Robert Campbell on denunciation in Randland


Michael Stuart Kelly

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Not the one I was referring to. That one had her arms behind her. Looks like he put a little AR into this one too. I wonder how many paintings he sold at his show. He spoke two or three European languages, but no English.

In this one you can see some of the problems Jonathan referred to. I wonder, though, if they might have been deliberate.

--Brant

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In this one you can see some of the problems Jonathan referred to. I wonder, though, if they might have been deliberate.

No, it's clearly unintended. He had obviously problems with perspective (especially the cards on the table). Now even masters can struggle with perspective (it can be tricky), but Capuletti's errors are rather elementary (and can also be found in other paintings of his).

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Oh come on, Rand didn't say "I don't like Parrish" or even "I hate Parrish", which would imply that according to her own theory Parrish still could be a master in his trade, while she didn't like his subjects or his "sense of life". No, she called it trash, and that is as unequivocal a condemnation as you can get, not only a dislike of style or subject, but also of his technical skill. Rand claims that an objective judgment of art work is possible, so one can't cover up her gaffe here by trying to claim that it was "just her personal opinion", she cannot have her cake and eat it too.

I think Rand was into art as her or not her--that that was the rock basis of all her esthetic judgments. Parrish was not her. She obviously, to me, didn't want to discuss Parrish at all. I was there when she gave that answer. She seemed to experience the question as hostile somehow, as if the person who asked it was seeking some kind of sanction. It seems the big thing missing in her life was a whole raft of people willing and able to talk back to her to her face. To the extent they weren't she expanded into the vacuum. Von Mises stood up to her, never mind whom might have been right or wrong or if that were the objective issue, and she put up with him. She got much too comfortable with people who put up with her, usually because they were a generation younger.

--Brant

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In this one you can see some of the problems Jonathan referred to. I wonder, though, if they might have been deliberate.

No, it's clearly unintended. He had obviously problems with perspective (especially the cards on the table). Now even masters can struggle with perspective (it can be tricky), but Capuletti's errors are rather elementary (and can also be found in other paintings of his).

Oh. I didn't take the time to notice the cards. Very bad and distracting, especially the one closest to the front. The table isn't right either. It's not distinct enough from the walls and the subject doesn't seem to have room to stand when she's standing. It would have been much better if it had just been the semi-draped subject and maybe even better than that as a total nude. In any case the window, table, cards and rose are simply distractions and probably would have been if they had been done better.

I've told this story before, but it's worth repeating: In the summer of 1968 during a Q&A at NBI someone sent up a written question to her apropos the lecture and asked her, it might have been a multiple part question, "What would you do if you owned a Picasso?" Ayn finished her answer by saying: "And as for what would I do if I owned a Picasso? I'd sell it." This caused some general laughter and she smiled too. The inertia of all her remarks on art implied she would throw it out her window, drop it in the trash or burn it. That she'd be willing to turn it into money meant she would certainly be practical about it. Of course, prices of Picassos subsequently went through the roof.

--Brant

Edited by Brant Gaede
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In this one you can see some of the problems Jonathan referred to. I wonder, though, if they might have been deliberate.

No, it's clearly unintended. He had obviously problems with perspective (especially the cards on the table). Now even masters can struggle with perspective (it can be tricky), but Capuletti's errors are rather elementary (and can also be found in other paintings of his).

Oh. I didn't take the time to notice the cards. Very bad and distracting, especially the one closest to the front. The table isn't right either. It's not distinct enough from the walls and the subject doesn't seem to have room to stand where she's standing. It would have been much better if it had just been the semi-draped subject and maybe even better than that as a total nude. In any case the window, table, cards and rose are simply distractions and probably would have been if they had been done better.

