Why did Ayn Rand rage over abstract art? [Archive]

Jimmie Higgins

24th April 2011, 03:47

I like generally constructivism too, I also generally don't like neo-classicalist realism/socialist realism while I do like American naturalist realism and neo-realism in film. I also generally am not interested in abstract mid-20th century art and might actually agree with Rand on some pieces.

The problem, I think, is promoting art as only having ideological value. Art can always be critiqued politically (and should be) but not "denounced" or restricted as an art movement or whatnot. Trying to "control" art or interpretations of it, is impossible, so it generally comes down to controlling people's behavior when some art is labeled as treasonous or degenerate or ideologically flawed.

I strongly disagree with much of the assumptions of post-modernist art, but a lot of it - especially early stuff - is fantastic and it would be a crime for people not to see it. What can be more backwards politically than church-funded art of the middle ages... but some of it actually transcends the political assumptions of the day and is valuable to all of humanity beyond the surface subject of some bible story. Shakespeare has plays justifying monarchy, but they are not considered reactionary plays because those politics are known to be due to conditions that he was living in and other aspects of the works attributed to him are still valuable and speak to human experiences and emotions beyond the Elizabethan world.

sokpupet

24th April 2011, 03:49

Princess Luna

24th April 2011, 04:00

Agent Ducky

24th April 2011, 04:00

To me, the idea of revolution is about fabricating a new reality, looking past not only the the decaying carcass of the previous system but also the more mundane elements of the transformation from said system. You create in culture and art an ethos and aesthetic that transcends and points towards something greater.

"Be realistic, demand the impossible!" :che:

Tim Finnegan

24th April 2011, 04:17

my faith in humanity died a little when i found this was a famous piece of art
Then you clearly don't understand Suprematism, or this paintings' Manifesto-like role within the movement.

agnixie

24th April 2011, 04:17

my faith in humanity died a little when i found this was a famous piece of art
that said, i have seen some good abstract art

Malevich will eat you raw while pontificating about why, exactly, everyone else are idiots ;)

L.A.P.

24th April 2011, 05:55

my faith in humanity died a little when i found this was a famous piece of art
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Black_Square.jpg/607px-Black_Square.jpg
that said, i have seen some good abstract art

I don't get what's so bad about it, I think just because it didn't fit the narrow standard of "didn't require enough skill" doesn't necessarily mean it was a bad piece of art.

RED DAVE

24th April 2011, 06:52

Ayn Rand spent her life deploring the New Deal, Social Security, the Great Society and every other form of government aid to the poor and elderly ended up taking government handouts in the form of Social Security and almost certainly Medicare, too under the name of Ann O'Connor.

Just another "Do as I say; not as I do" hypocrite. :rolleyes:I think that she just as easily could have raged over realism or anything else. Her problem was that abstract and nonrealistic painting waere broadly, identified with the left and liberalism. Plus the abstract expressionists were getting a lot of press and were famous, and the early and mid-50s, despite The Fountainhead (book and movie) and her McCarthyite testimony, she wasn't famous. It's that that she couldn't stand.

Her favorite living author was the right-wing, sadistic Mickey Spillane. Her writing on Spillane reads like a parody of literary criticism.

RED DAVE

Invader Zim

24th April 2011, 18:55

I'm not sure why she raged over abstract art but drawing pictures of actual stuff does require more skill than drawing pictures of random colors. I would say very few works of abstract art have any artistic merit.

It is difficult to put into words how wrong this idiotic statement is. Just because something attempts to represent an idea in a manner which you do not like does not imply that it did not require technical skill, talent and ingenuity to produce.

manic expression

24th April 2011, 22:58

Malevich will eat you raw while pontificating about why, exactly, everyone else are idiots ;)
No, Malevich will probably paint some square with a sprinkle of faux-Christian spirituality thrown in and do nothing for art in the process. Kandinsky, on the other hand, will create beautiful works of art. So will Delaunay. Just because it's abstract doesn't mean it's inherently good...Malevich was innovative to an extent but he never did much beyond that.

IMO, abstract art can be great, but it only gets you so far. By the time "modernism" had gotten to Pollock, it had reached its inevitable conclusion. Then came pop art, which was modernism poking fun at its own dead-end. Now we have an endless string of installations that no one actually likes. Representational art needs to be brought back.

Anyway, I don't see a very strong relationship between politics and artistic tendency. Abstract artists were left-leaning, but that's only a narrative of the society they lived in (socialism was "in" for intellectual circles after WWI). The Futurists, who were definitely part of the avant-garde, were in some instances pro-fascist IIRC.

gorillafuck

25th April 2011, 01:34

I don't get what's so bad about it, I think just because it didn't fit the narrow standard of "didn't require enough skill" doesn't necessarily mean it was a bad piece of art.Yeah but in the opinion of many, myself included, it's boring as shit.

