According to Barbara Branden's biography of Rand, she was an admirerer of
the works of Salvador Dali. Dali's work, by his own admission, was
completely "anti-reason". Branden says that Rand admired Dali's later work,
specifically his crucifixion scenes which he painted after his conversion to
Catholicism. Given Rand's theories of art, I would expect that such pictures
would be considered by her to be just a Christian glorification of suffering
(i.e. bad). And even in these paintings, Dali's surrealism makes itself
present (for example, Christ crucified on an unfolded hypercube).
Nevertheless, Rand liked his paintings.
I think that the connection between artistic tastes and
philosophical/political bent is mainly imagined, especially by the artists
creating the work. This can be seen throughout art history. Dadaism, which
was an attack on all "bourgoise" values, is very similar in visual style to
Futurist works, but many Futurists ended up being supporters of Italian
Fascism. Much of Nazi art is glorification of the beauty of the human form,
such as in the films Olympia. This is the kind of visual art I would think
Rand would find most appealing, yet I cannot think of a single
political/philosophical belief she would have in common with the agenda it
is pushing. Many of the surrealists considered their work to be close to
communist ideals, and many of them joined the communist party, but Salvador
Dali, who epitomized the movement's visual look, was a supported of Franco.
Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s, like Eistenstein and Pudovkin, used an
editing style they considered to be particularly suited to communist
propaganda, yet their methods were highly influenced by an American
filmmaker they admired, D. W. Griffith, whose movie "Birth of a Nation" is
probably the most racist movie in film history.
Art history is full of examples of individuals of completely different
belief systems producing art of such similar styles, each claiming that the
aesthetic theory they are following reflects their convictions and social
goals, and Rand was not the first to claim that her own subjective tastes
somehow reflected an "objective" truth.
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Zeb Haradon (zebharadon@hotmail.com)
My personal webpage:
http://www.inconnect.com/~zharadon/ubunix
A movie I'm directing:
http://www.elevatormovie.com
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