Reply to Fred Seddon: What Does Ayn Rand Have to Do with Who Says That’S Art? Author(S): Michelle Marder Kamhi Source: the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies , Vol

Reply to Fred Seddon: What Does Ayn Rand Have to Do with Who Says That’s Art? Author(s): Michelle Marder Kamhi Source: The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies , Vol. 15, No. 2 (December 2015), pp. 280-286 Published by: Penn State University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jaynrandstud.15.2.0280

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Reply to Fred Seddon

What Does Ayn Rand Have to Do with Who Says That’s Art?

Michelle Marder Kamhi

ABSTRACT: This commentary is in response to Fred Seddon’s review of Who Says That’s Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (December 2014). In addition to answering objections raised in the review about such matters as whether “abstract art” and photography should qualify as “fine art,” it aims to show in what respects the book was influenced by Rand’s thought.

Let me begin by expressing my thanks to Fred Seddon (2014) for his recommendation—in the final paragraph of his review—that readers buy not only Who Says That’s Art? (2014) but also What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand (2000), which I coauthored with Louis Torres. Apart from that recommendation, however, I fear that readers unfamiliar with my work would have little sense of why Who Says That’s Art? was being reviewed in a journal devoted to Rand’s ideas, for nowhere does Seddon indicate their relevance to my thesis. A key aim of this response, therefore, is to show in what ways my book is indebted to Ayn Rand. But first I must note an important bibliographic error: Who Says That’s Art? was incorrectly listed as an “E-book, no bibliography or index” (275). While there is no separate bibliography, all editions of the book contain

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numerous bibliographic endnotes, which serve the same purpose. Moreover, in addition to both Kindle and Epub electronic editions, the book is also available in print, as a fully indexed quality paperback. Now to more substantive matters. Seddon’s initial objection (278) is to my definition of visual art as “imagery that skillfully represents real or imagined people, places, and things in a form expressive of the maker’s temperament, deeply held values, and view of life” (Kamhi 2014, 34). He rightly notes that defining art in terms of imagery precludes abstract work. But his objection ignores the larger context of the definition. My introduction clearly stated that “the concept of art dealt with in this book is that of ‘fine art’ (as distinct from the ‘decorative arts’)” (8). As I noted, the best way to define any concept is to trace it back to its origins (8). Though I didn’t cite Rand on that point, I was in fact following her sage advice in the Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology:

When in doubt about the meaning or the definition of a concept, the best method of clarification is to look for its referents—i.e., to ask oneself: What fact or facts of reality gave rise to this concept? (Rand [1966–67] 1990, 51)

In Chapter 1, I therefore traced the concept of visual “fine art” back to its roots in eighteenth-century European culture, where it referred mainly to painting and sculpture—that is, to the image-making arts (Kamhi 2014, 12–17). In addition, I documented its fundamental kinship to the concept of mimetic art in ancient Greek thought (14–15). I also argued that a similar concept is implicit in non-European cultures, in which painting and sculpture have always served to embody a society’s most important beliefs and values (23–31). I further argued that the largely unprecedented and confusing inclusion of architecture among the otherwise mimetic “fine arts” was based on very flimsy criteria put forward in the introduction to Diderot’s great Encyclopédie, and that it took hold mainly because of that document’s pres- tige, in spite of the evident contradictions of such a classification (17–20)— contradictions which, I should add, troubled even Rand (Torres and Kamhi 2001). Surprisingly, Seddon devotes nearly half of his review (278–79) to critiqu- ing my discussion of “abstract art” in Chapter 3. Yet he ignores the points that I expected would be of greatest interest for Objectivism. In a section titled “Why Was ‘Abstract Art’ Invented?,” I wrote:

To begin with, the abstract pioneers’ total rejection of imagery was rooted in a profoundly irrational impulse. Reacting against what they

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deemed to be the extreme materialism of late-nineteenth-century European culture, they earnestly desired to transcend it. That desire in itself was not irrational, but the form it took was. They attempted to create an entirely new kind of art, based on a series of ill-founded assumptions about the workings of the human mind—assumptions that have since been largely disproven by the findings of modern science (more on which in Chapter 7). (52)

