Ifat Glassman

I'm not sure if you will like what I say, but I believe it can help you. I think you did make an immoral choice back then (by your own standards and understanding at the time) by giving in to fear and letting him have his way, and continuing to do so for the duration of time in which it lasted. I think this is your source of guilt (and perhaps also of fear) - That back then you knew that what he was doing was bad, you knew that the right and just thing to do was to oppose him and put an end to it, and yet you didn't do it. It is very very understandable - you were a child and this was a very scary thing to do, but yet, you know that you had the choice, you should have chose one way but you chose the other and gave in to fear. I once lied about something very big because I was afraid of the consequences if my parents found out - I still feel guilty about it today as I look back. It had no justification, and I knew it back then. I let fear take over me instead of dong the right thing - and I knew it back then as well. What made it worse was that I consciously held honesty as a virtue, and I was honest in everything else I did in my life. Well, what to do? How to face the guilt? Accept it, realize its source, and make sure you make yourself the kind of person you can trust never to make such a choice again. A moral person, a proud person. I am certain now that no matter what happens and what disaster I may cause, I will do the right thing and tell the truth. It does not erase the mark, but it makes it insignificant, because the future is what counts and I know that now I am the person worthy and capable of enjoying it. If the case were that he abused you once but you would oppose him (like tell your parents about it) - I believe you would not have felt so guilty and afraid. I believe the feeling of weakness comes primarily from giving in back then and not from the act itself. Ask yourself if you rely on yourself to have the strength to do the right thing if a similar case happened today. Think of cases from your everyday life when something was scary to do yet right, and consider what you chose: If you constantly choose the right thing, give yourself credit for it, never forget that this is who you are now. If not, simply train yourself to be the person you want to be, a person you rely on to stand up for yourself. Confronting the case and pressing charges was courageous and great - it was a choice to do the right thing despite great fear. Like Larsa wisely said it has the power to break the feeling that it is a personal thing, vs. he is just a freak, rejected by society (and I think he is much worse than a freak, he is a monster, thoroughly evil), and like softwareNerd said - never forget to give yourself credit and feel pride at finding the courage to do this. It is well deserved. Make sure you separate what you did in the past from who you are in the present and who you make yourself to be in the future. Your past decisions are not an inescapable proof of your character, remember that! Who you are in the present is the inescapable proof of who you are. When you trust yourself and value yourself - dealing with external threats becomes much easier. I believe it will be difficult for you to open up to strangers. After something like this, I'd imagine you'd have a great will to keep close everything familiar and safe and stay away from unfamiliar things (new people). I think the way to get over it, if this is a problem, is to make good friends with which you share some personality traits that you like. This way you can see that there are new people out there which you can be intimate with, which are just like you in a way, and which you can enjoy. I think a possible reason for your nightmares is that your consciousness is beginning to wake up after a long time of repression. Your mind wants integration, it wants to be whole, which means: putting the past to rest. Accepting its existence, and putting it behind, but still registering that it existed. It's not easy to fully enjoy the present when one knows that at any moment one also ignores a huge chunk of one's life as if it never happened. There is no need to keep it in mind either though. I believe the right thing to do is to briefly as possible go over your repressed memories, without going into details - just tell yourself that they were real, they did happen, and that's it, once you do that train yourself not to think of them again, to forget as much as possible. They were real, but they don't matter and your goal is to forget all about them (forget - but still recognize that they did happen). That is the appropriate thing to do with bad memories that are no longer relevant to one's life. If you could do this with a therapist, someone you can trust and open up to, I think it would be a great help. I don't think that the way to handle stuff like what you went through are by opening up to the whole world, telling openly every detail. No. This IS a very private matter and you are right to want to keep it private. No one normal, even with a healthy sex life tells everyone what he's doing. I'd imagine some modern psychologist might give you an advice like this, which I think is destructive. One needs to be able to feel safe in the privacy of one's own mind, whether or not one has someone to talk to. This concludes my advice to you. I feel deeply sorry for what you went through and if you're worried about justice - I am sure the worst hell is the one the bastard lives in in his own mind. Not because of guilt - but because a monster like that cannot possibly know the happiness you are capable of. His mind is rotten and that's also how he experiences his life. I wish you full recovery, which you deserve and can have.

