On Saturday, May 27, 2000 9:40 PM Natasha Vita-More natasha@extropic-art.com
wrote:
> Rand's lack of appreciation for art and the arts outside her own personal
> opinion (however, she called it objective) was more due to her inability
to
> understand and appreciate knowledge outside her own sphere. Her rigidity
> and lack of experience in Contemporary Art
What "lack of experience"? Granted, I don't think she went to every new
installation at MOMA during her life, but she was not totally out of touch,
especially given her comments in _The Romantic Manifesto_ and elsewhere. I
see her as an omnivorous consumer of culture for her time. Surely, she was
not familiar with every nook and cranny of the art of her time (she lived
from 1905 to 1982), but she was not a totally ignorant. (If one holds up
total familiarity as the standard, then one might as well disqualify
everyone from the discussion. I don't think Natasha explicitly holds this
standard, though her and others' comments seem to hint at it.)
> seems to be reflective of the
> rigidity in her psychology and her need for control. This behavior runs
> contrary to the open mindedness and curious attitude which can be aroused
> by fluidity and uncertainty. Such reactions as feelings of fluidity and
> uncertainty stem are emotions experienced form contemporary art and which
> art modes. Rand did not have the intellectual flexibility to understand
> such freeness of intelligent thinking, and such she disregarded as
> unimportant.
I agree she definitely had some bad personality traits and some of this, no
doubt, reflects in her casual dismissals as well as vicious attacks on
certain art works and artists. Even so, a lot of highly creative people and
supposedly open minded people are often very rigid and even dogmatic in
thier personal life. Some of this leaks over into their intellectual life.
Look at, e.g., the case of Karl Popper. At least, according to W. W.
Bartley in _Unfathomed Knowledge, Unmeasured Wealth_, he was a "difficult
man." This does not excuse Rand, but it does point out that merely
dismissing her views because she often was a domineering bitch is not a
strong argument. Psychologizing -- attributing motives to someone -- is
usually only useful after one has refuted her or his theories. One should
never do it beforehand, else one runs the risk of not examining the ideas
too closely especially when one finds them disagreeable.
> Although an "intellectual", she lacked a necessary ingredient of an
> intellectual thinker -- ability to develop knowledge and understanding
from
> areas of thought outside one's one sphere of expertise.
LOL! What was her sphere of expertise? What areas did she fail to develop
or understand? This charge is interesting since it can be attributed to
anyone. All of us, I bet, make claims that are outside our province and
that demonstrate our ignorance. Even so, one needs more than just point to
a truism to prove a given assertion by a given thinker wrong.
Also, _What Art Is_, insofar as I've skimmed it, appears to be an attempt to
critically refine Rand's esthetics -- often correcting Rand by rejecting her
views. (I have read the essay on which the book is based and have been in
contact with the authors over the years, so I'm not just getting this from a
casual scanning.) I bring this up because one should try to see what is of
value in Rand's esthetics. I don't think they are totally worthless. (I'm
not sure if Natasha thinks they are, but I'd like to hear her comments on
what she thinks is salvageable from Rand's esthetics per se.)
> Narrow, limited, uninformed. This is as ridiculous as claiming that
> today's purported science is really not science at all. The subjective
> aspect of art is whatever the artists chooses his art to be. the
objective
> aspect of art is represented in the outcome of the artist's ideas -- the
> product.
This is an argument from authority. I.e., there is no such thing as art but
for what an artist tells us is art. Imagine if a chef fried up some plaster
and called it edible. Would we have to agree with him? What if a
physicist told us that since she wrote a fantasy novel that the novel was,
in fact, science?
The notion that art somehow is outside the province of identity is what Rand
objected too. She dos not stand alone in this. Nor are Objectivists the
only ones to agree with her on this point. Thinkers from philosophically
divergent backgrounds, such as Jacques Barzun, also agree. (I'm not
dropping names here as an argument from authority. Instead, I'm just trying
to show that Rand and Objectivists are not the only ones drawing this
conclusion.)
I expect Natasha here to contend that art _is_ outside identity or invents
its identity...:)
> I find that art today is so fascinating -- so beyond anything ever thought
> of years ago -- it's just different. This evening, I was watching a
> program on TV with Ray Kurzweil and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and four
other
> creative thinkers on the subject of "Creativity." I loved it. The
> consensus was that there are no boundaries on creativity and that a most
> necessary element of creativity is to allow oneself to explore an open
> range of possibilities, to make mistakes, to rearrange ideas, etc.
I generally agree, BUT one must also admit that creativity does not always
guarantee success. In this context, not everytime a painter puts paint to
canvas or whatever results in art. (I know this from experience. I would
claim all of my paintings can be safely ignored if not actively
disregarded.:)
> If the
> only worthwhile art, as Rand preferred, was the Romantic period and
artists
> kept making the same plays, fiction, music paintings and sculpture with
the
> same ol' tools, there would never have been challenge to artististic
> creativity. How contrary to her own values!
I agree here. I've said so elsewhere, though my views differ from
Natasha's. See "Romanticism -- Beyond Rand" (at
http://www.freeradical.co.nz/content/34/34ust.html), where I attack Rand's
narrow idea of Romanticism in art, and "Response to David C. Adams on Rand's
View of Romanticism" (at http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Adams.html),
where I rebutt a rejoinder by David Adams to the previous piece, and "Form
and Content in Poetry: A Reply to Jackie van Oostrom" (at
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Poetry.html) where I attack some narrow
Objectivist views of poetry. (To be honest, Rand said little about poetry,
which is surprising given the number of Romantic poets.)
Objectivists and the like need to be a bit less sheepish toward Rand and
willing to think and create outside the box. Still, this does not give them
a blank check. Creativity itself, again, is not guarantee one will get it
right. If it was, then there would be no need for knowledge and learning or
skill. And when a given creative endeavor fails, one must be willing to
admit that and move on -- rather than sing hymns to it or condemn those who
point out such failure.
Also, another point should be mentioned. Since human nature places limits
on what humans can perceive, art is limited by this. Even posthumans will
have a nature and this will be limited too. (To be is to be limited =
existence is identity.) This does not mean one can's skate close to the
edge. In fact, I encourage it, but, again, if the ice breaks...
> Oh my. This paragraph is painful to read. Pollock (painter), Cage
> (musician), Cunningham (dancer/choreographer) were brilliant artists whose
> *innovative* abilities shook the very foundation of the old-world
> stifling-stamp on what society thought art was supposed to be. Their
> visionary approach to creativity helped society to break free of
> intellectual and emotional constraints.
I don't think but for Pollock, Cage, and Cunningham, we'd be stuck in the
last century or with strictly European culture. I don't see Pollock or Cage
as liberating in an artistic sense. Anybody can proclaim anything goes.
This does not make him or her an artist. Granted, all of these people knew
how to create art -- I mean in the tradition sense -- but look what came
after. I.e., too many so called artists today have thrown out the baby with
bathwater -- or even kept the bathwater after throwing out the baby. In
painting, I see too many lauded works which are really flat -- having no
depth beyond merely being shocking for the moment and the latest fad.
Now we have to go find the baby and hope it didn't die of exposure.
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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