I've told this story before, but it's worth repeating: In the summer of 1968 during a Q&A at NBI someone sent up a written question to her apropos the lecture and asked her, it must have been a multiple-part question, "What would you do if you owned a Picasso?" Ayn finished her answer by saying: "And as for what would I do if I owned a Picasso? I'd sell it." This caused some general laughter and she smiled too. The inertia of all her remarks on art implied she would throw it out her window, drop it in the trash or burn it. That she'd be willing to turn it into money meant she would certainly be practical about it. Of course, prices of Picassos subsequently went through the roof.

--Brant

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Oh come on, Rand didn't say "I don't like Parrish" or even "I hate Parrish", which would imply that according to her own theory Parrish still could be a master in his trade, while she didn't like his subjects or his "sense of life". No, she called it trash, and that is as unequivocal a condemnation as you can get, not only a dislike of style or subject, but also of his technical skill. Rand claims that an objective judgment of art work is possible, so one can't cover up her gaffe here by trying to claim that it was "just her personal opinion", she cannot have her cake and eat it too.

I think Rand was into art as her or not her--that that was the rock basis of all her esthetic judgments. Parrish was not her. She obviously, to me, didn't want to discuss Parrish at all. I was there when she gave that answer. She seemed to experience the question as hostile somehow, as if the person who asked it was seeking some kind of sanction. It seems the big thing missing in her life was a whole raft of people willing and able to talk back to her to her face. To the extent they weren't she expanded into the vacuum. Von Mises stood up to her, never mind whom might have been right or wrong or if that were the objective issue, and she put up with him. She got much too comfortable with people who put up with her, usually because they were a generation younger.

--Brant

Dragonfly is of course set on cutting Rand no slack. I was there also, Brant, when the question was asked. I wouldn't describe her as experiencing the question as "hostile," but agree that she took it as "seeking some kind of sanction." That's just what it sounded like to me. I giggled at her answer, and thought, that should show them, not to presume they know what her tastes will be. As Scoutegazza commented in Walker, one could hear the bonfires lighting across the country.

Btw, I think, Brant, that the body in El Nudo is Pilar's. I don't know where you heard "an actress"; Pilar was a dancer. The body looks to me the same, judging from details of the anatomy, especially the colarbones, as other paintings where he was painting Pilar.

The painting Michael posted isn't the one. It's on this site somewhere. Am in a rush now and haven't time to look.

Ellen

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Oh come on, Rand didn't say "I don't like Parrish" or even "I hate Parrish", which would imply that according to her own theory Parrish still could be a master in his trade, while she didn't like his subjects or his "sense of life". No, she called it trash, and that is as unequivocal a condemnation as you can get, not only a dislike of style or subject, but also of his technical skill. Rand claims that an objective judgment of art work is possible, so one can't cover up her gaffe here by trying to claim that it was "just her personal opinion", she cannot have her cake and eat it too.

I think Rand was into art as her or not her--that that was the rock basis of all her esthetic judgments. Parrish was not her. She obviously, to me, didn't want to discuss Parrish at all. I was there when she gave that answer. She seemed to experience the question as hostile somehow, as if the person who asked it was seeking some kind of sanction. It seems the big thing missing in her life was a whole raft of people willing and able to talk back to her to her face. To the extent they weren't she expanded into the vacuum. Von Mises stood up to her, never mind whom might have been right or wrong or if that were the objective issue, and she put up with him. She got much too comfortable with people who put up with her, usually because they were a generation younger.

--Brant

Dragonfly is of course set on cutting Rand no slack. I was there also, Brant, when the question was asked. I wouldn't describe her as experiencing the question as "hostile," but agree that she took it as "seeking some kind of sanction." That's just what it sounded like to me. I giggled at her answer, and thought, that should show them, not to presume they know what her tastes will be. As Scoutegazza commented in Walker, one could hear the bonfires lighting across the country.

Btw, I think, Brant, that the body in El Nudo is Pilar's. I don't know where you heard "an actress"; Pilar was a dancer. The body looks to me the same, judging from details of the anatomy, especially the colarbones, as other paintings where he was painting Pilar.