This is a blog post I wrote: also available here) Common Sense in ethics What makes "common sense" ideas in ethics common sense? Consider the following examples: Example: Owner of a Pizza place, advertising his store with the following message: "Big chain of Pizzerias cannot produce the same quality of food as our small cozy store. come taste the difference". Then, after a few years he becomes so successful that he opens up a chain of Pizzerias. If he were to advertise it as "Best Pizza ever, we treat every pizza as if it came from our personal home oven" he would be regarded as a phony by people, because he previously claimed it is impossible to produce high quality food in mass production. Why would he be regarded as a phony? Because people realize in a common sense way, that if a principle is true a certain point in time, it should also be true for a later point in time. [An abstraction is true regardless of time] An example showing another aspect: A principle in ethics cannot be true for one man but not for another - it is true as an abstraction for every man. Every kid knows that if it is wrong for others to cheat in a game, it is wrong to cheat in a game, period. For others and for himself. Or if one kid accuses another kid for doing X (like talking during an important class), then it would be hypocritical for the blamer to do X and at the same time preach to someone else that doing X is wrong. A typical response a kid would give to such accusation under the circumstances is: "But you do it too!" The two examples show that it is common sense that an evaluation of an action (as good or bad, just or unjust) cannot be isolated to a single instance - it must be a principle. What makes it "common sense"? To understand it, let's look at how human cognition works in regards to inanimate objects. If one object falls down when you release it from a height, and this happens with every object, then one concludes that objects fall down when released from a height. People would consider a lunatic a person who would go "this objects fall" "and this object falls" "and this object falls" "But what happens with this object? I don't know". In other words, our cognition functions seeking abstractions, generalizations, principles. This is how even the least intelligent (yet still rational) man thinks. Even if all he knows is how to grow oranges, he would still know that all orange trees needs water to grow, that this is the nature of an orange tree as a principle. Deciding on shoulds, on right and wrongs in human behavior, is different than learning that objects fall and more complicated, but nonetheless, it remains the same that if a principle applies to one man, it applies to all men. If it is bad to murder, then it is bad to murder for everyone at every time. What makes this common sense, something that every kid understands, is the fact that our consciousness functions as an abstracting mechanism - this is the way we comprehend reality. Therefore a thieve cannot feel guiltless and still hold that if someone steals his property he's bad. In the back of his mind he knows and feels that if he condemns someone for doing X, then he is bad as well for doing it. A thief therefore has to develop a different view of ethics that would make stealing alright. For example "it's a dog eat dog world. One must steal and kill to survive, it's just a question of who does it better". Such a view makes a justification as a principle for stealing. [as a side note, notice the destructive role this conclusion plays in his life. He will regard thieves as virtuous and seek their company, even though they are the most untrustworthy people out there, he will not have the moral ammunition to blame someone for stealing from him. He basically strips himself off a central principle for survival] He may try to say that other people are bad if they steal from him, yet he is not bad for stealing from others - but then he would go against the very essence of his thinking, of how his mind grasps everything in the world. If X is wrong for men but not for him, even though he's a man, then generalizations as such cannot be trusted. If it is good for others to be happy, why would this mean that it is good for him