,

Shoot me a message if you made a new account because you forgot you password. I'll get you straightened out. If you made a new account for reasons of your own, though, no problem.

Michael

Michael,

I am OK with how it is now. I sent you a couple of emails earlier while trying to straighten it out, but did not hear back. Perhaps any replies ended up in the spam folder.

I'm with you regarding the false Kant/abstraction connection you talk about in your later post. But, I don't agree that what underlies cave art and a lot of other art is born out of the desire to say "look what I saw! Whaddya think?" If that's what you're saying. In the same sense that crucifixes with Jesus and other religious portrayals have deep meanings to western culture, the paintings within caves have specific meanings with regard to the animals and how they are layed out within the caves. Tremendous study has been put into trying to understand them, although no definitive answers have been reached. The clues that the paintings mean a tremendous amount with regard to ritual are great. Some of them are painted in chambers with high readings of carbon dioxide, and it's thought that the combination of the gas and the art was used to created visions.

MIchael's mentioning of an objectivist speaker linking Pollack's work to his family and communism is an example of the smearing that goes on in objectivist criticism. There is no certain linkage. There are great paintings by childbeaters, alcoholic Zororastrians, repressed Nazis and so on. Nevertheless, in Pollack's case, the story becomes something like the following:

"Clearly the nets and skeins within these miserable monstrosities represent the unsuccessful lurching toward concepts and precepts within the Wyoming native's deranged psyche (which was undoubtedly damaged by contact with Sioux indian savages). The space created within the paintings illustrates a lost wasteland in some kind of spatial nightmare embodying chaos, uncertainty and unchecked premises. Clearly, this is communism, circa 1937, Melinkov variation 2a. And the dripping technique in which the artist dances around the canvas splattering paint is obviously tribal, reminescent of the worst of skull-wearing savages from southeastern New Guinea (see ARI pamphlet #127; "My Years with the Passionate, but irrationally deranged, Cannibals of Port Moresby". Valliant, 1986). Everyone knows an artist should sit in a chair, bravely facing his destining embodied in paint and canvas propped up on an easel. Running dog critics, such as Clement Greenburg, are spreading filth to our children, unsettling their futures, and robbing their lives of visions of rational thought, which should be heroically portrayed in still-life paintings of decaying rutabegas, dead flowers in vases, and seashells. Our kids need stiff portraits of engineers poring over prints for spaceships. To the junkbin of history with the garbage of abstraction! We will be vindicated, sooner rather than later."

Jim Shay

[Jonathan]

Is looking with in only a series of colors, floating shapes?

Would you ask composers the same type of question -- whether they experience looking within only as a series of notes, floating sounds?

Do your dreams have people and recognizable things? Or are they only unidentifiable images?

Do you think that composers' dreams include the recognizable sounds made by people and objects, or only unidentifiable sounds?

J