To the Main Page

I was pretty geeky in college.

Horrible drawings brought to you by the late Rex the Dog.

It's my resume. Total Snoozer.

The Monkey Pit. Preferred by Monkeys. Approved by Wankus!

All original content (c)
Ben Cremeens

A Primer on the Objectivist Esthetics

Ayn Rand held art as more than a luxury, but a necessity due to the nature of Man's mind. An explanation of the function of art and the requirements of the Objectivist Esthetics is provided on this page. Quotes usually come from Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (OPAR), The Romantic Manifesto (RM), or The Ayn Rand Lexicon.

Why Do We Have Art?

Man has always had art in one form or another. Even the caves of prehistoric times were adorned with art work. Why does man have a need for art? According to Rand, the answer can be found in epistemology, the theory of concept formation. We are surrounded by thousands of objects, and our minds are bombarded by a "blooming, buzzing, confusion" of perceptual data. However, the human mind can only deal with so many things at a time. The idea of a limited consciousness is referred to in Objectivist slang as "The Crow," after one of Rand's examples showing the crow as having a limited capability to deal with only three or four percepts at a time. As a quick example of the crow at work, which do you understand more readily: the idea of ||||||||||||| or the idea of thirteen?

The reason you understand thirteen better than ||||||||||||| is that the idea of thirteen uses your conceptual faculty. We "overcome the crow" by forming concepts (group two similar existents together, use a different third object as a foil, then use measurement omission). But what happens when you have an extremely "abstract" idea to get across? Then you're dealing with large numbers of concepts, and "the crow returns".

Enter art. Art takes ideas requiring several concepts and creates a single concrete that gets the point across.

"[In art] we see man's need of unit-economy. Concepts condense percepts; philosophy, as the science of the broadest integrations, condenses concepts; and then art condenses philosophy-by returning to the perceptual level, this time in a form impregnated with a profound abstract meaning."
(OPAR, pg. 419)

A quick example: think about George Orwell's novel 1984, in the scene where Winston Smith has been captured by Big Brother and is being tortured until he gives the answer of two plus two as five. Or, as a cheesier example, recall the episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" where Picard is tortured by Cardassians until he says he sees five lights when in reality there are four. These examples show the importance of adhering to reality, regardless of what others would have you believe (basically reaffirming the Objectivist "primacy of existence over consciousness"), and they do it painlessly without subjecting you to hours of abstract discussion.

So What Was Art Again?

According to Ayn Rand, "Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgements." This of course, leads to the question of, "What's a metaphysical value-judgement?" A metaphysical value-judgement (MVJ) is the abstract idea that would otherwise burden our "crow". MVJ's are conclusions about metaphysics that form the basis of ethics.

A metaphysical value-judgement would answer questions like:

  • "Is the universe intelligible?"

  • "Can man find happiness?"

  • "Does man have choice, or is he directed by forces beyond his control?"

  • "Is man, by nature, to be valued as good, or to be despised as evil?"

Objectivists are often more familiar with the term Rand used for the implicit MVJ's that everyone holds subconsciously; she called them one's sense of life.

"Guided by his own metaphysical value-judgements (explicit or otherwise), an artist selects, out of the bewildering chaos of human experience, those aspects he regards as indicative of the nature of the universe. Then he embodies them in a sensory-perceptual concrete such as a statue, a painting, or a story (this last is perceptual in that visual appearance, sounds, textures, etc.).
(OPAR, pg 417)

Art essentially gives the artist's view of what is important in life. He essentially places his metaphysics before his audience and says "This is what counts in life--as I, the artist, see life."

So What Is Esthetics?

Esthetics is the study of art; it answers two questions: "Is it art?" and "Is it 'beautiful' art?" For many of the same reasons the Objectivist ethics are "objective" (tied to reality, i.e. the rules aren't pulled from Ayn Rand's biological nether-regions), the esthetics are objective. Since art has a function to serve-condensing abstract ideas like MVJ's into easily understood concretes-one may objectively judge art, and its beauty, by how well it performs its job.