as well? If a certain medicine is good to cure something for all men, who is to say that it is good for him as well? If it is wrong to grow orange trees without water, who is to say that this applies to any particular orange tree? He says in essence that generalizations about human nature and human behavior are illegitimate. But he cannot escape the fact that his consciousness acts seeking unity of his knowledge. If generaliazing about stealing is wrong, then generalizing as such should be doubted in other cases as well. He will no longer be able to say with conviction "well of course it's good for people to be happy, that is human nature". And since he rejects his ability to form principles in ethics, he is left helpless to survive. He can no longer hope to find a reliable guide for action. How could he? What's good for humanity, what man should do to live a good life can no longer logically apply to him as well. I think most people struggle to explain why things like murder, theft, dishonesty, etc' are bad on principle. The difficulty here is to comprehend that principles are equally valid to human actions as they are for the behavior of any other object or phenomenon. ** Conclusion from all the above: Moral people are those who stay loyal to the understanding that a principle of human action is a principle. In other words, practice what you preach. They may not know why this is right, they may only experience it as a strong emotional conviction, but the fact remains that they stay loyal to the proper method of making conclusions. And the strength of the conviction comes from the fact that they realize that if they desert this method of thinking about ethics, they desert their method of thinking about everything. Seemingly, the man who acts regardless of a principle because he cannot think of a rational explanation why it should be otherwise is the one acting on reason, not on emotions. But this is not true. He acts regardless of his implicit knowledge, which he did not insist on understanding. It would be the equivalent of dismissing the feeling of strong conviction that orange trees need water to grow because he is not yet sure what is the source of the feeling. By far, the more difficult thing to grasp in ethics is why things like stealing, killing, etc' are experienced as bad as common sense. Why these things and not others? The common sense behind that is that without those things life is not possible. If life is not possible, game over, there is nothing more to talk about. If someone came to you and said "Why do you need your house? this is nonsense, I'm taking it away from you", you'd smack the bastard on the head. It would be clear to you that you need your house to survive, and that something that goes against your survival is bad. "Why do you need to be alive? What do you care if I cut your throat?" Such a question would be a sign of lunacy. It is clear to one that living is important, it is important, because without that there is nothing else to experience or regard as important. So in these extreme cases which are easily observable to one, like a fist quickly approaching one's face, one understands implicitly that life is the standard of value - of regarding something as good or bad. The difficulty is in generalizing cases like that to the rest of one's life. Something like lack of a law against stealing seems much further away and less tangible than a knife in proximity to one's throat. This is why, in my opinion, people have a problem explaining why stealing and killing are wrong, even though they are experienced as a common sense thing. A: "Why do we need laws against stealing and killing?" B: "Because that is the only way we can survive as a society" A: "And why is that significant in any way?" B: "Because if it wasn't, you wouldn't be standing here, punk." The last answer of B is the recognition that life is an ultimate value, one that makes all others possible. A question "why is living of any importance?" bypasses the fact that anything that is important is within one's life. No life, nothing to regard as important or non-important. It's like asking "why are questions important?" bypassing the fact that the questioner is asking a question.

