M HKA Ensembles

Other, 31,5 x 31,5 cm.

Collection: Collection MHKA, Antwerp.

Ayn Rand’s 1966 lecture Our Cultural Value-Deprivation begins with a description of how recent experiments have demonstrated the destructive effects of sensory deprivation. Rand argues that the deprivation of values in culture can be even more subversive. Giving examples of what she sees as symptoms of decay in various facets of modern culture – philosophy, politics, literature and arts – Rand characterises the visual arts of her time as nothing but distortion (of human figure, space, colour, etc.). She also distinguishes a “Rorschach school of art”, or the nonrepresentational, comparing nonfigurative art with the abstract inkblots of the Rorschach psychological test. She concludes that modern culture is not only experiencing a lack of values, but makes a reasonable person “doubt the evidence of one’s senses and the sanity of one’s mind”. As a consequence, she argues, cultural value-deprivation in the arts leads to a rise in drug addiction and teen suicide.