Can art be defined? - Review - book review

CERTAINTY is a marvelous thing. It not only provides a useful carapace against the onslaughts of doubt; it also does wonders for one's self-confidence. It is perhaps the one mental commodity that everyone, admirers and critics alike, will agree that the novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982) possessed in abundance. The attitude must be catching, for her disciples tend to be well endowed with certainty as well.

I thought about this when contemplating the title of Louis Torres and Michelle Marder Kamhi's book on Ayn Rand's theory of art: What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand. As the authors note, the title is "a deliberate inversion" of the title of Tolstoy's didactic manifesto What Is Art? Most readers have found Tolstoy's brief for subordinating art to religion and morality sufficiently, not to say crudely, apodictic. But at least he had the delicacy to cast it in the interrogative. The authors of What Art Is want none of that pusillanimous hesitation. Rand's speculations about art and literature may exhibit some "shortcomings in detail," they tell us. Nevertheless, they argue that "in its fundamental principles" her theory of art is "coherent, substantial, and valid, constituting a major contribution to the literature on the philosophy of art."

The prospect of an aesthetic theory that is not only "coherent" and "substantial" but also "valid" is pretty impressive, not to say intimidating. Of course, "valid" is an equivocal term. It can mean anything from "following necessarily" to merely "sound" or "compelling." The authors of What Art Is do not specify in what sense they use the word. Several things suggest that they presume a fairly high degree of rigor: their decision to italicize the word, the air of impatient certainty with which their discussion proceeds, and their emphasis on the importance of having "an objective definition" of art. Indeed, it seems that one of the chief things that attracted them to Band's aesthetic theory was her willingness to provide such a definition. At a time when there is so much bogus art about, they were grateful to find someone who cut through the morass and could tell them--clearly, without any foolish shilly-shallying--that this here is art, while that over there just doesn't make the grade.

I WILL come back to the question of defining art in a moment. First, let me say a few words in general about What Art Is. The book was a long time coming: more than a decade, the authors tell us. Their researches over the years turned up a lot of art-world exotica, and they were loath to leave anything out.

What began as a series of magazine articles slowly accreted into a 500-page book, the main text of which is divided about equally between an exposition of Rand's theory of art and an attempt to apply its lessons to the bewildering world of twentieth-century art. The book proper concludes with a chapter on "public implications": government and corporate support of the arts (the message: Here Be Monsters), art and the law (free speech, pornography, etc.), and teaching the arts to children (the more traditional the better). This chapter, which I found to be the most persuasive part of the book, is followed by three brief appendices: a list of "some of the alleged forms of art invented since the beginning of the twentieth century" (Pop art, Op art, Body art, etc.), a list of art-world buzz words, and a few pages of examples of how the New York Times uses (and misuses) the term "arts" in its cultural coverage. The appendices are followed by just over 150 pages of endnotes that qualify, elaborate, or comment on is sues raised in the main text. It's a rich, opinionated melange of a book, full of notes, asides, and second thoughts, but positively steely in its pursuit of its main theme: laying down the law about what does, and what does not, qualify as art.

I suspect that this book had its genesis in two distinct impulses: admiration for the writings of Ayn Rand, on the one hand, and impatience with the contemporary art world, on the other. The impatience is eminently justified. As one looks around at much of what is adulated as art today, one shuttles between weariness, incredulity, and revulsion. Of course, there is plenty of good art being produced today. But the headlines are mostly reserved for work that is unutterably banal, downright pathological, or, just occasionally, both. Everyone will have his own rogues' gallery and catalogue of horrors. Karen Finley, for example, earned her place in the annals of fatuousness by convincing the National Endowment for the Arts to shovel some money her way for an act that consisted of her prancing about naked, smeared with chocolate, while skirling about the evils of patriarchy. Or consider Matthew Barney, a hot young artist whose oeuvre consists of things like "Field Dressing (Orifill)," a video that depicts the arti st "naked climbing up a pole and cables and applying dollops of Vaseline to his orifices." That description comes from Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic for the New York Times, who recently declared Barney "the most important American artist of his generation."