On Monday, May 29, 2000 6:14 PM altamira altamira@ecpi.com wrote:
> Well, Daniel, (I know your comments were addressed to Nadia and not to me;
> please excuse me for butting in)
It's an open forum, so anyone can butt in or stay out. No one's holding a
gun to anyone's head here.
> when you said there was nothing wrong with
> stoking the fires of debate, it came across to me as though your main
> purpose in entering into the conversation was to manipulate the behavior
of
> the other parties to the conversation.
Well, I did NOT mean it that way. Until I brought this _What Art Is_ up on
this list, I've never seen so many reactions, especially negative reactions
to my posts.
> It's like a put-down, like you're
> making fun of them for taking the issues seriously or something. I could
> understand why Nadia felt like moving on to some other conversation.
Her choice.
I was not trying to put anyone down, even though she put me down and used ad
hominem attacks on Rand. It's not such a big deal. but if [all of] you
reread the exchange, you'll see her accusing Rand of being ignorant and
offering no proof of this ignorance. Surely, Rand was not a painter, but to
claim she had no knowledge or that she or anyone who wants to evaluate art
has to jump through hoops and then not even find out if he or she has done
the jumping is strange to me. I don't think Rand was that ignorant. Her
comments seem to demonstrate this. (Granted, she was not an expert in all
the arts (who is?), but she seemed to have enough knowledge of the works
(see the many examples she uses), technique, composition, and esthetics in
general to not be bluffing at every turn.)
Also, Rand was not just taking an informed view and exploding it into a
philosophical stance. Instead, if one reads _The Romantic Manifesto_,
despite its many flaws (see my web site for a few I've found in regards to
architecture, Horror, and painting) she's not talking out of the side of her
mouth.
The authors of _What Art Is_, Louis Torres and Michelle Marder Kahmi do have
a background in the arts, both in teaching and criticism.
Later!
Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:12:07 MDT