Art History Question Re: Rand
Dwight Decker
20th Century cultural history can straighten out my thinking
on a certain point.
In my casual reading of books and essays from past decades,
I've gotten the distinct impression that there was a now
forgotten cultural battle over such issues as "sentimentality"
and "mediocrity," and Rand's novel The Fountainhead bears traces
of it. Well, the whole point of The Fountainhead is arguably
Roark's refusal to bend to the popular will and build unesthetic
buildings that appeal to mass taste, counterpointed with Gail
Wynand's crowd-pleasing newspaper, with minor examples along
the way such as gifted sculptor Stephen Mallory's crass little
dime-store quality bare-butt baby scupture that he apparently
did in a moment of "If that's what the mob wants, I'll give
it to 'em!" Even as late as Atlas Shrugged, the actress in
Galt's Gulch is quoted as saying she left the outside world
because she kept getting cast as prostitutes or other bad girls
in movies that glorified mediocrity and girls-next-door. (While
Rand deplored mass taste, I should add that her novels do suggest
that if treated as individuals, "common" people can be reasonable:
it's when merged into a mob that that there's trouble.)
But it isn't just Rand. You see something of this in other
writers earlier in the century, particularly ones convinced they
were defending high artistic standards against the rising tide of
barbarism (there's a classic contemporary New York newspaper review
of Disney's Fantasia that heaves with loathing at Disney for
making classical music accessible to people without fine arts
degrees). The five volumes of H. P. Lovecraft's collected letters,
written in the '20s and up to his death in the later '30s, are
filled with pot shots at the vulgar, common tastes of the masses;
he doesn't just condemn "sentimentality" in popular literature,
he always has to call it "mawkish" sentimentality. Other critical
literary observers of the time, "progressive" and "reactionary,"
often say much the same thing, and even to this day, "sentimental"
seems to be the worst pejorative in the critical lexicon.
What's going on here? I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that
we're dealing with the fossilized remains of a dead issue here that
really ought to be cleared away. Times have changed. The state of
"serious" culture is so awful today that what yesterday's purists and
elitists were raging against doesn't look so bad after all. At least
a sentimental artwork, "mawkish" or not, reflects some kind of human
value. I'd sooner hang Mallory's bare-butt baby sculpture on the wall,
no matter how deplorably tasteless, than some modern abstract whatsit
that is cold, sterile, and inhuman. Or to put it another way, Norman
Rockwell may not be perfect, but good golly Miss Molly, look at the
alternative!
How do the Objectivists and non-Objectivists with a better grounding
in art history than I have see this issue?
--Dwight Decker
Jason E Swihart
Dwight Decker <dec...@agcs.com> wrote:
>I'm posting this in the hope that someone well-versed in
>20th Century cultural history can straighten out my thinking
>on a certain point.
[snip]
> In my casual reading of books and essays from past decades,
>I've gotten the distinct impression that there was a now
>forgotten cultural battle over such issues as "sentimentality"
>and "mediocrity," and Rand's novel The Fountainhead bears traces
>of it. Well, the whole point of The Fountainhead is arguably
>Roark's refusal to bend to the popular will and build unesthetic
>buildings that appeal to mass taste, counterpointed with Gail
>Wynand's crowd-pleasing newspaper, with minor examples along
>the way such as gifted sculptor Stephen Mallory's crass little
>dime-store quality bare-butt baby scupture that he apparently
>did in a moment of "If that's what the mob wants, I'll give
>it to 'em!"
[snip]
>While
>Rand deplored mass taste, I should add that her novels do suggest
>that if treated as individuals, "common" people can be reasonable:
>it's when merged into a mob that that there's trouble.)
[snip]
> How do the Objectivists and non-Objectivists with a better grounding
>in art history than I have see this issue?
>
>--Dwight Decker
Well, I have a fair amount of knowledge in art history, but I think the
real answer to your question involves a different understanding of the
art of Ayn Rand than the one you seem to posit here.
To take the Fountainhead, I think it is an incorrect identification to say
that the whole point of that novel is Roark's refusal to bend with the
winds of the culture. Rather, the whole point is WHY he refuses, which is
the vehicle for the theme of this novel: independence as a virtue vs.
dependence as a vice. It's not that Roark refuses to accept popular
tastes, etc. It's that he refuses to put somebody else's judgement ahead
of his own, and that is the essence of independence as Ayn Rand identifies
it.
For artistic reasons I would imagine, Ayn Rand places Roark in a culture
that is deteriorating, so that popular taste IS despicable. This means
that he spends alot of time going against the popular tide and that you
might get the impression that he is fundamentally opposed to popular will
and popular taste. (I would imagine she chose this as a background
because it puts Roark's character in stark relief whereas, if he was in a
culture that was always right, no struggle would occur.)