I think so. I think the style alone can communicate a wide abstraction, like peace of mind (objects depicted in calm colors and smooth transitions, like this painting I found online), or style can express other things like "observing reality" (high degree of focus on objects) - the abstraction involved is nature of cognition in relation to the world (how it functions). I think the painting of the keys shows something very similar because of the high degree of focus on a single object. If it is very bright, as if colors are shining through, for example: Put aside the subject, the style alone communicates being alive rather than bored. It reflects a sense of life that conceives the world as beautiful and meaningful, something to be enjoyed. (This is so because the colors are very vivid and convey a sense of light). I am not sure what is the abstraction the style shows... but I think it is a wide one, because of the nature of the subject involved (feeling bored or feeling alive, feeling that the world is worth seeing or that there is nothing worth looking at, which is something fundamental in human life).

I need to make one note here. Art is not a study of metaphysics, as in the study of the fundamental nature of the universe. "Pride" for example, is a concept belonging to ethics, not metaphysics. But art presents the nature of things in general (vs. the nature of a specific sack of potatoes, or a specific event in some specific person's life). "Pride" in art describes the nature of man in relation to the world, which is why, as I understand it, Ayn Rand refers to it as a metaphysical abstraction, not an ethical abstraction or whatever. An equivalent from literature would be telling a story of the kind "today I went into the grocery store, the clerk said this and that to me and I had to stand in the line for 20 minutes" or telling a story that deals with fundamentals, such as The Fountainhead (dealing with individualism). The first kind of story is not art, even though it is literature. I got to tell you though, I still find this use of the term "metaphysics" in this context a bit confusing, which is why I took long to reply. Please let me know what you think of this, if you consider it an answer to your question and if you have more questions. I'm glad you asked what you did, I like these kind of questions. Sophia: let me know what you think about my reply to you and if you still disagree with me. <I'm curious>.

Sophia, in the above post I was referring to: What you describe is a study of the artist's psychology, or view of man. You can say that he probably does not see nudity as a bad thing. That doesn't make it art, even though it is a positive thing to have. There is a big difference between knowing that about the artist, and having a piece reflect the message "man is good" by showing him nude (like the sculpture by Michaelangelo). Otherwise, every drawing of some concrete is art. It's not enough to draw something that looks like a man to make the statement "man is good". If it was, then this --> would be art as well. I agree with your interpretation. I think overall the painting is sending a more negative message rather than positive. It could be the exact reverse if the girl looked thrilled by the makeover, or excited about the adult world. Instead she looks at herself displeased and critically, as if saying "I'm not good enough". It captures a certain fundamental state of mind that goes above transition to adulthood. It reflects an approach to oneself in regard to achievement of values. A person could have two opposite approaches about pursuing values - either as a test of his worth or a quest to reaffirm and feed his self esteem. I think the following picture sends essentially the same message: An athlete in the Olympics looking anxious before going on the stadium to perform, while the background shows some emotional attachment to the profession, like framed uniform that belonged to a past great athlete from the same field. The message: Self criticism as a method of actualizing a dream. The opposite message would be a proud athlete who got the second place, but is smiling while looking at the first place stand, as if knowing he'll get it some day. The message: confidence and enjoyment in actualizing one's dream.

"Life is great", "The world is good", "The world is hostile", "Man can succeed in this world", victory, loneliness, loss, self-reflection, pride, man's essence (as rational, or ugly, or humble), safety, Productivity as good, feeling of being lost (in the broad spiritual sense), sex as good (or demeaning), and the list goes on. All of these things represent something general about human nature, about the nature of the world, or about the relation of man to existence, which makes them wide metaphysical abstractions. This is why art involves emotions - intense emotions - because it deals with the deepest things in man's soul, with things central to his/her life. To give an example: if one conceives of oneself as alone in a hostile world, a painting that will reflect that, that would make it real and concretized, will generate a very deep and intense emotional reaction, because such an idea is the widest for that person, it reflects the most major issue in his life as a whole. (I think the graveyard painting is a good example of this idea. Its content is things that represent the end of life, the deserted and corroded human creation [the deserted building], the stormy sky as hostile physical environment, the broken tree branch and the tombstone which fell next to the river, about to be swept away with no one to notice or care. It doesn't show a world without humans - it shows a world where one is isolated from humans, where values don't exist, when things end and corrode. Is summary - loneliness in a bad world). Sophia: I don't agree with you that only good art answers this criteria - every art must answer this criteria to be considered art rather than an exercise in technique, if art is to have an identity.