La Comédie Noire

25th April 2011, 01:38

LOL you should see the part in the Fountainhead where she takes a cheap shot at James Joyce and the other modernists.

Rooster

25th April 2011, 01:41

I prefer Reinhardt to be honest

http://www.artst.org/albums/abstract-expressionism/ad_reinhardt/mia_6833e_ad_reinhardt_1167828717.jpg

And I prefer Rothko over Reinhardt

http://www.shuchter.com/z_outpost186/images/08Rothko-763501.jpg

I have no idea why Rand opposed abstract art. I do think it might have been because of it's slight association with the left and what stuff like that. I don't know if this is related or not (and I doubt it) but I was watching a documentary and it said something like "You could say that the Third Reich was a reaction against modern art". I can't for the life of me remember his reasoning.

Thirsty Crow

25th April 2011, 01:56

I don't get what's so bad about it, I think just because it didn't fit the narrow standard of "didn't require enough skill" doesn't necessarily mean it was a bad piece of art.

What's so bad about it is that this work does not conform to a certain socially constructed and "disseminated" view on what constitutes art. It was precisely this viewpoint that the avant-garde movements attacked virulently (some favourable views upon this "attack" have invoked notions of inherently bourgeois nature of the dominant "definition" of art; while there are arguments to support this view, I cannot but conclude that Gyorgy Lukacs was also right, in some aspects, when condemning avant-garde art - literature, in his case; but his argument is even harder to verify)

Now, if I were to choose between an exhibition of, let's stick with this example, Malevich and Chagall (who is more "conservative"), I'd definitely choose Chagall (one of my favourite visual artists, incidentally :D). But I sure as hell wouldn't condemn "abstract painting" - it's a matter of taste and preference.

L.A.P.

26th April 2011, 22:47

Yeah but in the opinion of many, myself included, it's boring as shit.

See but that's how I feel about most realist art, it's boring and obvious.

Minima

25th May 2011, 20:52

Simplistically put,

Ayn rand claims a romantic heritage.

"Romanticism is the conceptual school of art. It deals, not with the random trivia of the day, but with the timeless, fundamental, universal problems and values of human existence. It does not record or photograph; it creates and projects. It is concerned—in the words of Aristotle—not with things as they are, but with things as they might be and ought to be."

"What the Romanticists brought to art was the primacy of values, an element that had been missing in the stale, arid, third- and fourth-hand (and rate) repetitions of the Classicists’ formula-copying. Values (and value-judgments) are the source of emotions; a great deal of emotional intensity was projected in the work of the Romanticists and in the reactions of their audiences, as well as a great deal of color, imagination, originality, excitement and all the other consequences of a value-oriented view of life. This emotional element was the most easily perceivable characteristic of the new movement and it was taken as its defining characteristic, without deeper inquiry." (Rand's The Romantic Manifesto)

...How wacky, considering her claim of a "new objectivism"

Irrelevant of the fact that I would consider this a horrible representation of Romanticism, (some strains of) Modernism would indeed challenge these assertions!

Therein would lie Rand's beef with modernism!

Hit The North

25th May 2011, 20:58

From what i can tell, Ayn Rand hated stuff she didn't understand - and as a renowned autistic, that was quite a lot of stuff.

blake 3:17

25th May 2011, 21:44

It was precisely this viewpoint that the avant-garde movements attacked virulently (some favourable views upon this "attack" have invoked notions of inherently bourgeois nature of the dominant "definition" of art; while there are arguments to support this view, I cannot but conclude that Gyorgy Lukacs was also right, in some aspects, when condemning avant-garde art - literature, in his case; but his argument is even harder to verify)

Art v craft? Or something else -- a kind of journalism, observation, etc which is related to art, craft and science.

As for visual art, Lukacs pretty consistently dismissed or ignored it.

Raymond Williams or John Berger are of much more interest.

Тачанка

25th May 2011, 21:55

From what i can tell, Ayn Rand hated stuff she didn't understand - and as a renowned autistic, that was quite a lot of stuff.

Using "autistic" as an insult is inappropriate and against the rules, I believe...

She's still mad though.

Sir Comradical

25th May 2011, 23:28

And I prefer Rothko over Reinhardt

http://www.shuchter.com/z_outpost186/images/08Rothko-763501.jpg

Fuck is that?

Hit The North

25th May 2011, 23:29

Using "autistic" as an insult is inappropriate and against the rules, I believe...

A fair point, but I wasn't using the term as an insult. Her work, her attitude to those around her, her close relations, were all marked by a lack of empathetic reasoning - a classic symptom of autism.

L.A.P.

26th May 2011, 01:12

were all marked by a lack of empathetic reasoning - a classic symptom of autism.

This is wrong. I have reason to believe that I very well could have aspergers and so do several others on this board have some form of autism. A lack of demonstrated empathy is a symptom of autism, not selfishness and narcissism.

