Interesting Parallels: Kenyon Cox and Ayn Rand on Art

[dan2100]

Kenyon Cox's (1856-1919) ideas on art -- especially, those presented in his essay "What is Painting?" (in What is Painting? "Winslow Homer" and Other Essays) -- hold some interesting parallels with Ayn Rand's views.¹ There are differences, though many of these are in nonessentials, such as their respective tastes in painting. This does not mean Cox is to be held to the standard of Rand. Both should be judged against the facts, but such a judgment goes beyond the bounds of this exploration.

As the title of his essay suggests Cox concentrates on painting. He penned it more than half a century before Rand's The Romanctic Manifesto was published. "What is Painting?" asks and answers that question by focusing on the history of art. It is this broad scope which allows him to test his ideas and not fall prey to prejudices.

Cox dissects painting into two factors, imitation and relation. Imitation, not surprisingly, is the aspect of realism in painting. For instance, that a seascape resembles the sea. Relation is the interaction of internal elements of painting. This is the medium specific aspects of the painting. For instance, watercolors and oil paintings have different internal harmonies. Watercolor tends to be lighter and less severe, while oil tends to be heavier and more detailed. The interactions of colors, lines, and masses inside any given work are more instances. They make up the relational aspects common to all painting. Needless to say, this can be generalized to other art forms.

At one point he divides the arts into imitative and relational. Painting, sculpture, acting, and dance are imitative arts. Music and architecture are relational arts. (Rand also put music into a special category because of its special means of affecting human consciousness. "Music is experienced as if it had the power to reach man's emotions directly." (The Romantic Manifesto, p50)) He admits that these differences are ultimately a matter of degree and that imitative arts have a relational side, though he stresses music's sui generis relationalism. Though music does seem to be more relational than the other arts, it still has an imitative content.²

He offers another classification of the arts by whether they are spatial or temporal. From this, we can put painting, sculpture, architecture into the former class. Music and poetry fall into the latter. Dance and acting are a blend of the spatial and the temporal. Though he mentions this method of classification, he does not use it except to illustrate another way of looking at things.

Note that though he's classifying by nonessentials, like Aristotle he at least believes it is important to classify and to search for patterns. In the infancy of every science, classification, no matter how ad hoc, is always found. Also, like Aristotle, he is quick to drop a lead, such as the above alternative classification when it doesn't prove fruitful.³

Cox defines painting in steps. He starts off with a working definition then improves it until he finally arrives at:

"The art of painting is the selective representation on a plane surface of objects, real or imagined, by means of spaces, lines, colors, and variations of light and dark, all of which elements, as well as the materials employed, have been subjected to some principle of order for the attainment of unity." (What is Painting? "Winslow Homer" and Other Essays, p146)

He comes to this definition near the very end of the essay. His first definition, given after a brief survey of painting from the prehistoric cave dwellers to his time, is "the art of representing on a plane surface (in contradistinction to sculpture which works in three dimensions...) the forms and colors of objects." (p94)

Very much like Aristotle, he considers this definition only to find its weaknesses. It's chief weakness is that it makes painting purely imitative. If painting's goal is only to imitate, then photography and film had already surpassed it in many aspects even while he was writing. However, Cox recognizes quite early that painting is not copying: "...it is not the imitation in all respects the most exact which affords the greatest pleasure." (p95) There are elements of exaggeration and elimination in every painting. In other words, elements of selectivity.

He points out that this selectivity is due to two causes. One is the nature of the medium. Greek vase painters, for instance, selected contour over all else (e.g., depth, color, shadow) because of the nature of the materials and the tools involved. Intricate details and coloring just won't do. The other cause is what he calls the expression of different "orders of truths." (p95ff) It's not hard to find other examples, such as Rembramdt's emphasis of light and shadow while diminishing contour and color. To show the power of his view, we can even find examples outside painting, such as novels, poems, songs, and sculpture. All of them involve selectivity that is medium specific, e.g., poetry's use of rhythm and rhyme.

He also contrasts the "pleasures of recognition" to those of the "pleasure of recognition... under new aspects." (What is Painting? "Winslow Homer" and Other Essays, p100-101)) He remarks on the painter's ability "to give us, temporarily, the benefit of his power of vision, of his training and knowledge, of his perception of the significance of things, and by doing so to give us an unwonted sense of physical and mental efficiency..." (p122) This is similar to Rand's analysis of a still life of apples. She also states that the visual arts "teach man to see more precisely and to find deeper

meaning in his field of vision." (The Romantic Manifesto, p47)

Rand held a similar view with her definition of art as "a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments." The inclusion of selectivity in the definition stresses that the art work cannot be purely imitative -- that certain parts of reality are stressed, while others are diminished or ignored. The parallel here is so tight that Rand's perspective is directly applicable to Cox's examples.