I find it interesting that it is the opposite with me. Ideas come most easily to me and in abundance. I find it a very good thing to have. For me it is connected with joy of living. I think so because in times when I don't feel that life is great, I also don't get ideas or want to draw. I'm wondering if this is true in general, for everybody. See, I think the reason why I have abundance of ideas is because I find certain things very beautiful and respond intensely to them. I think if I had held my values with less emotional attachment, I would have to whack my brains over every new idea for a painting. Instead, when I start drawing a human figure, I feel strongly about it, and creating a certain expression comes naturally because of it. It's like - the act of drawing and the beginning of putting down a subject on paper triggers the corresponding concept in my mind, which puts me in a certain mood which makes it easy to be creative. For example, I can start by drawing legs, and think that they belong to a human, a woman. That brings to my mind things like lightness of feet, joy, and implicitly - pride, confidence, giving in to a feeling. In other words it brings to my mind the ideal human and how he or she would feel (well, in my case it's usually a she, because that allows me to express feelings which are more personal. This doesn't mean, by the way, that I think of myself as perfect, just that I have such an image in my mind - it reflects my core values, my evaluation of what should be, but it does draw from my experiences and feelings). You could take it one step further and ask; why do some people feel more intensely about their values than others? I don't know, it's a very interesting question, I wish I knew the answer. To continue my reply to the quote: For me the problem is technique (and not ideas): If I don't think I can execute an idea technically well enough I can put it off for a long time or even forget about it. I don't think that's a good decision, thinking about it now. It's better to execute an imperfect thing but yet give birth to your idea than to put it off indefinitely.

Yes, bull's eye. That's exactly what I think as well. An artist can have a certain intention and fail to execute it, or he can have one intention but end up creating something different. For example, he can be a beginner and distort a human figure so badly that if interpreted as serious art (not as part of a study) would objectively be interpreted as presenting man as a distorted being. It's not likely to create something good unintentionally, but I guess that's a possibility in rare cases.

Ayn Rand explains that art serves the function of integrating man's mind - his conceptual faculty and emotional faculty with his senses. (bold emphasis added by me) Art does exactly that - brings widest metaphysical abstractions into perceptual level. If it doesn't - it is not art. Now maybe you folks would like to explain to me what metaphysical abstractions the first drawing of a man I linked concretizes? Please don't say "man", because then every stylized version of a man is art, even a stickman is a stylized presentation of the concept "man".

That's not enough to make something art. If it was, every painted commercial poster would be art too. Art concretizes concepts central to human life. A stylized presentation of a concrete is not art. It is a concrete, not concretization.

Here is another example I thought of to illustrate what makes something art or not... I like the human figure. Suppose I decide to draw it for the purpose of studying anatomy. It looks like nothing more that a lifeless body, since my purpose was study of anatomy. Is it art? I would say no. It is only when I communicate something meaningful about the human figure that it becomes art. Like a facial expression or position communicating something central to human beings. For example: This is a stylized presentation of the human body, undoubtedly chosen by the artist as something valuable to him. But it has no distinctive meaning, and I would not call it art. This is a stylized drawing of a man that expresses a moment of observation, or inquiry, which is an essential cognitive and emotional state. This is art, because it concretizes something meaningful for human life.

Just because an artist selects something for a subject and presents it in some way which is not the same as in reality does not make it art. A painter can choose to paint a smashed can of beans, because he has no idea what he likes and he wants to paint something. He cannot make it fully realistic, so therefore it is art. Would you say this also follows from your description of what is art? If not, where did I get it wrong? I also don't think the pipe is art. It is definitely stylized but it communicates no fundamental idea, nothing meaningful to human life or cognition. I'm not fully sure about this one, though.

Peikoff addresses this in OPAR (Objectivism: the philosophy of Ayn Rand), the book summarizes and explains (to some degree) her philosophy. It's a good place to start. [i shamefully admit that I did not read the book yet, just parts, but it's good. Gives answers.]

Not if the bread is simply copied. *Selective* RE-creation means that the object is stylized, emphasized in a certain meaningful way. Meaningful, like, say, a golden light shining on the part the artist wishes to emphasize - not blue background with purple dots, because it reminds me of the dress I had when I was 5. You're taking a subjective approach. you don't start with a picture and then attach your own connotations to it - that's not an objective way to analyze art. If you see a pair of keys and they remind you of the time your brother scratched your leg with them to teach you a lesson, and you say "oh, this painting represents the evil of mankind" - that is not objective. If you look at the nature of keys - an object that keeps safe, and gives access to a valued property, and you use this fact to interpret a piece, then it is objective.