Kléber

26th May 2011, 05:44

People with autism can empathize with others and demonstrate it, autism is a spectrum disorder that includes many different conditions. A couple users on this forum have said they were diagnosed with some form of autism and they still care about the working class and their community. It's an insult to liken everyone w/autism to some misanthropic counter-revolutionary blowhard based on outdated stereotypes.

Johnny Kerosene

26th May 2011, 05:51

Fuck is that?

It's cool as fuck. It's like black anarchisty part is slowing overtaking the Red, part, and eventually it will be all black.

Hit The North

26th May 2011, 09:52

This is wrong. I have reason to believe that I very well could have aspergers and so do several others on this board have some form of autism. A lack of demonstrated empathy is a symptom of autism, not selfishness and narcissism.

People with autism can empathize with others and demonstrate it, autism is a spectrum disorder that includes many different conditions. A couple users on this forum have said they were diagnosed with some form of autism and they still care about the working class and their community. It's an insult to liken everyone w/autism to some misanthropic counter-revolutionary blowhard based on outdated stereotypes.

Sorry, guys, I'm not trying to stigmatise anyone here, and my comment was more of a throw away. However, accepting that autism is a spectrum disorder including different conditions, there is also evidence that a lack of cognitive and affective empathy is symptomatic of some conditions within the spectrum. Even ARC agree with this:

http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/research/project.asp?id=1

And this is supported by other experts:

And Dr Michael Isaac, of Lewisham University Hospital in London, said that empathy was something that could be learned to an extent in some people who exhibit autistic-like behaviour.

He stated that this was possible, "if you are explicitly taught - if you are given a series of quite simple rules.
"For example, a lot of what we do is based on imitation. If somebody rises to get up and go, it's almost an automatic response to get up and rise as well... You can learn, to a large degree, to simulate empathy."

However, he added that this was not possible for "the truly autistic person", as for them another person "doesn't exist at all".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3690763.stm

Kléber

27th May 2011, 00:06

I'm sorry if I sounded hostile, but I know from experience that those quacks are wrong. People with autism do have difficulty communicating - but that does not mean that they can't empathize with others, nor that every expression of empathy they make is some fake "learned behavior" (what a load of crap! as if people without autism are born fully socialized, capable of telling jokes and holding conversations upon emerging from the womb!). Obviously a "truly autistic person" who can not communicate verbally at all can also not communicate feelings of empathy to the satisfaction of non-telepathic researchers. You can't look inside their head just because they failed some test and therefore assume there is not a full human being behind the misfiring synapses. People with autism have wildly varying personalities, just like all other people; some are spoiled brats, some prefer to sit in a corner all day thinking to themselves, some are extroverts who couldn't survive without human interaction, and some are the nicest and most empathetic people you could ever meet in your life. Ayn Rand was simply not autistic - she may have been a terrible writer, but she could communicate her ideas and feelings fine, and we know what an ugly person she was inside.

Rooster

27th May 2011, 00:19

Fuck is that?

It's paint on canvas. Some people like realistic depictions of external real life, others just like the seeing the actual paint, the colours and the texture. Personally, I enjoy the latter. I think the former became pointless once photography and film hit the scene, it allowed painting to be freed up a lot more. I think this sort of thing allowed more people to express theirselves without feeling like they're being looked down upon. You, know, people who just like the tactile sensation of painting.

Honggweilo

31st May 2011, 07:31

For a frigid objectivist moralist, who promoted the "creative class" right to their own "labour", *****ing about abstract art really contradicts her own philosphy. How can someone who focusses so much on the individual concept of morality, have so much criticism on abstract art because its not "understandable for a majority of people", that sounds pretty much like the opposite of objectivism.

Dont get me wrong, alot of abstract contemporary art is really shitty imho, but thats just personal taste. You can expres yourself in any way you want, but for art to matter, is for art to actually get a message across. Thats how it leaves a mark. The Suprematism movement was a great philosphy that revolutionized practical arts, espacially graphic design (see their influence on "De Stijl" and "Bauhaus" movements), not so much esthetically, but its philosophy for bringing applied sciences and psychology in to consideration to get your point across. Esthetically, most suprematist works look like shit though :p.

i think the big difference lies in the impact of art, not in its form. Art can only be judged on the impact it has. Suprematist were revolutionairy and anti-reactionairy in that sence, and had major influence on developing practiced art forms liek typography and graphic design. But some contemporary post-modernist hipster artmajor douchebags smudging shit and catfood on a piece of cardboard and calling it abstract art, is just pretentious attentionwhoring. I guess what im trying to say is that its much better to objectively judge art on its impact on reality, then just on its esthetic or conceptual value.

But i guess einzelganger headcases like ayn rand, who focussed so much on her own subjective view of reality, didnt see the need for a reality check by objective. reality. Oh the irony

Im thinking of beating these kind of pretentious artmajors in the face, and smear their bloody noses onto Ipad box and calling it "the bloody dialectical synthesis of post modern mediocracy". Now thats abstract art with impact. that is, the impact of my foot in their face and the esthetical satisfaction i get from it.

