Abstract

Gene H. Bell-Villada argues that What Art Is, by Torres and Kamhi, opens with a useful exposition of Rand's aesthetic theories. Unfortunately, once that task is completed, the book becomes mostly a rant against the twentieth century avant-garde, with little in the way of suggested alternatives. Though they offer a causal explanation for Modernism as the product of its practitioners' schizophrenia, they make no attempt at a socio-historical accounting for the emergence and triumph of vanguard art. Their dislike of the bleakness of much Modernist literature shows a lack of understanding of the dark times in which its authors lived