Orders of truths are the various truths that are accentuated in any given work. Stressing one order, such as contour, is done by reducing or outright eliminating others, such as color. This is a very important idea for Cox's theory and has a shadowy reflection in Rand's. His orders of truth are very close to her "metaphysical abstractions." Recall the latter are an overall view of existence and life. While Cox would seem to give all orders of truth an equal footing, Rand would almost say it's an artist's obligation to accent certain facets of existence at the expense of others. This is why she didn't dwell on whether John Galt caught a cold standing out in the rain in her novel Atlas Shrugged.

This is important because Cox does not really give any details on why a given "order of truth" is selected over another. The only thing one can guess from reading him is that this is a product of the personalities of the artists and the traditions they finds themselves in. Rand points out that it's the artist's "metaphysical value-judgments" that do the selection.

Rand's style is different, yet the definition she arrives at is remarkably similar. She defines art, then goes on to define each of the fine arts. She defines art as "the selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments." (The Romantic Manifesto, p19) She then defines painting as a subcategory of art -- it "re-creates reality... by means of color on a two-dimensional surface." (p46)

Note the similarities in wording. Cox's "plane surface" is equivalent to Rand's "two-dimensional surface." His "principle of order for the attainment of unity" is a good lunge toward her "metaphysical value-judgments." It also hints at her dictum that "the essence of art is integration." (p76) His "selective representation" is almost her "selective re-creation." Some of these seem merely stylistic changes.

The differences in writing style map on to Joseph Agazzi's difference between the "store window" and the "workshop" in science. (See his introduction to Mendel Sachs' Einstein versus Bohr.) Rand is a store window writer. She gives you the finished, polished product. This doesn't mean she didn't do the necessary work. Cox is a workshop writer. He brings you back into his work room. The reader gets to watch him honing away and occasionally sweeping up the mess to start over.

That both Cox and Rand think it's important to define painting may seem like another important parallel. It reveals the change in esthetics from prior times to the Twentieth Century modernism. The modernist view is one that definition is either impossible or trivial. The typical result is to say that definition is arbitrary and, surprisingly, to let artists or art critics define art. In other words, there is no objective definition, so some authority (e.g., painters, art critics) will have to do. This is yet another triumph of subjectivism.

They are almost equivalent in their critique of modern art. However, Rand seems superior here in many respects because she is able to find the roots of modernism and because she is a lot less charitable than Cox. She exposed the origins and premises of modernism with much more skill because she was a philosopher, as well as an artist and art critic. Not only this, but she also was intensely interested in the history of ideas and in the structure of knowledge and human action. This is illustrated in her views of history where she demonstrates the role of ideas in shaping life and culture.

She was less charitable then Cox because she believed that modernism was undergirded by a philosophy that was both flawed in theory and inhuman in practice. Rand did not believe in separating theory from practice. The "true in theory" leads to the successful in practice and the "false in theory" results in failure in practice. This notion, as alien as it might be to modernists, seems common sensical.

She clearly defined art because "Works of art -- like everything else in the universe -- are entities of a specific nature; the concept requires a definition by essential characteristics which distinguish them from all other entities." (The Romantic Manifesto, pp77-78) This is nothing more than an application of the Law of Identity and Rand's theory of concept-formation to the field of art.

The culture in which Cox grew up had a healthy respect for ideas and the truth. This was the somewhat rational culture of the Late Nineteenth Century, a time just on the brink of modernism. He was writing at a time when modern art was beginning to invade America. He was very much a critic of it and was relegated to the dust bin of history because of his views.

One of Cox's main criticisms of modern art is it's detachment from the great traditions of art. No doubt this is true. Modern Art is often a conscious attempt to break with the past. Ironically, this is sometimes done by wholesale borrowings from primitive or Eastern art, as in the some of the works of Expressionists and Minimalists. One might ask why shouldn't one borrow from other traditions or break with them. His answer is that we lose much more than we gain. Not one to discourage invention and creativity, he thought that these must flourish in the context of the great traditions. These traditions, especially what he labels "classicism" -- which he calls "the disinterested search for perfection... the love of clearness and reasonableness and self-control... above all, the love of permanence and of continuity." (The Classic Point of View, p3-4) -- are to be used as jumping off points. Isaac Newton's metaphor of "standing on the shoulder of giants" catches this best. For Cox, each new generation of painters should seek to create anew the eternal and strive "for the essential rather than the accidental, the eternal rather than the momentary..." (p4)

(This is not to be confused with Rand's use of the term. She uses "classicism" to denote a mechanical imitation of past forms of art for imitations sake: "a school that had devised a set of arbitrary, concretely detailed rules purporting to represent the final and absolute criteria of esthetic values." (The Romantic Manifesto, p104) This has the aspect of memorization rather than truly being part of a great tradition. No doubt some readers will have problems with the term because in general usage it connotes both meanings.)

