FROM THE EXPERT ON EVERYTHING!!!!

The words to articulate this came to me this morning while watching cartoons and I decided they merit recording.

Here's Ayn Rand on Art....she refutes most of what we've said in class. INTERESTING!!!!!
From the Introduction What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand by Louis Torres and Michelle Marder Kamhi:

"While Ayn Rand retains the traditional classification of art as well as the idea that the arts are essentially mimetic in nature she rejects the traditional view that the primary purpose of art is to afford pleasure and convey value through the creation of beauty, which she does not regard as a defining attribute. In her view, the primary purpose of art is much broader: it is the meaningful objectification of whatever is metaphysically important to man. For Rand, every art work whether of painting, sculpture, literature, music, or dance is a 'selective re-creation of reality' that serves to objectify, in an integrated form, significant aspects of its creator's basic 'sense of life.'

"Further, Rand holds that the distinctive character of each of the major branches of art derives from--is determined by--a specific mode of human perception and cognition. As a consequence, she argues that, technological innovations notwithstanding, no truly new categories of art are possible, only recombinations and variants of the primary forms which have existed since prehistory.

"According to Rand, art serves a vital psychological need that is at once cognitive and emotional. Only through art, in her view, can man summon his values into full conscious focus, with the clarity and emotional immediacy of direct perception. For Rand, then, art is a unique means of integrating the physical and psychological aspects of human existence. Thus she not only identifies what art is, in terms of essential characteristics, she also provides an enriched appreciation of the importance of art in human life. Moreover, in so doing, she makes clear why much of what the artworld has promoted as the art of the past hundred years is, by objective standards, a perversion of the very concept."