The painting Michael posted isn't the one. It's on this site somewhere. Am in a rush now and haven't time to look.

Ellen

The body doesn't count. I was in the gallery with Arthur Silber who made the comment, somehow getting thru to Capulleti (there may have been an interpreter) and Capu--his nickname--nodded his head in vigorous agreement. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the actress.

--Brant

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I'll put out a word that might be a good replacement of or at least alternative to "selfishness" (in Rand's sense).

SELFULLNESS.

It's a good word, but I heard it first around 30 years ago from a friend of mine, David Epston, who was one of the inventors of what's known as Narrative Therapy and an all round brilliant guy. At the time he worked exclusively with life-threatened children, and as I recall coined it to try to find a term that privileged the self ahead of oppressive normative demands for self-sacrifice but that did not endorse the more usual sense of selfish behaviour. Other people seem to have also used the word later, probably coining it separately, including some self-help writers, but I've never heard it used earlier than Epston at any rate.

Personally I doubt Rand would have come up with such a term, even though it superficially seems quite close to the Objectivist project. This is because it's far from clear that Rand actually rejected the more negative, Nietzschean connotations of "selfishness"; she toyed with them throughout her work and even resorted to faking the dictionary definition of the word in the introduction of her "The Virtue of Selfishness" so she could pretend it was unfairly maligned.

FYI, Epston is primarily influenced by Foucault, feminism, and the social constructionists. Yes, that's right, shock horror!

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[....]

Btw, I think, Brant, that the body in El Nudo is Pilar's. I don't know where you heard "an actress"; Pilar was a dancer. The body looks to me the same, judging from details of the anatomy, especially the colarbones, as other paintings where he was painting Pilar.

The painting Michael posted isn't the one. It's on this site somewhere. Am in a rush now and haven't time to look.

Ellen

The body doesn't count. I was in the gallery with Arthur Silber who made the comment, somehow getting thru to Capulleti (there may have been an interpreter) and Capu--his nickname--nodded his head in vigorous agreement. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the actress.

--Brant

I'm not following. "The body doesn't count" - ?? It isn't an insignificant part of the painting!! Do you mean merely that the face was a combination of AR and an actress? The face isn't veridically AR, that's for sure, though recognizably suggesting AR, the eyes especially, and the mouth being close to her mouth in earlier years. The shape of the face is improved from that of AR's face.

Ellen

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What year was the Capuletti gallery showing in Manhattan?

The one I was talking about, where the Rand-suggesting El Nudo was shown (there is another El Nudo, which is entirely Pilar), was in spring 1970, I think March. It was in the same two-week stretch during which Allan Blumenthal gave a recital which was attended by Capuletti and Pilar, along with AR and Frank and all the remaining Collective members, except maybe Greenspan -- I don't remember if he was there.

The showing featured in Rand's Objectivist article "Capuletti" (December 1966) was November 15-26, 1966. That wasn't his first New York showing, but I don't know the dates or the number of earlier ones, or if there was a later one. He died in 1976 or 1978. I think 1978 is the correct date, although the Capuletti Cyber Museum (link) says 1976. Other sites which come up on a Google search (link) say 1978.

Ellen

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[....]

Btw, I think, Brant, that the body in El Nudo is Pilar's. I don't know where you heard "an actress"; Pilar was a dancer. The body looks to me the same, judging from details of the anatomy, especially the colarbones, as other paintings where he was painting Pilar.

The painting Michael posted isn't the one. It's on this site somewhere. Am in a rush now and haven't time to look.

Ellen

The body doesn't count. I was in the gallery with Arthur Silber who made the comment, somehow getting thru to Capulleti (there may have been an interpreter) and Capu--his nickname--nodded his head in vigorous agreement. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the actress.

