Art Renewal Center

[Mike Renzulli]

Hey Everyone,

I have a website you all might be interested in. It's for a group called The Art Renewal Center. They specialize in Classical Realism which, essentially, is similar (if not exactly) in the vain of the kind of art Ayn Rand wrote about in The Romantic Manifesto.

They not only specialize in selling duplicates by many famous Renaissance-era painters and (I believe) sculptors but also have paintings and sculptures by present day artists too. ARC also has books and DVD's dedicated to demonstrating their approach to art and even have schools affilated with them listed too.

The artist schools affilated with them seem to show students how to paint via the Atelier method used by many classical/romantic realist painters in the 19th century.

They have really got their act together!

Their website is: http://www.artrenewal.org/

Edited January 27, 2010 by Mike Renzulli

[Jonathan]

Hey Everyone,

I have a website you all might be interested in. It's for a group called The Art Renewal Center. They specialize in Classical Realism which, essentially, is similar (if not exactly) in the vain of the kind of art Ayn Rand wrote about in The Romantic Manifesto.

I don't know about that. I don't think that we can say with any certainty that most, or even any, of the art at ARC is the kind of art that Rand wrote about in the Romantic Manifesto. We really have no way of knowing which paintings she would have seen as "romanticism" versus which she would have seen as "false romanticism" or "naturalism" or "trash." I think there's just as good a chance that she would have despised the ARC and the artists they most heavily promote as she would have supported them.

They not only specialize in selling duplicates by many famous Renaissance-era painters and (I believe) sculptors but also have paintings and sculptures by present day artists too. ARC also has books and DVD's dedicated to demonstrating their approach to art and even have schools affilated with them listed too.

The artist schools affilated with them seem to show students how to paint via the Atelier method used by many classical/romantic realist painters in the 19th century.

They have really got their act together!

Their website is: http://www.artrenewal.org/

I agree that the site is a valuable resource.

J

[Mike Renzulli]

Unfortunately, she is not around to tell us. However, I did find this one article at their website:

http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/archives.php?articleid=990

Letter to ARC

by Rodney Rawlings

The founders of ARC may not realize this, but there's a strong probability that they have philosopher Ayn Rand to thank -- at least in part -- for the resurgence of respect for representational art.

In 1969, she wrote: Just as modern philosophy is dominated by the attempt to destroy the conceptual level of man's consciousness and even the perceptual level, reducing man's awareness to mere sensations -- so modern art and literature are dominated by the attempt to disintegrate man's consciousness and reduce it to mere sensations, to the 'enjoyment' of meaningless colors, noises and moods. ... The art of any given period or culture is a faithful mirror of that culture's philosophy. If you see obscene, dismembered monstrosities leering at you from today's esthetic mirrors -- the aborted creations of mediocrity, irrationality and panic -- you are seeing the embodied CONCRETIZED reality of the philosophical premises that dominate today's culture. Only in this sense can those manifestations be called 'art' -- not by the intention or accomplishment of their perpetrators (The Romantic Manifesto).

According to Rand, the disintegration of art, and indeed of the modern world, are to be traced to the philosophical rejection of reason.

I don't know about that. I don't think that we can say with any certainty that most, or even any, of the art at ARC is the kind of art that Rand wrote about in the Romantic Manifesto. We really have no way of knowing which paintings she would have seen as "romanticism" versus which she would have seen as "false romanticism" or "naturalism" or "trash." I think there's just as good a chance that she would have despised the ARC and the artists they most heavily promote as she would have supported them.

[Jonathan]

Unfortunately, she is not around to tell us. However, I did find this one article at their website:

http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/archives.php?articleid=990

Letter to ARC

by Rodney Rawlings

The founders of ARC may not realize this, but there's a strong probability that they have philosopher Ayn Rand to thank -- at least in part -- for the resurgence of respect for representational art.

In 1969, she wrote: Just as modern philosophy is dominated by the attempt to destroy the conceptual level of man's consciousness and even the perceptual level, reducing man's awareness to mere sensations -- so modern art and literature are dominated by the attempt to disintegrate man's consciousness and reduce it to mere sensations, to the 'enjoyment' of meaningless colors, noises and moods. ... The art of any given period or culture is a faithful mirror of that culture's philosophy. If you see obscene, dismembered monstrosities leering at you from today's esthetic mirrors -- the aborted creations of mediocrity, irrationality and panic -- you are seeing the embodied CONCRETIZED reality of the philosophical premises that dominate today's culture. Only in this sense can those manifestations be called 'art' -- not by the intention or accomplishment of their perpetrators (The Romantic Manifesto).

According to Rand, the disintegration of art, and indeed of the modern world, are to be traced to the philosophical rejection of reason.

Yeah, well, I don't think that Rand, or Rodney Rawlings, had much, if any, knowledge of the visual arts or any understanding or appreciation of why "non-representational art" movements came about in the first place. I think the quote of Rand's that you posted above comes across as the hysteria of someone who is visually "tone-deaf" and perhaps resentful of the fact that others aren't. It comes across as defensiveness and "psychologizing" to the extreme.

I suspect that Rand probably believed that she was basically a perfect or universal human being who could not have lacked sensitivities that others possessed, so, since she was not emotionally sensitive to abstract visual arrangements, she concluded that others could not be either. I don't think that it ever would have occurred to her that her inability to experience strong emotions and meaning in such art forms might have been an indication of nothing more than the fact that she could not experience emotions or meaning in them. Instead, she seemed to believed that her lack of response was proof of the universal nature of those art forms and of all humans' similar inability to experience emotions and meaning in them, and therefore people who claimed to experience something that Rand didn't must have been evil liars and "perpetrators" trying to put one over on her, and trying to "destroy" and "disintegrate."

Anyway, Rand probably would have found common ground with the visually tone-deaf over at ARC, and shared some of their hatreds, but that doesn't mean that she would have also shared their joys. I think the odds are that she would have been just as disdainful of their favorite representational art as she was of "modern art."

J