Ayn Rand's POV

[Claire Senft]

Sorry to be offensive but I have come to believe that A. Rand is a goofy zealot. I also wonder why the question of photography as being an art form is so important to photographers.

 

[Pastiche]

Sorry to be offensive but I have come to believe that A. Rand is a goofy zealot. I also wonder why the question of photography as being an art form is so important to photographers.

Sorry, but I think this is a given :

Because a lot of artists are photographers.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I wonder what Derrida said about it - I would be surprised if he didn't have a go at it!

Oh please no don't bring Jacques Derrida into it!

"the photograph is inherently a falsehood, therefore it fails to represent that which it claims to represent because it elides the truth away from the truth - it is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object, therefore it is inherently untrustworthy. We can only interpret, and interpretively fail to understand, that which the photograph is, because it is by definition only a representation, a simulacrum, of the real which it attempts to represent."

or somesuch.

 

[arigram]

Oh please no don't bring Jacques Derrida into it!

"the photograph is inherently a falsehood, therefore it fails to represent that which it claims to represent because it elides the truth away from the truth - it is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object, therefore it is inherently untrustworthy. We can only interpret, and interpretively fail to understand, that which the photograph is, because it is by definition only a representation, a simulacrum, of the real which it attempts to represent."

or somesuch.

That was Plato's argument against all art: that is a falsehood and thus can mislead and hurt a society based on truth.
I agree with him, but with a twist: I've used his idea to support modern art in a paper and go against representationalist art.
Art is not a representation of another thing, art is itself.

 

[Claire Senft]

I have come to the conclusion that to many photographer's being considered an artist is important...perhaps more important than the work created by them.

The production of a satisfying photograph is something that I find very rewarding..for me it is not important whether others consider it art, in fact it is not important to me that others even consider it to be a decent photograph.

 

[jstraw]

My goal is to make photographs that I find interesting to look at after I've made them. That's the toughest order to fill that there is.

 

[jeroldharter]

Good to Ayn Rand's name pop up on the forum. She has an uncanny ability to make people squirm, even from her grave. I think she is one of the few lucid people to come out of the previous century. I have not read the "Lexicon" in many years but I think she was trying to make a point that 2 + 2 really does equal 4 regardless of how that makes us feel. She was trying to make a point, an arguable point, artists are individuals who create something more or less de novo rather than snap a photo of something in an arsty way and call it art.

Because she is someone who believed what she said and was willing to make the argument, some think she was a "zealot." I think she is always worth reading. She was very prescient in many ways. I have a collection of newspaper columns that she wrote about the future of medicine in the USA back in the 1960's. At the time, people like Phil Donahue turned gray listening to her yet 50 years later she could not have been more accurate.

 

[Bromo33333]

Oh please no don't bring Jacques Derrida into it!

"the photograph is inherently a falsehood, therefore it fails to represent that which it claims to represent because it elides the truth away from the truth - it is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object, therefore it is inherently untrustworthy. We can only interpret, and interpretively fail to understand, that which the photograph is, because it is by definition only a representation, a simulacrum, of the real which it attempts to represent."

or somesuch.

Heh - that's Jacques, allright. Say 1 sentance's worth of content in about 8-10 'deconstructed' sentences, I always say!

 

[Bromo33333]

Good to Ayn Rand's name pop up on the forum. She has an uncanny ability to make people squirm, even from her grave. I think she is one of the few lucid people to come out of the previous century. I have not read the "Lexicon" in many years but I think she was trying to make a point that 2 + 2 really does equal 4 regardless of how that makes us feel. She was trying to make a point, an arguable point, artists are individuals who create something more or less de novo rather than snap a photo of something in an arsty way and call it art.

Because she is someone who believed what she said and was willing to make the argument, some think she was a "zealot." I think she is always worth reading. She was very prescient in many ways. I have a collection of newspaper columns that she wrote about the future of medicine in the USA back in the 1960's. At the time, people like Phil Donahue turned gray listening to her yet 50 years later she could not have been more accurate.

I have never felt the need to insult Ayn Rand in a personal way, but I do think her philosophy is rather one dimensional and incomplete. When I read her books, while a bit long and pedantic, there was always an element that was left missing - something like some concept hanging there she never addressed. A friend told me Objectivism could never explain child raising and other relatively selfless things - but that isn't all of it.

Anyway, when I was about 16 I read Atlas Shrugged and then The Fountainhead, though it was great, but more or less rejected it by the time I was 18. A lot of folks at University who followed her philosophy were so adamant it bordered on religious in my estimation.

 

[Bromo33333]

Good to Ayn Rand's name pop up on the forum. She has an uncanny ability to make people squirm, even from her grave. I think she is one of the few lucid people to come out of the previous century. I have not read the "Lexicon" in many years but I think she was trying to make a point that 2 + 2 really does equal 4 regardless of how that makes us feel. She was trying to make a point, an arguable point, artists are individuals who create something more or less de novo rather than snap a photo of something in an arsty way and call it art.

However, she is also a person who would say that the artist cannot and should not accept others' or the 'collective' option on what they do. Hence her declaring photography not-art is a contradiction.

 

[jstraw]

Best way to get over her is to watch the film version of The Fountainhead...the most egregious dreck film stock was ever wasted upon. She thought the adaptation was just great.

 

[Peter De Smidt]

That was Plato's argument against all art: that is a falsehood and thus can mislead and hurt a society based on truth.
I agree with him, but with a twist: I've used his idea to support modern art in a paper and go against representationalist art.
Art is not a representation of another thing, art is itself.

To a large extent, I agree. Something certainly doesn't need to be representational to be good art. On the other hand, some art is representational (or symbolic), and it too can be good.