--Brant

I'm not following. "The body doesn't count" - ?? It isn't an insignificant part of the painting!! Do you mean merely that the face was a combination of AR and an actress? The face isn't veridically AR, that's for sure, though recognizably suggesting AR, the eyes especially, and the mouth being close to her mouth in earlier years. The shape of the face is improved from that of AR's face.

Ellen

Well, he might have used her legs if he had depicted legs.smile.gif

We were talking about the face.

--Brant

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I find the painting a striking, forceful, and dramatic one overall (although my favorite Capuletti is a different one), and think this is another instance of a (sub)thread focusing too much on the negative, allowing the positives to go unstated or unappreciated. Yes, he doesn't do perspective much (seems to be deliberate, perhaps to heighten the fantasy element?). But all painters, even great ones, have flaws. If you focus too much on the fact that Rembrandt's paintings are too dark and use too much black or that Vermeer doesn't paint heroes or that some lovely impressionist landscapes are too 'fuzzy' or coarse, or that Botticelli doesn't use enough perspective or you wouldn't choose his particular palette of colors -- you may run the risk of being so negative and nitpicky and perfectionist that your appreciation of great beauty and skill is darkened by the black cloud over your head.

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No, she didn't. Not in that Parrish quip. She was asked her personal opinion; she gave it.

I disagree. A personal opinion is "I don't like it." In all other cases that I'm aware of, including in other off-the-cuff Q&A sessions, Rand distinguished between what she thought were her objective appraisals of the artists' work and what she thought were her personal responses to it: Beethoven was a great composer, but I don't like his work, Rembrandt was a very skilled artist, but I don't like his work, etc. In regard to Parrish, her comment refers to his work, not to her personal response to it. In her view, the work was trash rather than great art that she didn't like.

I know she ~seemed~ to you pretty much to equate rankings of excellence with her particular likes. She didn't seem to me to do that, and I heard a great deal more about details of her opinions and tastes than you were there to hear. One thing, you keep confusing judgments of aesthetic worth and judgments of moral worth.

No, as I see it, it isn't an issue of her moral vs aesthetic judgments, but of her personal responses vs her appraisals of merit (both moral and aesthetic), and an issue of her allowing, in some instances (such as when commenting on Parrish, Capuletti, Vermeer, etc.), her personal, subjective responses to become the basis of her "objective" appraisals: her feelings led her to "objectively judge" Parrish's work as "trash," Capuletti's as a "tour de force," and Vermeer's as "folks-next-door naturalism."

Rand made both types of judgments. She considered her judgments of merit, of both types, objective, but her merit judgments and her personal tastes didn't line up the way you think they did.

I didn't say that her judgments of merit and her personal tastes always lined up. I think that she often effectively distinguished between the two. But there were also times when her personal tastes became the basis of her judgments of merit, and she convinced herself that because she liked or disliked a work of art, it therefore had merit or didn't.

For example, she was under no illusions that her tiddlywink music held a candle in technical greatness to Beethoven. She called Rembrandt, whose work she mostly hated, a great master. She didn't think that the works of Vermeer which she disliked were any worse technically than the ones she did like. She considered Isak Dinesen the greatest stylist writing at the time of her (Rand's) conversations with John Hospers in '60-'62, but thought that Dinesen

had a bad sense of life. She loathed Tolstoy's work but ranked him as a great writer. She understood the difference between her personal tastes and aesthetic judgment and considered personal liking and aesthetic judgment different dimensions.

I agree that she understood the difference between expressing personal tastes and expressing aesthetic judgments, which is why in the examples that you listed, as well as in all others that I'm aware of, she separated her personal opinions -- "I like" or "I don't like" -- from her appraisals of the merit of the work -- "it's great" or "it's trash." If she had thought that Tolstoy's work (or Rembrandt's or Beethoven's) was bad, she would have called it "trash" (or something similar). And if she wanted to convey the idea that her views on Parrish were just personal opinions, she would have said, "I don't like it."

