(and I'm doing this from memory, so it may not
be exact!).

According to Ayn Rand, art is the SELECTIVE recreation of life.

Her theory was that what an artist chooses to put in the painting reveals their psycho-epistemology. That is, it reveals their values and how they view life, ie whether the universe is good or bad. One little example she gave always stayed with me. If you go to a party and see a very attractive woman in a beautiful evening gown who had a zit on her face, you would not ascribe any importance to it. Yet, if an artist painted that, you would, because the artist felt that it was important.

Now, when you see still life, the apples you see look like none you have seen. The artist is painting his concept of "appleness". He takes all the apples he has ever seen, extracts all the similarities and discards all the non-essentials and differances. But, in the example above, the
artist, by including the blemish (a non-essential) he is making a statement about life and the way he views people, etc. It is not that life imitates art, it is that art mirrors the artist's subconscious.

In case you're interested, my 2 favorite artists
are Vermeer and Sylvia Bokor. I have no connection with her other than a profound debt of gratitude for showing me that a reproduction of a cambells soup can or paint thrown against a wall are not art!


THIS is art...as it could, and should be!