I then presented a brief summary of those assumptions, which I noted were inspired by the quasi-religious cult of Theosophy. At their base was belief in an irreconcilable split between “spirit” and matter—mind and body—coupled with a profoundly anti-individualist animus grounded in an essentially collectivist worldview (52–56, 65–66). Moreover, these artists believed that reason could be replaced with a higher form of consciousness that would, as I stated, “give them effortless insight—immune from error—into the fundamental truths of exis- tence” (53–55). By banishing reference to the material realm in their work, they intended to facilitate this new consciousness, beyond reason (54). Yet they were haunted by the very realistic fear that in the absence of imagery their paint- ings would be perceived as merely “decorative” rather than deeply meaningful (56–57). As I indicated in endnotes, this summary in Who Says That’s Art? was based on a much longer discussion in What Art Is (Torres and Kamhi 2000, 133–46). Ignoring the fundamental considerations outlined in that summary, Seddon instead focuses on a section he refers to as “How Much Like Music Is Painting?” Unfortunately, readers will be unable to find that title, which appeared in early page proofs but was changed to “False Analogy with Music” (corrected proofs were submitted to the journal for checking against the review, but no one caught the change). Seddon’s main objection (279) to this section is I that wrongly “attack” Wassily Kandinsky—a leading pioneer of abstract art—when I claim that he “argued that visual art and musical composition were essentially similar” (57). I refrain from commenting on Seddon’s rather trivial points that Kandinsky, as a nonphilosopher, did not “argue” anything or use the word “essential” (279). The point I was making might have been better expressed as follows: Kandinsky advocated creating visual art that would emulate and approach the condition of music. To rebut my claim, Seddon (2014, 279) argues,

[Kandinsky] is not trying to construct a definition or even point out similarities between painting and music. Listen to what he says. “A painter, who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his inner life, cannot but envy the ease

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with which music, the most non-material of the arts today, achieves this end [the expression of the artist’s soul]” (Kandinsky 1912).

But Seddon omits what Kandinsky added in his very next sentence:

[Such a painter] naturally seeks to apply the methods of music to his own art. And from this results that modern desire for rhythm in painting, for mathematical, abstract construction, for repeated notes of color, for setting color in motion. (Kandinsky [1912] 1977, 19)

Why that omission? I can only speculate that it stems less from a desire on Seddon’s part to defend abstract art than it does from a wish to justify his own view that the art of music is nonrepresentational. In any case, he (like countless others since Kandinsky) proceeds to enlist the analogy with music in defense of abstract art, by arguing,

[Since] instrumental music doesn’t represent objects, it’s nonrepresentational. . . . [I]f being nonrepresentational doesn’t disqualify music as art, why should it disqualify painting? Art can be art without being representational. (Seddon 2014, 279)

True, music doesn’t represent visual “objects.” It is, after all, an aural medium. Since Seddon is an admirer of What Art Is, however, he should have been famil- iar with the discussion by Torres and me of just what music does represent or re-create. In the chapter titled “Music and Cognition,” we wrote, in part,

[A]s many theorists have argued, and as [instrumental] music’s close kinship with song and dance suggests, the two main aspects of experience from which music derives its vital meaning—and which it “selectively re-creates”—are vocal expression and the sonic effects of emotionally charged movement. Even [Eduard] Hanslick, the most influential exponent of the formalist [i.e., nonrepresentational] view, recognized that music can “represent” the “dynamic properties” of feeling—“the motion accompanying psychical action, according to its momentum: speed, slowness, strength, weakness, increasing and decreasing intensity.” (Torres and Kamhi 2000, 89, emphasis original; quoting Hanslick [1854] 1964, 193)

That is why music is emotionally expressive to a degree that painting can never be. And it helps to explain why I include abstract work in the pseudo art I lam- baste in Chapter 9. Seddon considers that inclusion to be in “tension” with my