Where she tended to lose the distinction was on judgment of moral worth, but even there she didn't consider her liking an art work equivalent to its having a good sense of life and vice versa -- an example which is famous (infamous) in some circles, her dislike of "The Blue Danube" and similar Vienese fare.

And a good example, again, in which she tried to make aesthetic evaluations of merit which she thought were objective, but were actually based on her subjective tastes, were her comments on Capuletti's technical mastery. She raved about it. The problem is that his art is not "sheer perfection of workmanship." She only evaluated it as such because she liked it.

On the "Parrish The Thought" thread, you asserted that Rand disliked Parrish for the same reasons that she disliked The Sound of Music. You say that she thought his work showed a fairy tale world, and that she believed that such stuff wasn't actually benevolent. Could you provide details about how you came to be so certain about the reasons that she disliked Parrish? In that discussion, were you also claiming that Rand thought of Parrish's figures as being androgynous, or did you mean that that is your opinion of his work, and that you feel that Rand would have shared your opinion?

From what I've seen of Parrish's work, only a small fraction of it actually contains fairy tale or fantasy elements, and ever fewer paintings contain what might be called androgynous figures (in fact, in looking through a couple of books on Parrish, it appears that he painted more images based on mythology than on fairy tales, and heroic Greek gods engaged in heroic deeds are Objectivistically acceptable, if not gush-worthy). But even if what you say is true, and you can support your assertions with evidence of what Rand actually said about her reasons for disliking Parrish, the issue still comes down to Rand offering a moral/aesthetic evaluation based on her subjective dislikes. Fairy tales are not "false benevolence" just because Rand didn't like them.

On the SOLOP thread, you asked:

Why do you suppose all those O'ists who had Maxfield Parrish prints hanging on their walls had them? Do you imagine that by some strange confluence they all just happened to be enamored of Parrish's work from their own genuine response? Or might they have acquired the prints because they wrongly believed that ~Ayn Rand~ would be a Parrish fan? Do you suppose that maybe Ayn Rand had heard of her admirers adorning their walls with Parrish prints and that she might have been irritated both by the copycatism and by the error of the presumption as to her tastes?

Parrish was, and still is, a very popular artist. He's much more famous than Rand. I've been in many homes, owned by people of all income levels and backgrounds, which have his images on their walls. So I think that your question is kind of like asking if people have copies of Tom Clancy's books because they think Rand would have liked them. They don't. They own his books because they like them. So, in general, I think most people probably were indeed enamored of Parrish's work from their own genuine responses, and, since they saw great beauty, heroism and inspiration in his work, they assumed that Rand would too. I suspect that people probably liked his work, then discovered Rand's views on romanticism, and then thought that their favorite Parrish paintings fit her definition. They were right -- most of his works are romantic by her definition. Perhaps she mistook their expectation of sharing a common passion with her as copycatism.

I do think, though, that a lot of people were probably "copycats" when it came to buying original art or prints by Capuletti, Ilona Royce Smithkin, Frank O'Connor and perhaps others whom they had read that Rand liked.

J

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I find the painting a striking, forceful, and dramatic one overall (although my favorite Capuletti is a different one), and think this is another instance of a (sub)thread focusing too much on the negative, allowing the positives to go unstated or unappreciated. Yes, he doesn't do perspective much (seems to be deliberate, perhaps to heighten the fantasy element?).

I don't understand what "doesn't do perspective much" means. Does it mean that Capuletti doesn't do perspective well? If so, I agree.