Another criticism he levels against modernism is that it disregards the imitative side of painting. This is true of paintings that are dubbed "color symphonies." They have lost their representative aspect and merely are blobs of color. This is a more serious criticism than lacking respect for the past masters. It's also a good time to bring up Rand's views of modernism since to her this is probably modern art's greatest crime.

One of Cox's historical generalizations based on this is:

"In all times which we think of as times of progress in art there has been an increasing truth of representation. In... the great epochs of art there has been a high degree of such truth. In... times of decadence there has generally been a lessening of such truth." (What is Painting? "Winslow Homer" and Other Essays, p93-94)

By losing or, rather, expunging its representative side modern painting, indeed all modern art forms, seek to destroy the mind's ability to integrate perceptions into concepts. Rand believes that this parallels the philosophic attacks. She saw this art as truly "anti-art", as "an attempt to disintegrate man's consciousness and reduce it to a pre-perceptual level by breaking up perceptions into mere sensations." (The Romantic Manifesto, p76) The function of art for Rand is to allow man a perceptual-like access to his widest abstractions. Modern art reverses the process. By turning paintings into "smears" modern art destroys the meaning of art. She emphatically states that "a work of art must be a representation; its freedom of stylization is limited by the requirement of intelligibility..." (p75) By losing its intelligibility the modern art work ceases to be a vehicle for man's widest abstractions and becomes a tool of alienation. In other words, what can one feel but alienation from a Jackson Pollock painting?

Naturally enough, since Cox was a painter and Rand a writer, one would expect them to be more expert in their respective art forms than in others. However, while Cox concentrated on painting to the exclusion of all else, Rand's project was broader in scope and, ultimately, in results. From Cox, we get some pretty good views on painting, but to apply his ideas elsewhere is not as straightforward as in Rand's case. This is because Rand built a general theory of art of which her views of painting are a minor part.

Cox often seems more perceptive than Rand. His understanding of style and subject matter in painting is much more sophisticated than her almost dismissive views of every painting she doesn't like. However, what might be said in Rand's favor was that she did not pretend to be an expert on painting. She points out the difference between her tastes and esthetic judgments. Even so, the frequency of attacks on works she is repulsed by makes it hard for readers to separate her tastes from what she believes are objective judgments.

Rand also covers the choice of subject. While Cox does not cover this matter in "What is Painting?" he does devote a chapter of his The Classic Point of View -- his in depth coverage of painting first published in 1911 -- to the matter. However, even here, Cox and Rand disagree. Cox delves into the subject insofar as it can be adequately translated into painting. Rand is not directly interested in this matter, but in the relation of the choice of subject to the artist's outlook on life.

An interesting thing to juxtapose is Rand's view of the subject in sculpture with Cox's of it in painting. She thought "Only the figure of man can project a metaphysical meaning" in sculpture. (The Romantic Manifesto, p50) He believed "The highest subject for the exercise of the greatest powers of a painter is the human figure..." (The Classic Point of View, p43) Certainly, Rand would've thought similarly of painting, though her views of sculpture are a little narrow. Surely, some sculptures of animals can project a metaphysical meaning even if only because of their associations, such as those of an eagle with wings spread projecting "power" or a lion projecting "majesty."

This can best be illustrated by a examples. Cox likes Millet's paintings of peasants. He believes these demonstrate the timelessness inherent in anything classic. In our non-agricultural age this might seem like a quaint agrarianism, but Cox thought that Millet was communicating his themes very well given his medium. He also believed agricultural to be a universal that could be portrayed through painting. His case might even be defended to some extent by stating that the agricultural lifestyle has been around longer than ours -- roughly ten thousand years for the former and less than two hundred for the latter! Still, it wouldn't take much to drop Millet's peasants and yet agree with Cox that art portrays the universal. The universal shouldn't be taken so narrowly as what most people concretely do, but can be abstracted. What do peasants, factory workers and stock brokers have in common? They all do productive work. A refined and updated Kenyon Cox can inform us of things that really are universal.