Also - In the Romantic Manifesto Ayn Rand discusses specifically what is art, in "Art and cognition". She explains it better than I do, she understands the subject completely (unlike me). I recommend reading it. I'll put some quotes from there later on.

No, what you're describing is an IDEA behind a painting, essentially - productiveness, which *would* make it art. I deliberately talked about a RANDOM street scene. I meant a painting of a bread, nothing more. As in, white canvas, and in it a painting of bread, no special stylization. If you want to add a golden light shining on the bread, some golden wheat next to it and a dark wood table, you have an idea going on. Otherwise (without special emphasis on anything), you don't. To throw in some examples: if the bread is painted sliced, and the slices look crisp and fresh - he emphasizes the value of bread as food. If he shows bread next to wheat, he emphasizes bread as a creation of man because he links it to its origin. Adding a dark wood table adds the settings of a home, which emphasizes security, a safe home with the simplest food. If the artist adds abundance of ingredients that could go with bread he is looking at it from the eyes of a chef, celebrating the diversity of creating wonderful tastes. But just a piece of bread without stylization communicated no idea. It is exactly you who is subjective by forcing your connotations on a painting that does not communicate them. Not that this is wrong to do - I think it's a natural thing to think of one's connotations and ideas relating to different objects (people, or scenes), but so long as it is clear that that's what they are, and you don't present it as something that is objectively actually there. Second point here, is that I did not provide any definitions. Maybe you can enjoy it, but it is not an objective interpretation. You essentially project your associations on a painting that does not communicate that idea. I did not define anything, I was describing No, you don't. Keys don't normally look like she showed them. You were not as polite to me when you told me "please learn to distinguish between "I don't like it" and "this is bad" ", before you asked me to demonstrate why it is objectively not art. But please, let's leave it behind, I don't see any value in talking about that.

So here is one drawing that I did from imagination (or memory), with a lot of focus on anatomy. It shows the process of learning I was talking about.

Can you say which conclusions or ideas of his seem right to you but yet seem to contradict Objectivism, or other ideas you have?

Yes, I completely agree. The pleasure is incomparable. There is a way though to use references creatively (few options I noticed): One is if you start with an idea, draw a sketch, and then create or look for a reference to help improve the execution. An artist I admire, Boris Vallejo, uses this method, and his work is great and very creative. I think a reference can help reduce the complexity, like skin tones, light patters (especially if there are multiple light sources). Though I don't think it can ever be as fun as painting purely from imagination (and possibly not as artistically good for what I want to do). The second - (works for me with faces) - is to use the reference mainly for patters of light and shade, but still inventing my own facial features, and change the expression as I like (though it can't change too much else the reference becomes useless). Yes, that's exactly how I feel too. When painting from imagination it's like the rest of the world disappears. Not so when you're putting a lot of focus into the technical part. Yeah, I agree. I found a solution for that. Basically, I have two sets of training: One in which I focus on anatomy, and the other when I tell myself to forget all about it and draw from imagination (using automatized knowledge in anatomy I have acquired). I train myself to have a "flowing creativity" - by that I mean that there are no psychological blocks stopping my ability to express myself. It is very easy to fall into such a trap, like you said, by focusing only on the technical part. An artist that ends up with nothing but technical ability is finished. Then I also do sketches from imagination but purely for anatomy (without artistic content). Then I can compare what I did to reality and see what needs further work. I can notice, for example, that I was unsure how to do the armpit in a certain angle, and then invest in that. Well, here is the thing. If I wanted to draw from models a few years ago when I was doing the rest of my work - I could have done pretty close to what I do now in drawing. I know this because I tried it once, though I never put it on my website, and I'm not even sure where it is anymore. I have improved in skin tones - I don't think I could have done as well in the past. I have some improvement in anatomy too, since I started paying so much attention to it. And it helps to draw realistically. I don't think you can draw very realistically without knowing anatomy (or at least noticing it while drawing) - a surprising discovery to me. It is very hard to get things right without keeping in mind the 3D form and the direction of the light. Her neck appears long because her head is tilted back and the angle of the viewer is somewhat below her head, so you can see more of the neck than you would for a different position. Then again, it is a bit too long even for that position. I think the reasons for that are: 1. Her left side of the head is not portrayed well enough - I didn't give it enough angle and so it changes the way you perceive the position of the head. (I fixed that already, actually). 2. I continues the line of the neck below the shoulder line a bit too much. It's only a bit but it makes a big difference. (Fixed that too meanwhile). I agree, drawing is not life-recording. Changing certain features to something not normally seen has an artistic value. For example: a woman with extraordinarily thin waists - very feminine. Imagine how much less appealing wonderwoman would be if you gave her the usual waist thickness. As for my painting - I actually think Myself was right about the neck - it is (a bit) too thick - it bothered me too at some point but I forgot about it. I'm going to change that too. I really enjoyed this discussion. It's very fun to see another artist feeling about art like I do and having the same thoughts.