But all painters, even great ones, have flaws. If you focus too much on the fact that Rembrandt's paintings are too dark and use too much black

It's a "fact" that Rembrandt's paintings are too dark and use too much black?

or that Vermeer doesn't paint heroes

It would depend on how one defines "heroes" ("people who display courage or nobility"? "People who visually demonstrate their passion by leaping through the air with their heads thrown back"?). And even if you conclude that Vermeer didn't paint any heroes by your definition, it doesn't follow that his not painting them is a "flaw." It simply means that you don't like art which doesn't include characters which fit your definition of "heroes."

or that some lovely impressionist landscapes are too 'fuzzy' or coarse

How fuzzy or coarse is "too" fuzzy or coarse?

or that Botticelli doesn't use enough perspective

What does "enough perspective" mean? Perspective doesn't come in quantities. In a 2-dimensional representation of 3-dimensional space, one either uses perspective correctly or one does not.

or you wouldn't choose his particular palette of colors

It's not an issue of preferring a different palette of colors, but of the artist consistently adhering to his own principles of color usage which he has chosen for his painting. An example would be that an artist establishes a certain lighting scenario for his painting, and he modulates his halftones accordingly in most areas but not in others because he was distracted or lazy. It would be like Rand writing Atlas Shrugged and carelessly including in the middle of the novel a few paragraphs about characters who have nothing to do with the story but were ones she thinking about because she was planning on writing about them in her next novel.

-- you may run the risk of being so negative and nitpicky and perfectionist that your appreciation of great beauty and skill is darkened by the black cloud over your head.

Is the cloud merely black or is it "too black"?

I'm sure that to someone who has little knowledge of the visual arts, those who are knowledgeable and discerning seem to be "nitpicky" rather than knowledgeable and discerning.

J

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No, she didn't. Not in that Parrish quip. She was asked her personal opinion; she gave it.

[Rand] seemed to believe that her tastes and opinions were objective, and she seemed to place a high degree of importance on ranking artworks that she liked as being "objectively superior" to artworks that she didn't like.

I know she ~seemed~ to you pretty much to equate rankings of excellence with her particular likes. She didn't seem to me to do that, and I heard a great deal more about details of her opinions and tastes than you were there to hear. One thing, you keep confusing judgments of aesthetic worth and judgments of moral worth. Rand made both types of judgments. She considered her judgments of merit, of both types, objective, but her merit judgments and her personal tastes didn't line up the way you think they did. For example, she was under no illusions that her tiddlywink music held a candle in technical greatness to Beethoven. She called Rembrandt, whose work she mostly hated, a great master. She didn't think that the works of Vermeer which she disliked were any worse technically than the ones she did like. She considered Isak Dinesen the greatest stylist writing at the time of her (Rand's) conversations with John Hospers in '60-'62, but thought that Dinesen had a bad sense of life. She loathed Tolstoy's work but ranked him as a great writer. She understood the difference between her personal tastes and aesthetic judgment and considered personal liking and aesthetic judgment different dimensions. Where she tended to lose the distinction was on judgment of moral worth, but even there she didn't consider her liking an art work equivalent to its having a good sense of life and vice versa -- an example which is famous (infamous) in some circles, her dislike of "The Blue Danube" and similar Vienese fare.

Ellen

Ellen, again I find your views quite insightful and a pleasure to read. Thanks.

Michael

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Oh come on, Rand didn't say "I don't like Parrish" or even "I hate Parrish", which would imply that according to her own theory Parrish still could be a master in his trade, while she didn't like his subjects or his "sense of life". No, she called it trash, and that is as unequivocal a condemnation as you can get, not only a dislike of style or subject, but also of his technical skill. Rand claims that an objective judgment of art work is possible, so one can't cover up her gaffe here by trying to claim that it was "just her personal opinion", she cannot have her cake and eat it too.

Dragonfly, as always, I find your views to be quite insightful and a pleasure to read. Thanks.

J

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Fairy tales

Can come true,

It can happen to you...

(From the song "Young at Heart" by Leigh and Richards.)