/rant (end of rant, see what i did there? its funny because ayn rand... ok ill stop now)

Rooster

1st June 2011, 12:21

Wait... is this because.... abstract art is subjective? :O

blake 3:17

7th June 2011, 03:57

Dont get me wrong, alot of abstract contemporary art is really shitty imho, but thats just personal taste

What contemporary abstract art did you have in mind?

The Teacher

7th June 2011, 04:14

Why do we care what Ran thought of anything? Besides, the point is to express your creative will or something and not care what other people think? Got I hate talking about this person. Terrible writer.

Honggweilo

7th June 2011, 07:07

What contemporary abstract art did you have in mind?

post modern jackson pollock, and karel appel ripoffs. While the originals might had a certain appeal to its concept, i find it losses all meaning in this time and age, if some snobby artmajor just exactly clones it (instead of improving on it). I dont mind people still doing this, but ffs i cant respect someone who gets a liberal art degree just by shitting paint on a piece of paper for the sake of returning to some fetal simplicity. Go ahead, express yourself, but dont expect me to like your paint-on-canvas bukakke. I've seen alot of creative and groundbreaking people get rejected to artschools, while these snobby simplistic inspireless middle class parental paracites get put on a fucking pedestal. I've seen much more inspiring work in bathroom stalls.

maybe the best example of what i mean

Interior Semiotics "aka" im smearing dogfood in my cooch, can i haz a degree nao?
I9lmvX00TLY

If i put my johnson into a hole at a bathroom stall, and call it "exterior cockophonics", fabricating some story about the misogynistic "genitalisation" of corporate society, can i get a liberal arts degree too? instead of working my ass of for 4 years? Im just sayin

manic expression

7th June 2011, 11:17

It's paint on canvas. Some people like realistic depictions of external real life, others just like the seeing the actual paint, the colours and the texture. Personally, I enjoy the latter. I think the former became pointless once photography and film hit the scene, it allowed painting to be freed up a lot more. I think this sort of thing allowed more people to express theirselves without feeling like they're being looked down upon. You, know, people who just like the tactile sensation of painting.
Very much to the contrary, the emergence of the "art world", a development essentially synonymous with non-representative art, has led to a great many people being looked down upon. Namely, most of humanity, as well as any artist who goes against the grain. Clement Greenberg basically said that most people were "kitsch", that they would never "get it" when it came to "good art" and that artists need not give a sh*t about what anyone outside their circle thinks of their work. Well, that's precisely what the art world does, ignore what people have to say and give each other awards for putting a glass of water on a shelf and calling it an oak tree. It gets even more flippantly elitist when you look at modernist and "deconstructivist" architecture (*shivers*).

Further, the art world is the picture of intolerance. Don't think a shark cut in half is art? Screw you. Don't think an unmade bed sitting in the middle of a museum is worthwhile? Screw you. Don't worship at the altar of Jeff Koons (who freely admits that he doesn't draw much inspiration from art...but does from cereal boxes and such)? Screw you. The art world, far from promoting expression, is actually actively guarded against anyone who expresses anything at all.

But the most important thing is that "the tactile sensation of painting" isn't actually painting...just like randomly smashing a keyboard isn't actually writing. Saying that you want to see the "actual paint, the colors and the texture" is a comment on materials, not on art. Artists do things with raw materials in order to create something greater than the sum of its parts.

If i put my johnson into a hole at a bathroom stall, and call it "exterior cockophonics", fabricating some story about the misogynistic "genitalisation" of corporate society, can i get a liberal arts degree too? instead of working my ass of for 4 years? Im just sayin
:lol: So, so true. What a joke "art" has become.

Tim Finnegan

7th June 2011, 16:27

It gets even more flippantly elitist when you look at modernist and "deconstructivist" architecture (*shivers*).
You realise that those two movements are only very loosely related, don't you? Or are you one of those people who uses "modern" as a slightly abbreviated way of saving "new and threatening"? :confused:

And is it worth pointing out that the early Soviet Union was, until the Stalinist cultural reaction, the world's leading light in modernist architecture? You should probably read into some of the architectural manifestos surrounding the Communist movement before you start making snide remarks about a "modernism" which you quite clearly do not comprehend. Maybe start with Melnikov and the constructivists, they're a good bunch.

Honggweilo

7th June 2011, 17:45

You realise that those two movements are only very loosely related, don't you? Or are you one of those people who uses "modern" as a slightly abbreviated way of saving "new and threatening"? :confused:

And is it worth pointing out that the early Soviet Union was, until the Stalinist cultural reaction, the world's leading light in modernist architecture? You should probably read into some of the architectural manifestos surrounding the Communist movement before you start making snide remarks about a "modernism" which you quite clearly do not comprehend. Maybe start with Melnikov and the constructivists, they're a good bunch.