The Objectivist esthetics have three basic criteria:

  • Selectivity -- One must be dealing with metaphysical subjects, especially on what is "important" in the universe. An minor event in one's life could have no significance whatsoever; a minor event or detail in a work of art was selected by the artist to represent part of his microcosm, by virtue of being there, the event has been decided by the artist be important. Rand has said, "In life, one ignores the unimportant; in art, one omits it." Art cannot include random events.

  • Clarity -- Art has a purpose, to "overcome the crow" and make understanding possible. Art, therefore, must be intelligible and it must be clear.

  • Integration -- The degree of how tightly integrated a work of art can be thought of as the degree of "beauty" of a work. Rand thought of beauty as a "harmony" between the parts of a given object. The integration of a work often depends on the artist's devotion to his selectivity. During the filming of Siegfried, the director Fritz Lang was reported to have a sign in his office with the words, "Nothing in this film is accidental." This is the credo of Objectivist art.

Questions to Argue About

Does one have to agree with an artist's MVJ's to like a work of art?
(OPAR 448)

Which is worse: a good idea done badly or a bad idea done well?
(OPAR 441)

Rand snubbed/denounced several artists/works of art/artistic movements. Was she justified in such verdicts?

Art Works to Consider

Salvador Dali

"...[His] style projects the luminous clarity of a rational psycho-epistemology, while most (but not all) of his subjects project an irrational and revoltingly evil metaphysics." (RM, 41) Mr. Dali created the surreal work displayed on this page (the woman attacked by two tigers, a fish, and a bayonet), entitled "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate, a Second Before Waking Up."

Johannes Vermeer

"...[Vermeer] combines a brilliant clarity of style with the bleak metaphysics of Naturalism...The greatest of all artists, Vermeer, devoted his paintings to a single theme: light itself. The guiding principle of his compositions is: the contextual nature of our perception of light (and of color). The physical objects in a Vermeer canvas are chosen and placed in such a way that their combined interrelationships feature, lead to and make possible the paintings brightest patches of light...One might wish (and I do) that Vermeer had chosen better subjects to express his theme, but to him, apparently, the subjects were only the means to his end." (RM, 41, 48, 49) His work, "The Girl with a Pearl Earring" can be found at right.

Claude Monet

"Compare the radiant austerity of Vermeer's work to the silliness of the dots-and-dashes Impressionists who allegedly intended to paint pure light. He raised perception to the conceptual level; they attempted to disintegrate perception into sense data." (RM, 48) Apparently Rand didn't care for Monet. His work, "Water Lillies (The Clouds)" can be found on this page as well.

Pablo Ruiz Y Picasso

Rand didn't like Picasso's "cubism" which she claimed "seeks specifically to disintegrate man's consciousness by painting objects as man does not percieve them (from several perspectives at once)." A detail of "Guernica," his rather large work painted after the bombings of the town during the Spanish Civil War, is shown on this page.

Boris Vallejo

This is my "joke entry" of sorts. Many would argue that he doesn't belong in a serious discussion on art, as he does "lowbrow commerical hack work" and makes a decent living doing so. I would disagree. He creates human figures that are strong, confident, and unapologetic about their existence. His work interpreting the myth of "Pygmalion" can be found on this page, as well as his work, "Icarus", which causes one to think of the cover art to Rand's own The Romantic Manifesto.

Art Links

Try these links to get an idea of what Objectivist art, known as the "Romantic Realist" school, is like.

  • Non-Objective Art is Bad Art -- An essay applying the Objectivist esthetics and critiquing the basic artistic movements throughout the ages.

  • Quent Cordair Fine Art -- A gallery with a truly delightful sense of life and an remarkably motivated management. I tend to visit on a regular basis.

Back to the Main Objectivism Page

This page contains non-copyrighted information that is completely worthless, as well as copyrighted material (see citations). If you want to reproduce this page in any other manner, I would prefer that you ask my permission.