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 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Penn State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies This content downloaded from 86.59.13.237 on Mon, 07 Jun 2021 09:32:48 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Discussion 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 rec- ommendation, 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 The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2015 Copyright © 2015 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA JARS 15.2_04_Kamhi.indd 280 04/11/15 12:57 AM This content downloaded from 86.59.13.237 on Mon, 07 Jun 2021 09:32:48 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Discussion | Kamhi 281 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 sculp- ture 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 JARS 15.2_04_Kamhi.indd 281 04/11/15 12:57 AM This content downloaded from 86.59.13.237 on Mon, 07 Jun 2021 09:32:48 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 282 THE JOURNAL OF AYN RAND STUDIEs 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 JARS 15.2_04_Kamhi.indd 282 04/11/15 12:57 AM This content downloaded from 86.59.13.237 on Mon, 07 Jun 2021 09:32:48 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Discussion | Kamhi 283 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.