I dont get this whole fabrication about how constructivist and other modern art forms were completely repressed during the 30's in the SU. Most of these artforms were a major part in soviet culture throughout its history, and the "suppression" of art had more to do with the internal crisis/chaos of the 30's after years of civil war then it had to do with specifically attacking "modern art". There was no massive iconoclasm, like for example in the height of the chinese cultural revolution. Most art funding was halted due to the relocation of resources.

Hebrew Hammer

7th June 2011, 18:10

I never got why she has such a problem with abstract art and only narrowed her taste to romantic realism and also acting like it was objective fact. Just because she had a fucked up idea of "objective reality" doesn't mean that art should only represent things the way they are, it just doesn't make any sense. She's so god damn stupid I can't take it.

My guess would be that Abstractionist art and other various advant-guarde artistic schools were tied with leftist politics/people and reflected these ideals and aims.

Hebrew Hammer

7th June 2011, 18:18

my faith in humanity died a little when i found this was a famous piece of art
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Black_Square.jpg/607px-Black_Square.jpg
that said, i have seen some good abstract art

I have been to his chapel and I have seen Rothko's work and I dig it, perhaps you don't understand it. Abstractionism tops.

Tim Finnegan

7th June 2011, 18:42

I dont get this whole fabrication about how constructivist and other modern art forms were completely repressed during the 30's in the SU. Most of these artforms were a major part in soviet culture throughout its history, and the "suppression" of art had more to do with the internal crisis/chaos of the 30's after years of civil war then it had to do with specifically attacking "modern art". There was no massive iconoclasm, like for example in the height of the chinese cultural revolution. Most art funding was halted due to the relocation of resources.
I didn't say "repression", I said "cultural reaction". That's different.

blake 3:17

7th June 2011, 21:19

post modern jackson pollock, and karel appel ripoffs. While the originals might had a certain appeal to its concept, i find it losses all meaning in this time and age, if some snobby artmajor just exactly clones it (instead of improving on it).

I've seen a fair number of pomo Pollock cops, which kinda makes sense given the nature of his art -- the Last Authenticity or whatever. Wouldn't mind more Appel ripoffs but maybe they're mostly in kids books, video games and here and there.

I used to get furious at Basquiat ripoffs but then I calmed down.

Did Sherie Levine do Pollock copies? I do recall one NYC based artist making copies of Pollock paintings and then photographing the copies in basements and rubbish yards.

Anyways, neither Levine or Appel were abstract artists.

I tried finding a site/page with the images of the faux Damien Hirst skull put by piles of garbage etc but couldn't find it.

David Shrigley?

Old Mole

7th June 2011, 21:41

The bourgeoisie tend to view the role of art to be that of ornamentation so that people can see how rich they are, how stylish, etc... Because of this the common capitalist is interested in technical skill of the artist, if the artwork is "stylish", if it reminds the viewer of some familiar desirable stuff, if it fits with the furniture. Those with a high accumulation of "social capital" (stupid concept, I know). Be they capitalists or proles, are interested in art as a intellectual exercise. For them, the primary function of art is not to be their property but to be their entertainment. This is of course oppressive to the large majority of the people. The only thing all art have in common is that it is viewed as art by the establishment (dadaist art for example began as an anti-art and then it was integrated into capitalist culture so that it would be acceptable to bourgeois tast and, hence, made into expensive commodities). This means that art is an enemy of the people, just like whatever the bourgeoisie call "economics", or "psychology", "philosophy", "democracy" becomes trash, everything they call art is rotten to the core. Because Ayn Rand is a ultra-reactionary she will of course support the most reactionary in a reactionary field.

manic expression

7th June 2011, 23:22

You realise that those two movements are only very loosely related, don't you? Or are you one of those people who uses "modern" as a slightly abbreviated way of saving "new and threatening"? :confused:
In terms of overlap in practitioners, they are indeed loosely related, but deconstructivist architecture doesn't depart from the main tenets of modernist architecture and follows them quite closely. Namely, deconstructivism is almost always devoid of ornament, favors modern materials (to a fault...why use Australian titanium in Bilbao?), rejects/ignores the architecture of the past, attempts to use materials "honestly" (what that means exactly, no one's actually sure). Sure, deconstructivists tossed out "Less is More" and "Form Follows Function" (although modernists themselves didn't follow that nearly as much as they'd have you believe)...but aside from this they continued working within much of modernism's rulebook.

More to my point, though, both have been absolutely guilty of not respecting the wishes of the public and cavalierly assuming that their circle always knows best. It's an approach summed up concisely by this Guardian commentator, who wrote of Sterling's architecture (http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/apr/02/james-stirling-architecture-exhibition-tate), "The abiding image is of young German and Japanese architects unloading from their coaches, peering in through the great glass wall of Cambridge's History Faculty Building and snapping away frenetically, while students and staff trapped in the cage froze or fried, according to the season."