I don't know how to make it simpler: He explained why in his first post he did not mention a single good thing. I don't see the point continuing this further, there is nothing I can add. So I'm done with this particular topic.

Alfa, Trebor: I'm reading a great book called "Figure drawing without a model" by Ron Tinner. I highly recommend it. It is full of insights and great tips for a training artist. He really takes a rational approach in analyzing everything - it's great.

It's not just an ability I want to develop to impress myself for me it is an absolute necessity. The reason for that is that a central theme of my art is expression of character through body language - body pose and facial expression. It is only possible to do it spontaneously and fully creatively if you draw it using subconscious content that easily "flows" to you. If I had to stop at every moment and think of the bone structure or look at a model it would mess up the expression of the image/ idea/ feeling I have in mind. It is only by automatizing anatomy that I can fully express my inspiration (like I have in the older paintings) and at the same time do it realistically. I gave a detailed, thorough explanation why I think it is not on post #66 on that thread. If you want to discuss that, you can reply to that post. In fact, it would be better to start it in a new thread. It is also important to rememeber that a definition is not the full picture of a concept. Just because someone creates something according to his metaphysical value judgement still does not make it art. For example, a dance composed of random jerky movements like a jungle ape expresses the artist's M.V.J. (too long to retype), but it is still not art.

I didn't say he was participating. I can only repeat what I already said to answer what I think you're asking: He replied that he did not say a single good thing about my painting because I "posted it as art and not as an exercise" - those are the exact words I used in that thread. This, very straight forwardly, implies that his first post took its form because of the other thread. The fact that his response was sarcastic detract nothing from its being an actual answer describing his reason. Furthermore the fact that he did not have a single good thing to say - that his criticism was only negative also points to the goal (or motive) he explained to me. _____________________ Edit: Addition after more thought: He is obviously against (let's call it) "harsh" criticism - everything he says in regard to my criticism in the other thread points to that. Is it normal then, for someone who has such an opinion of negative review to all of a sudden give someone else a purely negative criticism saying, essentially, that the criticized object is worthless? No, it is psychologicaly impossible, give or take a split personality. Without some additional, special condition such criticism would not be possible for someone who has such high objections to very negative, unconstructive criticisms. Now, I know what you'll be saying (figure of speech). You're going to say that I am psychologizing, that I have no way of knowing what's on his mind. Psychological analysis is not automatically psychologizing. Rational, logical psychological analysis is possible and legitimate. [That by itself is a loaded subject (I can already see the replies outraged that someone can claim to know what another person's motives are) so I prefer to restrict it to this post, or move it to another thread if anyone wishes to discuss it].

Sounds great. I'll definitely look into it.