Certain things are off limits to Cox. He tells us of how certain paintings fail because they contain a subject that is not transmittable through their medium. One example he uses is "Washington Crossing the Delaware." The work relies too much on extraneous factors to make it what it is. To someone not steeped in American history, the painting would probably not mean much more than some people rowing through an ice flow with a flag. Of course, we must assume the art viewing public are not completely ignorant, but the goal of painting should be to transmit its ideals through the art work itself, not through obscure associations it may trigger.

While Rand would probably not contradict Cox's limits, she approaches the choice of subject for its metaphysical and moral meaning. She would rather have a bad painting of an heroic man or extraordinary event, than a masterly work centering on the average or mediocre. Rand here is more the philosopher concerned with ideas and their consequences while Cox is the artist concerned with adapting means to ends. There is nothing wrong with combining the two to come to the conclusion that art should choose an heroic subject emphasizing man's ability to choose and succeed, but this choice must take into account the limits of the media. A poem captures facets of a given subject that can't be done well if at all in a painting, and vice versa. Compare Wordsworth's "The Daffodils" to an Innes landscape. Both treat similar subjects in their own manner determined mostly by the fact that one is a poem and the other a painting.

As was said above, Rand's project in esthetics is much larger and encompasses all the arts, even if her concentration is on literature. That Rand makes integration of all knowledge an explicit principle accounts for this broader project. Her views on context and hierarchy (really another form of context) in regard to knowledge lead to the idea that knowledge is a totality NOT a collection of assorted statements disconnected from each other. This totality must be noncontradictory and firmly grounded in sense perception.

This is not to say that Cox wouldn't have arrived at similar view had he extended his survey to the other arts. However, the fact that he didn't, leaves this open to debate. Perhaps an answer to this question can be given by examining the work of those influenced by his esthetics of painting. Cox and Rand share many important similarities as shown above. Some of the differences are due to their respective expertise in different fields. Objectivists should explore his ideas not only in search of similarities to Rand's ideas but also to fill in the gaps in Objectivist esthetics. One major suffering of the latter is its almost total obsession with literature. By studying Kenyon Cox we have a chance to remedy this.

Similar thinkers exist in other fields, including the other arts, philosophy, and social theory. By finding such parallels we not only allow ourselves to expand our horizons but to understand our own ideas better by placing them within the wider context of all human endeavor.

Notes:

1 I am indebted to Louis Torres and Michelle Marder Kamhi for pointing out this in their essay "Ayn Rand's Philosophy of Art: A Critical Introduction" in Aristos 5(2) through 5(5).

2 Torres and Kamhi noted this in a personal communication to me.

3 This is not to say these classifications were originated by him.

Edited April 14, 2010 by Dan Ust

[Jonathan]

This is true of paintings that are dubbed "color symphonies." They have lost their representative aspect and merely are blobs of color.

I think one of the most amusing things about people who claim that the goal of all modern art was to "destroy the mind's ability to integrate perceptions into concepts" (and similar nonsense) is that they imagine that they can recognize all sorts of emotional expression and deeply metaphysical meaning in the abstract forms of architecture, but that no emotion or meaning -- none whatsoever -- can be recognized in exactly the same forms minus the utilitarian function.

By losing or, rather, expunging its representative side modern painting, indeed all modern art forms, seek to destroy the mind's ability to integrate perceptions into concepts.

That's bullshit. In limiting or eliminating the representational side of painting, modern artists were focusing on what Cox calls the "relational" aspects of visual art rather than the "imitative" aspects.

By losing its intelligibility the modern art work ceases to be a vehicle for man's widest abstractions and becomes a tool of alienation. In other words, what can one feel but alienation from a Jackson Pollock painting?

"One" should ask such questions of people who enjoy Pollock and feel anything but alienation in his art, or who otherwise don't share "one's" personal tastes or visual limitations, and then actually listen to and respect their answers instead of telling them what they feel based on what "one" feels.

J

Edited April 14, 2010 by Jonathan

[Dragonfly]

By losing or, rather, expunging its representative side modern painting, indeed all modern art forms, seek to destroy the mind's ability to integrate perceptions into concepts.

That's bullshit. In limiting or eliminating the representational side of painting, modern artists were focusing on what Cox calls the "relational" aspects of visual art rather than the "imitative" aspects.

Indeed. It's one thing to say that abstract painting has little or no meaning to you and to give reasons why you don't like it, but that outrageous psychologizing that such art forms "seek to destroy the mind's ability to integrate perceptions into concepts" is utter bullshit. As if you would no longer be able to integrate perceptions into concepts if you look too much at abstract paintings! And the absurd idea that such is the purpose of abstract paintings, what a ridiculous conspiracy theory! That's one of the reasons that I won't touch such general art theories with a ten-foot pole. It reminds me too much of Peikoff's blather that modern physics is "corrupt".