And is it worth pointing out that the early Soviet Union was, until the Stalinist cultural reaction, the world's leading light in modernist architecture? You should probably read into some of the architectural manifestos surrounding the Communist movement before you start making snide remarks about a "modernism" which you quite clearly do not comprehend. Maybe start with Melnikov and the constructivists, they're a good bunch.We must retain the beautiful, take it as an example, hold on to it, even though it is ‘old.’ Why turn away from real beauty, and discard it for good and all as a starting point for further development, just because it is ‘old.’ Why worship the new as the god to be obeyed, just because it is ‘the new’? That is nonsense, sheer nonsense.

As you can see (http://www.mcg-j.org/english/e-theory/lenin/Lenin-1.html), Lenin was never a big fan of the modernist mindset, either, so it's not like it started with Stlain (I've also read that Trotsky didn't think the constructivists were all that great)...constructivism's greatest hits never got off paper, which should tell you something at least. Anyway, so-called "Early Stalinism" (aka post-constructivism) was a synthesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_518) of constructivist and more classicized tendencies. There wasn't really a "Stalinist reaction" as such, but there was a turn away from modernism (typified by the experience of the "May Brigade" in the early 30's) and a simultaneous evolution to Soviet neo-classicism, which produced some incredible buildings. If there was any "reaction" in the history of Soviet architecture, it was when Khrushchev denounced the so-called "Stalinist" style in 1956.

In general, the politics of modernism tend to the right as much as, if not moreso than the left. One of the real heroes of early modernism has to be the Futurists...not the picture of revolutionary politics. Adolf Loos made his argument against ornament by chauvinistically comparing traditional tattoo practices to criminality. Gropius kicked out one of the professors from the Bauhaus school for being too outspoken a communist (the Bauhaus Manifesto, by the way, is politically vapid on its best day). Van der Rohe worked under the Nazis, hoping to get his style made the official style of the new Germany. Mussolini made the rationalists his preferred architects.

The political record of modernists after WWII is even less impressive. Architecture is intertwined with politics, of course, but it never falls into such neat categories, especially not when it comes to style. All things being equal, the most conservative neo-classicism is not inherently less communist than modernism.

Honggweilo

8th June 2011, 10:50

Great post Manic

speaking about "stalinist rejection of modernism". One of the most prominent architects, if not the most, of modernist and functionalist architecture was and still is an outspoken defender of Stalin, who worked on numerous projected in the pre and post krusthev USSR.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Niemeyer

Red Phalanx

9th June 2011, 18:35

Art is what you can get away with.

Honggweilo

10th June 2011, 15:33

Art is what you can get away with.

So hypothetically, raping your underage neighbourg is also art... :confused:?

DesertRuins

6th October 2011, 19:12

New to RevLeft. Interested in dialogue about art in relation to commodity fetishism. Thought I'd start here ...or should I start a new thread?
Recently Revolutionized as well, so this maybe "passe" for many here. So, relating to this thread for example, would any single work of art be understood basically, fundamentally, and primarily as a form of money, a commodity

I'm going to take this over to the 'Learning' forum.
Bye for now.

Fawkes

29th November 2011, 03:15

Realism is pretty useless for revolutionary purposes. Whether "bourgeois realism" or "socialist realism", they all obscure the fact that they are simply representations of a reality from one individual's perspective (or multiple individuals) while simultaneously aiding in the perpetuation of the society that produced them. They're inherently dictatorial in that their effectiveness lies on the creation of an emotional response within the audience. The audience identifies with characters in the work, and by doing so, it's a lot more difficult for a critical analysis of social relationships to occur. Realism makes you feel, not think. Emotions cause riots. Critical thinking causes revolutions.

Melodrama and self-reflexivity are where it's at.

Also, socialist realism is based largely on the assumption that workers are too stupid to appreciate anti-realist art (and they say we're the pretentious ones :rolleyes:). Fuck that.

Sir Comradical

29th November 2011, 06:26

I think she raged over it because it's mostly shite.

Apoi_Viitor

29th November 2011, 06:59

Ayn Rand's position was that art should portray two things: how an object (society, a specific individual, etc.) is and how it should be.

A Revolutionary Tool

29th November 2011, 07:15

I have been to his chapel and I have seen Rothko's work and I dig it, perhaps you don't understand it. Abstractionism tops.

I didn't get it at all. It's a fucking black square with a white border around it. I find no meaning to that at all.

Tim Finnegan

29th November 2011, 12:04

I didn't get it at all. It's a fucking black square with a white border around it. I find no meaning to that at all.
What do you mean by "meaning", and why is that a necessary facet of a given item of art?

Nox

29th November 2011, 12:18

I never got why she has such a problem with abstract art and only narrowed her taste to romantic realism and also acting like it was objective fact. Just because she had a fucked up idea of "objective reality" doesn't mean that art should only represent things the way they are, it just doesn't make any sense. She's so god damn stupid I can't take it.