If you look closely, all the villians in the novel are, as Ms. Rand would
say, second-handers. The dean of the college accepts the convictions he
does, not because he has arrived at them by exercising his own independent
mind, but because they are "traditional". Keating marries Dominique not
because he loves her, but because his mother will be pleased, and he turns
his back on Katie not because she has betrayed him, but because Toohey
doesn't approve. Wynand's downfall is the fact that he has placed his
highest value, his career, in the hands of everyone but himself. I can go
on and on with such examples, but I think my point is illustrated. Only
Roark consistently thinks for himself, chooses his own goals and values
and follows his own judgement. Only Roark has a *first-hand approach to
reality and his own life. (I realize there are other first-handed
characters in the novel, but I'm focusing on Roark to make my point.)
Popular tastes are not debased per se, rather, they are debased because
our culture has given up independence as a popular virtue. With so many
second-handers walking around, it makes sense that the culture is totally
debased and devoid of integrity. If your m.o. is to accept anyone's
conclusions but your own, the result is that the rotten wins out in you.
The reason the rotten wins out is because the rotten leads to clashes with
reality. In such cases, if you have abdicated your independent judgement,
you have no means of correcting your errors, rather, you must accept some
other error to explain your clash with reality. In the long run the
errors will win out since nothing can resolve clashes with reality but an
independent approach to reality, which clashes with your m.o.
The above is a pretty simplistic explanation of the issue. To really
grasp it you need to understand rationality as a virtue, and all of
its corrolary virtues. For a similar chain of reasoning, consider
honesty, the virtue: What happens when you tell a lie to gain a value?
You end up having to enter into a whole chain of lies. Similarly, if you
give up on using your own mind to grasp reality and to choose your values
and actions, then you become a slave to every false conclusion that passes
your way and to power-lusters like Ellsworth Toohey who control men by
controlling their ideas.
You are correct to point out that "common" tastes are fine when held by
individuals and that it is the mob that is the problem--this is
essentially what I have said above. The essence of a mob is a group of
individuals who abdicate their independent thinking minds. In _The
Fountainhead_ and with other similar themes elsewhere in her body of work,
Ayn Rand makes the point that independence IS a virtue and that
second-handedness is a vice.
As for critics, philosophers and intelligentsia who regard popular taste
as necessarily debased (which seems an apt description of the people you
cited apart from Ayn Rand) and therefore deplore movies like Fantasia,
they have not identified that which tastes and values require--
idependence. Had they made this identification they would realize that
values (of which tastes are a subcategory) are not intrinsic nor are they
sullied by the touch of many hands (two conclusions which go hand in
hand).
If what I have said is clear to you, then you will agree that the issue
you raised of yesterday's cultural garbage being today's cultural gold is
really not an issue. If one thinks for oneself and scrupulously works to
define one's values on objective grounds, then garbage is garbage and gold
is gold and all one need do is pursue the latter, which exists today as it
always has, in limited supply.
Jason Swihart
Tim Starr
>20th Century cultural history can straighten out my thinking
>on a certain point.
> In my casual reading of books and essays from past decades,
>I've gotten the distinct impression that there was a now
>forgotten cultural battle over such issues as "sentimentality"
>and "mediocrity," and Rand's novel The Fountainhead bears traces
>of it.
That's also known as "romanticism" versus "naturalism," and Rand devotes
a whole essay to the subject in "The Romantic Manifesto," namely: "What
is Romanticism?" It's quite good, even though some of her claims are
questionable - mostly accidental claims like the allegedly naturalistic
nature of Shakespeare's plays.
>...You see something of this in other
>writers earlier in the century, particularly ones convinced they
>were defending high artistic standards against the rising tide of
>barbarism (there's a classic contemporary New York newspaper review
>of Disney's Fantasia that heaves with loathing at Disney for
>making classical music accessible to people without fine arts
>degrees). The five volumes of H. P. Lovecraft's collected letters,
>written in the '20s and up to his death in the later '30s, are
>filled with pot shots at the vulgar, common tastes of the masses;
>he doesn't just condemn "sentimentality" in popular literature,
>he always has to call it "mawkish" sentimentality. Other critical
>literary observers of the time, "progressive" and "reactionary,"
>often say much the same thing, and even to this day, "sentimental"
>seems to be the worst pejorative in the critical lexicon.
> What's going on here? I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that
>we're dealing with the fossilized remains of a dead issue here that
>really ought to be cleared away.
Chris Tame of the Libertarian Alliance of England argues that there
arose a school of though in aesthetics in reaction against the popular-
ization of romanticism in the late 19th century, which took the stance
that if it could be appreciated by the masses it wasn't good art. This
school became modernism, which eventually came to eschew realism,
representationalism, beauty, or any value or meaning at all in art,
except the annihilation of all such aesthetic values.
Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! Think Universally, Act Selfishly
Assistant Editor: Freedom Network News, the newsletter of ISIL,
The International Society for Individual Liberty,
1800 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 864-0952; FAX: (415) 864-7506; 71034...@compuserve.com
Liberty is the Best Policy - tims...@netcom.com