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concession in the final paragraph of Chapter 3 that such work can have “some visual interest or appeal owing merely to its color or design” (Kamhi 2014, 68). What he misses is that the value of “abstract art” in today’s culture has been inflated far beyond that modest capacity—thus justifying my “wrath,” which Seddon (2014) thinks “may seem over the top to many readers” (280). Seddon’s review also devotes considerable attention to my chapter on photography, video, and film. He begins by complaining that I did not “do justice to [my] claim that while film can be an art, it is not a visual but rather primarily a literary art” (280). In my view, to devote more space to film would have been a digression, given this book’s focus on the primarily visual arts. But Seddon might have noted that I cited Rand’s own view of film as a primarily literary art (Kamhi 2014, 116), and that Torres and I had expanded on her thesis in What Art Is (Torres and Kamhi 2000, 74–76, 253–61). Seddon’s bigger objection is to my excluding photography from the category of fine art because a “photographic image is produced by a largely mechanical process” (Kamhi 2014, 101). Citing the documentary film Tim’s Vermeer—in which the nonartist, inventor, and entrepreneur Tim Jenison produced a fac- simile of Vermeer’s Music Lesson, with the aid of mechanical devices such as a camera obscura—Seddon (2014) wonders whether Vermeer’s possible use of such devices, if proven, would diminish my estimation of him (280). My answer is yes, because part of what is admirable about master artists is not merely the brilliance of what they produced but the consummate skill that went into creating it. In any case, having seen Tim’s Vermeer, I consider it more a tribute to Jenison’s self-aggrandizing obsession than a reliable insight into the creative process of Vermeer himself, or of any other master painter. Finally, both baffling and disappointing to me is Seddon’s failure even to mention Chapter 7, “What Do Cognitive Science and Evolution Tell Us about Art?”—apart from a cursory reference to “three chapters covering critics, cura- tors, science, and art education” (280). While Rand’s ideas are touched on else- where in the book, Chapter 7 most prominently highlights her fundamental insights regarding the relationship between art and cognition. In the section titled “A Theory of Art that Integrates Cognition and Emotion” (Kamhi 2014, 162–65), I argued that Rand’s theory, which informs my book, “is grounded in basic premises regarding cognition and consciousness that are essentially compatible with the psychological principles and mechanisms” outlined ear- lier in the chapter, based on work by leading psychologists and neuroscientists. Adding that Rand’s theory “challenges many of the artworld’s basic assumptions,” I summarized it as follows:

According to Rand’s view, humans create art because of a deep psychological need, both cognitive and emotional, to give concrete

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external form to our inmost ideas and feelings about life and the world around us. As she understood (and is increasingly confirmed by neuroscience), emotions are directly tied to sensory perceptual experience, whereas ideas and values are mental abstractions from that experience. Without external embodiment, such abstractions remain vaguely unreal, detached from our emotional life. Through the arts’ sensory immediacy, we reconnect our thoughts and feelings about things that matter to us, and we are thus made more fully conscious of them. As Rand succinctly put it, “Art brings man’s concepts [about such things] to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allows him to grasp them directly, as if they were percepts.” (163)

. . . [In sum,] art serves . . . to concretize value-laden beliefs about the world and our place in it—by means of perceptual embodiments that engage our attention and emotions. (164)

I further noted that “[i]n its crucial emphasis on values and emotion, Rand’s theory differs significantly from other cognitive theories of art.” While other thinkers have alluded to the values implied in works of art, and to the role of emotion in the response to them, none, I suggested, “makes the case as clearly or forcefully as Rand.” Nor do they explicitly connect it to an underlying theory of mind as she does (164). As a postscript, I’d like to clarify a point I made in Chapter 7 regarding abstract art. I suggested that Rand was

amply justified in excoriating as “anti-art” abstract modern work—which tends to “disintegrate [human] consciousness.”. . . [S]uch “art” in effect reduces consciousness “to a pre-perceptual level by breaking up percepts into mere sensations.” (166; quoting Rand [1971] 1975, 76; emphasis original)

I should have emphasized “in effect,” since there is no such thing as “pre- perceptual” consciousness. As Rand herself noted in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, “awareness begins on the level of percepts” ([1966–67] 1990, 5). Apologists for abstract work often speak of its being “about color,” or “about shape,” however, as if those attributes could be meaningfully experienced apart from the entities they belong to. Attributes of entities are thus treated by them as disembodied qualities (qualia). That is what I take Rand’s “mere sensations” as alluding to. I’m indebted to cognitive psychologist Robert L. Campbell for prompting me to clarify this point.

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References

Hanslick, Eduard. [1854] 1964. The Beautiful in Music. Translated from the German by Gustav Cohen. Reprinted in Art and Philosophy: Readings in Aesthetics. Edited by W. E. Kennick. New York: St. Martin’s, 190–213. Kamhi, Michelle Marder. 2014. Who Says That’s Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts. New York: Pro Arte Books. Kandinsky, Wassily. [1912] 1977. Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Translated and with an Introduction by M. T. H. Sadler. New York: Dover. Rand, Ayn. [1966–67] 1990. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded 2nd edition. Edited by Harry Binswanger and Leonard Peikoff. New York: New American Library (Meridian). ———. [1971] 1975. The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature. 2nd revised edition. New York: New American Library (Signet). Seddon, Fred. 2014. From the mathematical arts to the visual arts. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 14, no. 2 (December): 278–81. Tim’s Vermeer. 2013. Documentary film about Tim Jenison. Directed by Raymond Joseph Teller. Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. Torres, Louis and Michelle Marder Kamhi. 2000. What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand. Chicago: Open Court. ———. 2001. Architecture’s exclusion from The Ayn Rand Lexicon. What Art Is Online. June. Online at: http://www.aristos.org/whatart/ch10a.htm.

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