It's because she was a fucking idiotic weirdo with no sense of reality

Fopeos

29th November 2011, 13:33

Hitler hated modern art too hmmm......

A Revolutionary Tool

30th November 2011, 03:25

What do you mean by "meaning", and why is that a necessary facet of a given item of art?
Because like other people have said, it's boring as shit. That's a famous piece of art? It's a black square! I don't get it, how is that famous, why is that famous? It doesn't make any sense. People are saying people like Stalin are elitist saying people wouldn't understand that. I totally agree with him though, if I showed that to most people I think they would have the same reaction and say this "art" is fucking stupid.

Maybe Ayn Rand and Stalin "raged" against this "art" because it's shit.

That's just how I feel about that "art".

Tim Finnegan

30th November 2011, 15:55

Because like other people have said, it's boring as shit. That's a famous piece of art? It's a black square! I don't get it, how is that famous, why is that famous? It doesn't make any sense. People are saying people like Stalin are elitist saying people wouldn't understand that. I totally agree with him though, if I showed that to most people I think they would have the same reaction and say this "art" is fucking stupid.

Maybe Ayn Rand and Stalin "raged" against this "art" because it's shit.

That's just how I feel about that "art".
Ah, sorry, I was forgetting that you were the universal and absolute subject, thus the sole arbiter of what is interesting and good, and that the rest of us exist merely as ephemeral reflections of your omnipresent and transhistorical self. You'd think I'd remember something like that, wouldn't you? http://media.bigoo.ws/content/smile/miscellaneous/smile_280.gif

Tenka

30th November 2011, 17:29

I don't get why people take abstract art seriously because in the majority of cases it looks like something someone's child did that they wouldn't even hang on the fridge.

ColonelCossack

30th November 2011, 19:09

Because she was useless.

And it takes one to know one.

Just Kidding.No I'm not.

Yuppie Grinder

30th November 2011, 19:14

I never got why she has such a problem with abstract art and only narrowed her taste to romantic realism and also acting like it was objective fact. Just because she had a fucked up idea of "objective reality" doesn't mean that art should only represent things the way they are, it just doesn't make any sense. She's so god damn stupid I can't take it.
The 20th Century western avant garde was solidly leftist with the exclusion of the early futurists in Italy, who were fascists. That may have something to do with it.

Yuppie Grinder

30th November 2011, 19:20

Also, people who say abstract art doesn't have merit or is easier than realist art, get out of my internet.

Tim Finnegan

30th November 2011, 19:25

I don't get why people take abstract art seriously because in the majority of cases it looks like something someone's child did that they wouldn't even hang on the fridge.
If that's a comment on anything at all, it's on the philistinism of parents, not on the quality of abstract art. :p

#FF0000

30th November 2011, 19:39

itt people who don't understand why aesthetics is a big deal.

honestly i don't either but a philosophy undergrad friend of mine tells me that to understand any given philosopher's view of aesthetics, you have to understand their views on p. much everything else like epistemology etc etc etc

or something

A Revolutionary Tool

30th November 2011, 19:47

Only a bunch of leftist intellectuals could stand around looking at a black square calling it art. Not only calling it art but making it a famous piece of artwork LOL.

Tim Finnegan

30th November 2011, 19:50

Only a bunch of leftist intellectuals could stand around looking at a black square calling it art. Not only calling it art but making it a famous piece of artwork LOL.
And yet anti-intellectuals of all political stripes are able to bring the same criticisms to bear against it. Which one is the more damning observation, I wonder? :rolleyes:

Anyway, would it help if we could define exactly what is meant by "abstract art"? Because taken literally, it encompasses something like these

http://emptyeasel.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/celticknot.jpg http://www.silkroad1.com/items/540722/catphoto.jpg
http://www.patterninislamicart.com/ia/ss/ind_0416.jpg

As well as Malevich's famous square, but I don't get the impression that this is what is actually being discussed.

A Revolutionary Tool

30th November 2011, 20:51

And yet anti-intellectuals of all political stripes are able to bring the same criticisms to bear against it. Which one is the more damning observation, I wonder? :rolleyes:

Anyway, would it help if we could define exactly what is meant by "abstract art"? Because taken literally, it encompasses something like these

http://emptyeasel.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/celticknot.jpg http://www.silkroad1.com/items/540722/catphoto.jpg
http://www.patterninislamicart.com/ia/ss/ind_0416.jpg

As well as Malevich's famous square, but I don't get the impression that this is what is actually being discussed.
Some abstract art can be good. I think some languages by themselves look like art, or like graffiti. But a black square?

One time a user told me his avatar was some famous painting and it was just a triangle and a circle. He acted like I was stupid because I didn't know that it was a painting about the Red Army defeating the White Army. How the fuck was I supposed to know, it's a triangle and a circle, one of which was white and the other being red.