Here's a little section from The Art of Fiction, pp. 125-127:

From Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen

The road from Closter Seven to Hopballehus rises more than five hundred feet and winds through tall pine forest. From time to time this opens and affords a magnificent view over large stretches of land below. Now in the afternoon sun the trunks of the fir trees were burning red, and the landscape far away seemed cool, all blue and pale gold. Boris was able now to believe what the old gardener at the convent had told him when he was a child: that he had once seen, about this time of the year and the day, a herd of unicorns come out of the woods to graze upon the sunny slopes, the white and dappled mares, rosy in the sun, treading daintily and looking around for their young, the old stallion, darker roan, sniffing and pawing the ground. The air here smelled of fir leaves and toadstools, and was so fresh that it made him yawn. And yet, he thought, it was different from the freshness of spring; the courage and gaiety of it were tinged with despair. It was the finale of the symphony.

This is one of the most beautiful descriptions I have read in the Romantic style. (Primarily a writer of fantastic stories, Isak Dinesen is hard to classify; but she is certainly nearer to being a Romanticist than a Naturalist.)

First the author gives a general idea of the setting: it is a winding road rising through pine forest. Then she begins to give particulars: "Now in the afternoon sun the trunks of the fir trees were burning red, and the landscape far away seemed cool, all blue and pale gold." By means of a few essentials, the reader gets an attractive generalized picture.

The author then does something unusual and difficult. To convey the mood of the landscape and to give the reader a wider, more essential impression of it than she could have done by describing more leaves or branches or grass, she introduces this peculiar device: "Boris was able now to believe what the old gardener at the convent had told him when he was a child: that he had once seen, about this time of the year and the day, a herd of unicorns come out of the woods to graze upon the sunny slopes." Observe the connotations. That an old gardener at a convent tells something to a child has in itself a fantastic quality; and when he tells him that he has seen unicorns, this impossible fantasy projects the exact eerie quality of the afternoon. "A herd of horses" would not have produced the same effect, because the purpose is to suggest something supernatural, odd, almost decadently frightening, but very attractive. The words "about this time of the year and the day" skillfully show the author's intention: it is not to indulge in a fantasy for its own sake, but to convey that at this time of year and day, the sunlight on these trees and this slope has the eerie, fantastic quality that could make one expect the supernatural.

As the author goes on to describe the unicorns, they are made specific in an unusually artistic way. The description is almost over-detailed, but by essentials: "the white and dappled mares, rosy in the sun, treading daintily and looking around for their young, the old stallion, darker roan, sniffing and pawing the ground." Observe how carefully the color scheme is projected: that the mares are "white and dappled" but "rosy in the sun" is another reminder of the late afternoon sunlight. That they are "treading daintily" connotes the steps of elegant racehorses; yet the mares are unicorns, which makes them even more dainty. This amount of detail gives reality to the fantastic; and by so doing, the author conveys the mood of the afternoon.

The next sentence is completely realistic: "The air here smelled of fir leaves and toadstools, and was so fresh that it made him yawn." It is a brilliant sentence: with great economy of words, the very essentials are selected so that one can almost smell the forest.

"And yet, he thought, it was different from the freshness of spring; the courage and gaiety of it were tinged with despair." Since the freshness is different from that of spring, one can infer that it is fall. But what would imply, without the author saying it, that this is fall, is all the eerie fantasy that has gone before: the air of something supernatural, in gold, pink, red shades—the air of something decadent. The last sentence sums up the whole effect: "It was the finale of the symphony."

The author has given a specific description of this hillside and no other—at this time of year and day. To convey the mood, she gives specific images, such as the fir trees, the unicorns, their colors and gestures, and even the perspective, and the smell of the forest. These are concretes, as distinguished from: "It was an eerie, fantastic landscape; beautiful but tragic; lovely but heartbreaking." Those would be floating abstractions.

I am tempted to say some smartass thing or other about fantasy and unicorns, etc., but I will just let this very insightful analysis rest on its own merits. After rereading it, I became far more interested in what Rand was saying here (Boeckmann editing and all) than what people think she thought.

No wonder she was a great writer.

