In the fight between Diego Rivera and Nelson Rockefeller over Rivera’s refusal to remove a picture of Lenin from a mural Rockefeller had commissioned for Rockefeller Center whose side would Rand have taken?
Best damn question I’ve heard in ages. Now I’ve got to go and actually read The Fountainhead so I can contribute intelligently. Thanks a bundle.
I think she would’ve said “a pox on both your houses”: to Rivera for glorifying a collectivist dictator, and to Rockefeller for hiring a radical leftist to produce a great work of art, supposedly to reflect on American values, capitalism, or whatever.
I also think a moderator is going to relocate this thread PDQ.
Moved from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
Gfactor
for the Straight Dope
I think she would have taken the side of the property owner.
But wouldn’t her philosophy demand she support Rivera’s right to not compromise his artistic vision even though her politics would say otherwise?
On second thought, she would probably inquire into the nature of the contract (or oral agreement, or understanding) between the tycoon and the artist as to the artist’s degree of autonomy and freedom to paint whatever he wanted… or constraints placed upon same, before voicing her judgement.
But secretly, she’d still think that both men were [anachronistic profanity alert] asshats.
Ayn Rand, based upon her childhood in Russia, was a fanatical communist-hater.
Her “philosophy” is more about killing any of society’s socialist/communist characteristics (perceived or real) than anything else.
Her and Rivera would not get along.
Rand hated Rockefeller almost as much as she hated Communism. And she would absolutely loathe the implication that Diego Rivera was anything like Howard Roark. But she did have a great deal of respect for John D. Rockefeller, who built Rockefeller Center, and would never support a likeness of Lenin there. Her position would be a tribute to John D., not Nelson.
No, because his artistic vision wasn’t based on rational values, nor was his style.
Still haven’t read the book, but how was Roark’s vision based on rational values? How could any artistic vision be?
She would support Rivera until it was completed and then would support Rocky’s right to paint over it once it was done.
Ask one of the old inner-circle followers; at some point they seemed to indeed believe that there *would * be a set of artistic visions that would be based on rational values and be “objectively” moral. And that was either following her guidance, or else she did nothing to disabuse them of it.
I like Otto’s analysis. Though my guess is that she would find Rivera’s politics and his artistic expression thereof totally detestable; and that she would probably censure him for accepting the commission to begin with, when he should have known he would be in conflict with the values of the promoter of the project. But she would probably also reproach Rockefeller that he, too, must have reasonably known, and chosen a different artist.
BTW, standing in Rockefeller Center I have gotten the vibe that Ayn Rand must have loved that setting.
She did, especially the quotations from Rockefeller; and they also had some of her favorite music piped in. She even liked the Christmas tree.
Read her “Romantic Manifesto.” This was one of the main points of disagreement I had with her . . . not that her theories were wrong, but that they excluded all other theories.
And she would barely even consider Rivera an artist.
It’s been more that 20 years since I read The Fountainhead so someone please remind me: was Roark’s refusal to compromise right because that’s the right of every artist or was it for some other reason?
Roark was an innovator and individualist, and his uncompromising stand was based on his integrity as a creator. Rand would never apply that position to an artist like Rivera, who was obviously neither an innovator nor an individualist. She would consider a painting of Lenin in Rockefeller Center to be an obscenity.
The thing is that what Roark created was really good at least to Ms. Rand. It us east to defend the integrity of the creator when the creator is making stuff you like.