[Newberry]

Dan, your article, was excellent and refreshing to boot. I appreciate your understanding of Cox and Rand's intent, peppering it with your own insights, and your use of appropriate quotes.

By losing or, rather, expunging its representative side modern painting, indeed all modern art forms, seek to destroy the mind's ability to integrate perceptions into concepts. Rand believes that this parallels the philosophic attacks. She saw this art as truly "anti-art", as "an attempt to disintegrate man's consciousness and reduce it to a pre-perceptual level by breaking up perceptions into mere sensations." (The Romantic Manifesto, p76) The function of art for Rand is to allow man a perceptual-like access to his widest abstractions. Modern art reverses the process. By turning paintings into "smears" modern art destroys the meaning of art. She emphatically states that "a work of art must be a representation; its freedom of stylization is limited by the requirement of intelligibility..." (p75) By losing its intelligibility the modern art work ceases to be a vehicle for man's widest abstractions and becomes a tool of alienation. In other words, what can one feel but alienation from a Jackson Pollock painting?

This is an important issue. Dr. Stephen Hicks addresses this point in his article: Post-Postmodern Art:

The twentieth-century world is also the story of its own self-elimination. While Picasso and Munch looked at reality and reported their depressed observations, others retreated from the world and proceeded to strip away from art anything that they could. On the grounds that other media such as photography and literature reproduced reality and told stories, many eliminated as much content as they could from their works. Art came to be a self-contained study of dimension, color, and composition. But the reductionist, stripping-away game led quickly to challenges even to those features. In the sterile color studies of Piet Mondrian and Barnett Newman, any sense of a third dimension disappeared. In Kasimir Malevich's near-monochrome White on White, color differentiation was abandoned. And with Jackson Pollock's erratic paint drips and splatters, any role of artistic composition was eliminated.

The art world had reached a dead end. When it looked out at the world through the eyes of Picasso and Munch, it saw nothing of value. When it looked at what the reductionists had produced, it saw that nothing uniquely artistic had survived. Collectively, the leading members of the art world had decided that art has no content, that it has no special media or techniques, and that the artist has no crucial role in the process. Art became nothing - or a statement of nothingness.

From a different perspective I can add some insights about how abstraction works for a representation artist in this tutorial: Abstraction in Figurative Art

Cheers,

Michael

[dan2100]

Full disclosure: I wrote and Full Context published that many years ago. I did attempt a minor rewrite before placing it here, but I didn't want go over every place where I might have changed my views. So, I placed it in hopes of sparking discussion -- not in giving my final thoughts on this topic.

I also believe the interesting thing here is the similarities between Kenyon Cox and Ayn Rand -- regardless of whether anyone else agrees with their views.

[Jonathan]

This is an important issue. Dr. Stephen Hicks addresses this point in his article: Post-Postmodern Art:

Wow, that's embarrassing. I hope Hicks, as a professional intellectual, doesn't do philosophy as carelessly and capriciously as he does art history.

J

[Jonathan]

Full disclosure: I wrote and Full Context published that many years ago. I did attempt a minor rewrite before placing it here, but I didn't want go over every place where I might have changed my views. So, I placed it in hopes of sparking discussion -- not in giving my final thoughts on this topic.

I also believe the interesting thing here is the similarities between Kenyon Cox and Ayn Rand -- regardless of whether anyone else agrees with their views.

It would be a big undertaking, but I think it would very interesting to put together an essay, or essays, comparing Rand's aesthetic theories to those of a range of past thinkers. I think she had a lot in common with many of them.

J

[dan2100]

Full disclosure: I wrote and Full Context published that many years ago. I did attempt a minor rewrite before placing it here, but I didn't want go over every place where I might have changed my views. So, I placed it in hopes of sparking discussion -- not in giving my final thoughts on this topic.

I also believe the interesting thing here is the similarities between Kenyon Cox and Ayn Rand -- regardless of whether anyone else agrees with their views.

It would be a big undertaking, but I think it would very interesting to put together an essay, or essays, comparing Rand's aesthetic theories to those of a range of past thinkers. I think she had a lot in common with many of them.

J

My small contribution to this undertaking are my two pieces now residing here -- the one and the one on Goethe. I wanted to do essays comparing Aristotle's, Plato's, Kant's, and Hegel's esthetics to Rand's, but haven't gotten around to those and my interests have shifted.

[Newberry]

Maxfield Parrish, 1910, portrait by Kenyon Cox

Kenyon Cox, nude study