The first of these is that art is no mere adornment of human living... for
which a substitute could easily be found, but an indispensable factor in mak-
ing the animal man, into a human person. Another is that its proper use can
be discovered by an analysis of the work of art as an embodiment of objec-
tive meanings and values. A third is that we cannot grasp the work of art
objectively unless we bear in mind the act that creates it and the distinctive
mode of experience that apprehends it.Missing from criticism, Vivas argued, was a clear idea of such funda-
mental issues as “the nature of art” and its role in human life.^60
Two decades later, Ayn Rand (though no doubt unaware of Vivas’s
work) formulated the core of just such an “[objective] systematic phi-
losophy of art”—part of the broader philosophic system she called
“Objectivism.” It remains to be seen if her esthetic theory will take hold
in the culture, ending what I have termed the “interminable monopoly of
the avant-garde” and ushering in a genuine renaissance of traditional
painting and sculpture.
The likelihood of such a cultural upheaval anytime soon has greatly
diminished since I first drafted this essay over a decade ago, even as the
sheer number of contemporary traditional painters and sculptors has
grown. It is an illusion to maintain otherwise. As I have documented, the
ever-increasing dominance of the avant-garde is due to stubborn adher-
ence to the notion that virtually anything can be art if the artworld says
it is. What Art Is was published fifteen years ago as an antidote to such
madness. Despite praise by respected academic reviewers and occa-
sional citations in books, it has thus far been largely ignored—even,
with rare exceptions, by Rand’s followers.^61
Still, I remain guardedly optimistic. In 2001, in an In-Depth inter-
view on C-Span, the ninety-four-year-old cultural historian Jacques
Barzun, who knew a thing or two about intellectual history, expressed
admiration for What Art Is and for Rand’s ideas about art. Later that
year, he wrote Kamhi and me to say that “yours is the kind of work that
makes its way slowly but lasts long, both because its subject is perennial
and because of the breadth and depth of your treatment.”^62 Time will tell.
The Interminable Monopoly of the Avante-Garde 185