Plato thought that only that which is unchanging is truly real, and since everything in the world of the senses is constantly changing (Heraclitus's "you can't step into the same river twice"), this world isn't truly real. It is only a shadow of the real, which is the unchanging world of abstract forms.

Consider triangles. No triangle made in this world lasts forever, nor is it a perfect triangle, as none of it's lines are perfectly straight.... Triangularity, the essence of what it is to be a triangle, on the other hand, is always the same; and it is eternal. A photograph, then, is only an imperfect representation of an imperfect representation--it's a shadow of a shadow.

Observation #1: Plato's metaphysics aren't all that plausible, and there are some serious problems that his kind of account faces. For example, Plato thought that things in this world gain their properties by participating in specific forms. Something, for example, is beautiful to the extent that it participates in the form Beauty. Well, what does this 'participation' amount to? It's rather opaque.

Observation #2: Art can symbolize the universal. I'm sure we can all think of pictures that go beyond the mere particular and seem to stand for something widespread and fundamental. That's not just little Jimmy, that pictures represents Childhood ... So even if Plato is right that that which is more universal is more real, it's possible for art to be more real, even with his metaphysics, than the natural objects in the world.

In any case any theory of what is real, i.e. a metaphysics, will rest on some questionable assumptions. (If you don't agree, try specifying a metaphysics that does not. For example, in your metaphysics does a cause have to come before it's effect? A metaphysics will have to have answer that question, but either answer is questionable.) It follows that any claims made on the basis of that metaphysics will only be as good as it's fundamental assumptions, and since at least some of these assumptions are questionable, any pronouncements made on it's basis are at least as questionable.

I've come across some Ayn Rand's positions from time-to-time. Nothing I've seen indicates that it's worth any serious study.

 

[Peter De Smidt]

A friend told me Objectivism could never explain child raising and other relatively selfless things - but that isn't all of it.

There are some serious questions about the possibility of altruism. See Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene.

 

[jeroldharter]

Best way to get over her is to watch the film version of The Fountainhead...the most egregious dreck film stock was ever wasted upon. She thought the adaptation was just great.

I thought the film was great. I wish someone would make a film or mini-series out of Atlas Shrugged.

When people say: "I liked that when I was 18 but ..." I get the idea. I remember that when I was 18 I read Mother Jones and the Utne Reader.

 

[Bromo33333]

There are some serious questions about the possibility of altruism. See Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene.

I have done so - while he has a lot of interesting thoughts - I don't see it shoring up objectivism - simply because if you were to completely buy into Dawkin's memes and genes - a parent propogating itself is submission to the collective - and one's personal will to the species. Even if true, not particularly Objectivist. Like I said, I got over it when I was about 18.

 

[Allen Friday]

EVERY single time I've heard ART defined, an exception to the def. leaps to mind. Unless the defitions are so broad and vague, that NOTHING is excluded.

Good point.

For those who have not read it, I recommend "The Art Question," by Nigel Warburton. I reproduce here the first paragraph from the last chapter, just to pique your interest:

"So far in this book I've examined a range of philosophical attempts to define art. These have included Clive Bell's formalism, R.G. Collingwood's expressionism, Wittgensteinian denials of the possibility of definition, George Dickie's Institutional Theory and Jerrold Levinson's intentional-historical definitions. All of these theories are flawed to some extent. Where does that leave us?"

For Warburton's answer, you'll have to read the book.

Allen

 

[Bromo33333]

Good point.

For those who have not read it, I recommend "The Art Question," by Nigel Warburton. I reproduce here the first paragraph from the last chapter, just to pique your interest:

"So far in this book I've examined a range of philosophical attempts to define art. These have included Clive Bell's formalism, R.G. Collingwood's expressionism, Wittgensteinian denials of the possibility of definition, George Dickie's Institutional Theory and Jerrold Levinson's intentional-historical definitions. All of these theories are flawed to some extent. Where does that leave us?"

For Warburton's answer, you'll have to read the book.

Allen

I will have to pick it up.

A funny though comes to mind - if we cannot define it, then it must not exist. Therefore there is no art, and no not-art. All those prints are delusions, APUG doubly so. Ahhhh ... sweet hallucination!

 

[Will S]

Now, you have to remember that Miss Rand wrote this before the soaring prices of photographs that we have witnessed in the last few years. I'm sure that if photographs in her day went for millions of dollars photography would be ART!

 

[Bromo33333]

Now, you have to remember that Miss Rand wrote this before the soaring prices of photographs that we have witnessed in the last few years. I'm sure that if photographs in her day went for millions of dollars photography would be ART!

Heh - that is kind of funny. I suppose you are right - perhaps we haven't been intellectually honest.

Price < $1000 "not art" - Illustration at best, Dogs playing poker at worst
Price $1000+ "definitely art"
Price > $10,000 "important work" at best, something mildly unpleasant or in poor taste at worst
Price > $100,000 "earth shaking masterpiece" at best, Dogs Playing Poker at worst.
Price > $1,000,000 "VanGogh" or feces suspended in embalming fluid.

This has the ring of truth. I think we have it!

 

[Drew B.]

I thought the film was great. I wish someone would make a film or mini-series out of Atlas Shrugged. Reader.

I agree.

Yes, photography is technical in nature....the important thing is we make art...art. Dare I say..." taking a photograph, and doctoring it up either in the darkroom or w/photoshop, probably makes it more like what comes under the general definition of art.

personally, I think many of the (especially) b&w photographs found in apug's gallery, that haven't been doctored up, art. Art is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Donald Miller]

I would insert this observation at this point. Just because someone, MOMA in this case, says that "photography is art" does not automatically translate to "all photography is art".