After my last post, I came up with two keyword searches: Romantic Manifesto and Heroic. Found some good stuff. I was particularly interested in this post: http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?showtopic=22430&#entry281687 where Johnathan13 explains how his painting based on a paint splatter satisfies Rand’s aesthetic criteria, including the “heroic” criterion I referred to in my OP. If one agrees that he has properly applied Rand’s criteria (which I am inclined to do even as I seriously wonder Rand herself would have), then I am satisfied that Randian aesthetics is quite different from the authoritarian Soviet approach to art.