Tim Finnegan

30th November 2011, 20:59

Some abstract art can be good. I think some languages by themselves look like art, or like graffiti. But a black square?
Well, there you go: that's a specific criticism of a specific piece. The sort of generalised statement's that we're seeing in this thread (not from you, though, it must be said) involve a few leaps that nobody seems to care to explain, only the most blatant among them being how this binary distinction between abstraction and representation is formulated.

One time a user told me his avatar was some famous painting and it was just a triangle and a circle. He acted like I was stupid because I didn't know that it was a painting about the Red Army defeating the White Army. How the fuck was I supposed to know, it's a triangle and a circle, one of which was white and the other being red.Beat the Whites With the Red Wedge? It's pretty iconic, yeah, even if this chap seems to have been a bit haughty about it. But I don't really see what that has to do with anything...?

ColonelCossack

4th December 2011, 20:17

Some abstract art can be good. I think some languages by themselves look like art, or like graffiti. But a black square?

One time a user told me his avatar was some famous painting and it was just a triangle and a circle. He acted like I was stupid because I didn't know that it was a painting about the Red Army defeating the White Army. How the fuck was I supposed to know, it's a triangle and a circle, one of which was white and the other being red.

I think I've heard of that painting...

WeAreReborn

4th December 2011, 20:43

It isn't just a black square. Look at it closer. It has a lot of different shades and good texture. I personally like it.

tfb

4th December 2011, 21:10

What got me to accept abstract art as a legit thing was watching a documentary on Paul Klee in highschool. Searching for it, I see that there's a documentary about him called The Silence of an Angel, but I'm not sure whether that's the one. It was talking about how everything in his paintings is balanced and it blew my mind to see that everything in his paintings really is perfectly balanced. I'd thought before that abstract artists just started painting random things and weren't using any principles.

There is also some figurative stuff in Klee's art so it could kind of be a gateway to abstract art, if anyone's looking to give it a shot.

Fawkes

7th December 2011, 11:02

That's just how I feel about that "art".

woopdyfuckindoo

Wait, so you're telling me you sat down with an easel and painted a couple of workers in a factory exactly as they appeared? You call that art? So what, you're saying good art is that which most closely and accurately reproduces the exact material world I live in in a completely realistic manner, exactly as it appears in real life? That's what you call art?

I don't entirely agree with that, but still, see what I did there ;)

If you don't like it, don't look at/listen/watch it. I and many others are still gonna enjoy it regardless of whether it meets your standards.

edit: and yeah, like taco said, it's no surprise that the vast majority of experimental and avant-garde art movements in the West in the last century have been composed largely of leftists.

La Comédie Noire

7th December 2011, 16:05

I lament the loss of experimentation in writing. I remember I wrote a Joycean like vignette about an alcoholic on a bench in my home town and my teacher told me it was pretentious and I needed to use less elaborate and flowery sentences.

People just have this view of modernist and post modernist art as "hippy college stuff" because of the anti-intellectual backlash that is implicit in the mainstream media.

Alas, I think Ayn Rand did not like abstract art perhaps because she simply did not understand it.

RED DAVE

7th December 2011, 19:09

Only a bunch of leftist intellectuals could stand around looking at a black square calling it art. Not only calling it art but making it a famous piece of artwork LOL.I suggest that before you continue to post in such an ignorant manner you start studying the history of art.

RED DAVE

brigadista

7th December 2011, 20:27

i have been lucky enough to see the original "Guernica" and I can assure you it was one of the most powerful things I have ever seen...:):)

OHumanista

7th December 2011, 22:16

I favor enjoying what you like while refraining to judge the other side and letting people who like that enjoy it too.
I am myself a fan of varied kinds of art either abstract or realist.
Still I do reserve my preferences of course, which are fantastical (as in fantasy) realism, socialist realism and similars.
You don't have to paint a real scene to be realist and have that "flavor. Imagining characters, settings, creatures and etc can be a very important part of the proccess by itself.

manic expression

7th December 2011, 22:38

Anyway, would it help if we could define exactly what is meant by "abstract art"? Because taken literally, it encompasses something like these
Wouldn't those examples fall more under the definition of ornamentation, rather than straight-up artworks? It's one thing to have a pattern as part of a floor or a gate, but it's quite another to paint one within a frame and hang it up in a museum.

If you don't like it, don't look at/listen/watch it. I and many others are still gonna enjoy it regardless of whether it meets your standards.
That's a fair sentiment, but when abstract art starts winning awards and (more importantly in capitalist society) grants at the expense of artists who are actually trying to express themselves in a meaningful and communicable manner, I think there are grounds for some sort of objection.

i have been lucky enough to see the original "Guernica" and I can assure you it was one of the most powerful things I have ever seen...:):)
I do agree that it was most impressive, but I wouldn't call it abstract art.