Ayn Rand’s wacky art theory

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 20:43:00 +0000

Did you know that Ayn Rand had a theory of art? No? Neither did I! But I discovered it recently, thanks to a tip from painter Abigail Markov. It’s encapsulated in the hefty 539-page treatise "What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand," written and compiled by Louis Torres and Michelle Marder Kamhi. And while I didn’t buy the book — no, I couldn’t quite bring myself to do that — I did have a chance to read excerpted bits from the book as well as chapter summaries online. I’d like to share with you, dear reader, some of the key takeaways.

Let’s start where the book starts, with the most basic question of all: what is art? This is actually the hardest one to answer without the full text in front of us, but the website does provide some clues: Rand sees the primary purpose of art as “nonutilitarian and psychological in nature” and says that its cognitive function is “to bring man’s fundamental concepts and values ‘to the perceptual level of his consciousness’ and allow him ‘to grasp them directly, as if they were percepts.’” OK, fair enough. I can get with that.

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Ayn Rand’s wacky art theory