Michael

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Johathan -

Curious as to why you say Parrish is "much more famous than Rand" (#41). While I have no hard data, my intuition is just the opposite. Can you cite any hard numbers?

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I largely agree with Jonathan on Rand vs. Parrish.

Ayn Rand was, well, fairly articulate. If she wanted to render her personal opinion of Maxfield Parrish's work, she could and would have labeled it as such.

On what grounds has anyone concluded that Ayn Rand didn't want to be regarded as an authority on art? If there is evidence to that effect, I'd like to see it.

In the early 1970s, I knew some Objectivists who liked Maxfield Parrish. The first person I can recall talking about Parrish (to whom I hadn't paid much attention; I'm not a visual art person anyway) was Robert Bidinotto. Bob (as he was then known) seemed to have his own reasons for liking Parrish. I didn't get the impression that he put reproductions of a couple of Parrish's illustrations on the walls of his apartment because he thought Ayn Rand liked Parrish's work. Nor, to my knowledge, did he make a bonfire of his prints after Ms. Rand delivered her one-word dictum. I suspect that Henry Scuoteguazza (an old friend of Robert B's) was being a little sarcastic in his references to such bonfires.

Ayn Rand's complaints (in letters, etc.) that her fans mistakenly sent her things they thought she would like never struck me as a way of saying, "Don't try to figure out what I would like, because you shouldn't treat me as an authority and therefore what I would like should not be of any personal importance to you." I interpreted them to mean, "Don't try to figure out what I would like, because I am probably more discerning than you are, and your sense of life will definitely not measure up to mine."

Robert Campbell

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Subject: Cutting Rand Some Slack, Example #2,179,654

> Ayn Rand was, well, fairly articulate. If she wanted to render her personal opinion of Maxfield Parrish's work, she could and would have labeled it as such.

Robert, no matter how articulate they often are, you don't hold people to what they say in informal oral replies. That's notoriously short, very general and not nuanced, and off-top-of-one's-head (notably for an unforeseen question not answered lots of times). Especially if they have addressed the abstract issue more formally in writing, when they have had time to word it precisely, to edit, etc.

That is what you would take as the definitive viewpoint.

Or they could have just had a fight, be in a bad mood, not have enough sleep...or be on amphetamines :-) The carefully considered, written word always trumps the informal quip. (Especially if it's just one word like "Trash".)

Another example is that Rand once, fed up with having been asked the question "what about the poor?" ten zillion times said "let them starve!"

As you know, her formal position is not exactly that. She's said lots of stupid things in oral, informal contexts. She wasn't always one hundred percent precise or speaking perfectly nuanced and fully aware sentences.

Like I said earlier in this thread to someone else, you and others need to be willing to cut Rand some slack, allow her some context. She wasn't a 'goddess' of perfect even-keeled expression and articulateness. I mean you know that from her going off and raging at an innocent question, right?

Edited by Philip Coates
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Phil,

I'm not discounting the possibility that Ayn Rand blurted out "Trash!" when, on second thought, she would have preferred to say something different.

Jim Valliant may deny that Rand ever made a foolish statement on occasion; I certainly won't.

Ellen Stuttle has been trying to argue, however, that Ms. Rand was not putting herself across as an authority on the arts, and actually got annoyed when her fans treated her as such an authority.

Robert Campbell

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Another example is that Rand once, fed up with having been asked the question "what about the poor?" ten zillion times said "let them starve!"

As you know, her formal position is not exactly that.

How does her "formal" position differ from this, Phil?

As far as I am aware, her position is pretty accurately summed up by "let them starve!", and furthermore that making any sacrifice to potentially alleviate this suffering is immoral, and finally that you are "psychologically damaged" if you don't agree.

In fact this position appears to be her distinctive contribution to ethics.

However, as this is Rand, as usual one also finds odd remarks that confuse and even undermine her position (such as helping a neighbour in The Ethics of Emergencies). But unless by "nuance" you mean "contradiction" this hardly helps.

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