I walk the Line

[Howard Roark]

He will not be scarred for life, merely repelled and slowed in the process of his understanding. Its true, you have absolutely no obligation to help anyone, but how does it benefit you to take a mans ignorance out of context?

You have every right to expect the best in man, the fully conscious Objective adult. Why do you invest your energy talking to people who are yet unable to understand you?

I have only known about Ayn Rand for 4 years, I may well be considered a child or an immature adult, yet I am conscious enough to argue for the benevolence that Objectivism is capable of fostering.

This is why I brought up the quote about the intelligent child in post#59

I am going to answer for the last time, because this is something that I wanted to clarify in my last comment, but by the time I realized, it was too late to edit my post. The reason why I invested my time and effort in you, is simply because I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, even though most of my answers were not even addressed to you, until you started to bring me up in your comments. In part, I wanted to clarify your misconceptions about me, because I wanted my words to be properly understood by the members of this board that I know or respect. This was never about you. By the way, I learned about Ayn Rand one year ago, and I did it all by myself. When I was repelled and slowed in the process of my understanding, I never put the blame on somebody else. Instead, I ignored the aggressive comments, corrected my approach, and dealt with their hostility by making use of the positive aspects of their arguments, rejecting the rest. Anyway, I just wanted to make that clear. From now on, please stop asking me questions when I say that I am not interested in participating anymore. Thank you, and goodbye.

[Tenderlysharp]

Anyway, I just wanted to make that clear. From now on, please stop asking me questions when I say that I am not interested in participating anymore. Thank you, and goodbye.

I don't mean for my questions to disrespect your desire to leave this conversation. You are under no obligation to respond. I find it interesting that there are about 50 people who look at this thread each time you or I reply. The questions I ask are for anyone who may be inclined to extend the perspective of this conversation.

Ayn Rand wasn't under any obligation to offer perspective to anyone, yet here we are.

One million copies of Ayn Rand's books have been distributed to high schools, and millions of students will read her every year.

Maybe there could be words of waning, an introduction, a prerequisite, a disclaimer to the entrance of these forums what would reduce the amount of misunderstanding and redundancy? Maybe a list of the top ten issues that a novice faces when jumping into the fray.

[Tenderlysharp]

Maybe there could be words of waning, an introduction, a prerequisite, a disclaimer to the entrance of these forums what would reduce the amount of misunderstanding and redundancy? Maybe a list of the top ten issues that a novice faces when jumping into the fray.

I've started a new thread about this in the introductions forum http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.p...c=18978&hl=

[griffinax]

I don't mean for my questions to disrespect your desire to leave this conversation. You are under no obligation to respond. I find it interesting that there are about 50 people who look at this thread each time you or I reply. The questions I ask are for anyone who may be inclined to extend the perspective of this conversation.

Ayn Rand wasn't under any obligation to offer perspective to anyone, yet here we are.

One million copies of Ayn Rand's books have been distributed to high schools, and millions of students will read her every year.

Maybe there could be words of waning, an introduction, a prerequisite, a disclaimer to the entrance of these forums what would reduce the amount of misunderstanding and redundancy? Maybe a list of the top ten issues that a novice faces when jumping into the fray.

From The Romantic Manifesto:

*Since man lives by reshaping his physical background to serve his purpose, since he must first define and then create his values—a rational man needs a concretized projection of these values, an image in whose likeness he will re-shape the world and himself. Art gives him that image; it gives him the experience of seeing the full, immediate, concrete reality of his distant goals.

Since a rational man’s ambition is unlimited, since his pursuit and achievement of values is a lifelong process—and the higher the values, the harder the struggle—he needs a moment, an hour or some period of time in which he can experience the sense of his completed task, the sense of living in a universe where his values have been successfully achieved. It is like a moment of rest, a moment to gain fuel to move farther. Art gives him that fuel; the pleasure of contemplating the objectified reality of one’s own sense of life is the pleasure of feeling what it would be like to live in one’s ideal world.

* Art is man’s metaphysical mirror; what a rational man seeks to see in that mirror is a salute; what an irrational man seeks to see is a justification—even if only a justification of his depravity, as a last convulsion of his betrayed self-esteem.

Between these two extremes, there lies the immense continuum of men of mixed premises—whose sense of life holds unresolved, precariously balanced or openly contradictory elements of reason and unreason—and works of art that reflect these mixtures. Since art is the product of philosophy (and mankind’s philosophy is tragically mixed), most of the world’s art, including some of its greatest examples, falls into this category.

The art pieces in your gallery may be great works of art, but I do not like them at all. Ambiguous and unintelligible shapes and forms, helplessness and mystical concepts, this is not what a rational mind would like to see, this is not what he will value at all.

The initial replies by "Howard Roark" were not an attack on your ability to create, but were simply a sense of surprise due to the mere fact of their acceptance on an Objectivist forum.

I have always marked you defending yourself or your art using as much as plausible rationalizations you could use. Always, in the process, missing the point.

I suggest you to read thoroughly, Philosophy: Who Needs it and The Romantic Manifesto, and if you have already, you have my sympathy.

An unintelligible, amorphous, obscure, indefinite and ambiguous collection of smears on a canvas, which has to be given meaning arbitrarily through an enigmatic code of mysterious symbolism hidden from a rational mind, is definitively not an example of art under Ayn Rand's aesthetic theory.

This sums it up.

[Cole]

Non-objective? What does that mean?

I know this was asked awhile ago and already responded to, but I'd like to clarify and expand on the answer.

Non-objective visual art is art that makes no attempt to recreate anything that exists in reality. Its entire focus is on colors, shapes, brush strokes, etc. Abstract art is art that recreates at least one recognizable object from reality, but does so in an abstracted form; exaggerated shapes, warped outlines, visible brush strokes, etc. Non-objective art is often referred to as "abstract art," but this is a mistake in terms. There must be the representation of a real object in order that object to be abstracted from its real form.

This is an example of non-objective art, this is an example of abstract art, and this is an example of good art.

[John Link]

...and this is an example of beautiful art. (If the image appears small click on it to magnify it.)

John Link

[0096 2251 2110 8105]

Well, maybe if we had dedicated this whole thread solely to that painting from the very beginning we wouldn't had all this discussion in the first place. The thing is...that painting is merely one exception. Look at the rest of the gallery. It's filled with unintelligible smears from top to bottom, and they were listed at the beginning of this thread...almost thirty of them, and there are more. You have to look at the whole picture here, since that is what the topic is about.

Edited April 22, 2010 by 0096 2251 2110 8105

[Steve D'Ippolito]

...and this is an example of beautiful art. (If the image appears small click on it to magnify it.)

John Link

Looks like a map of Newfoundland to me.

EDIT: Full size, it looks like a woman emerging from a map of Newfoundland, when I look at it full size.

Edited April 22, 2010 by Steve D'Ippolito

[Tenderlysharp]

Reading through this thread again I am getting a lot more from it than I originally had. Understanding more Objectivist concepts has added greater meaning to many of the comments. I can see how overly intense my emotional reaction was to Howard Roark's comments. Analyzing myself now it seems I was trying to compensate for my insecurity.