Discussing Art

ARI

Miss Rand had very definite preferences in art. Reading The Romantic Manifesto, I see that she admired Vermeer and disliked Rembrandt. Did she ever discuss your art preferences with you, Mary Ann?

MARY ANN

She had very definite preferences in everything. As far as my own preferences, we did discuss them on a number of occasions. And I always found those discussions valuable. I always learned something—not only about the subject, but about myself, about what I liked and why I liked it. I can give you an example. But first I want to clear up something about Miss Rand and Rembrandt, since you mentioned him.

ARI

What’s that?

MARY ANN

She didn’t admire some of his subjects or his painterly style. She made that clear in her writing and in lectures, and she gave her reasons. But she did acknowledge, to me personally and during question periods publicly, that he was masterful in his use of light and dark, in his way of composing with those elements to achieve arresting and dramatic effects. In her appraisal of him, she made this distinction.

Some people who admired Rembrandt were offended by her remarks. But, I often wonder if they ever discussed with her what they liked about him and why, and explored their responses. The times I discussed art preferences with her, I learned how to approach something critically in a way I hadn’t been able to do before the discussion.

ARI

Give me an example.

MARY ANN

It was a discussion about the movie The African Queen, starring Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. At the time, it was one of my favorite movies. More than once, I praised it and recommended it to Ayn and Frank, who hadn’t seen it. I knew they liked Hepburn.

ARI

Why did you like it?

MARY ANN

I thought it was a great adventure story about ordinary people who undertake to do something extraordinary. I liked the effect that Hepburn and Bogart had on one another. He was a drunk and a coward, and she encouraged him to be brave and sober. She was a repressed, compliant, and very proper spinster; and with him she became assertive, feminine, and a woman in love. They brought out the best in each other. They were in a terrible situation, had to fight for survival, and they didn’t give up. And, most important, they succeeded.

ARI

So what happened?

MARY ANN

One day—this was after the publication of Atlas—Ayn called me to say that The African Queen was playing on television that evening, and invited me over to watch it with them. I thought they would see the same things in it that I did and would like it, too. Well, very early in the movie, she began to indicate her disapproval, and so did Frank, but not as much as she did. And my heart sank.

ARI

What didn’t she approve of? How did she indicate it?

MARY ANN

The pronounced naturalistic touches in the movie. For example, in the scene where they are having tea, Bogart’s stomach is making growling and gurgling noises. And she thought Hepburn was made to look unnecessarily plain and spinster-like, and Bogart unnecessarily dirty and unkempt. She indicated her disapproval by saying things like “tch tch” or “oh, no.” I thought, “This is the worst night of my life!” There were commercial interruptions, and I was dying to start talking about her reactions, but she suggested we wait until we had seen the entire movie and could talk without interruption.

ARI

And when it was over?

MARY ANN

The first thing she did was turn to me and say that she could see why I liked it. I was shocked. And I asked her why, because she had disliked so much about the movie. And then she began to give me her analysis of my positive response to the movie.

First, she asked me questions about my reactions to the characters of Bogart and Hepburn, and brought me to understand that I really didn’t consider him a heroic type, that I had overlooked those naturalistic touches (the growling stomach, his crudeness, his dirty clothes), and that my positive response was to Hepburn. I admired a woman who didn’t fold up and give up. In the story, she conceives of a plan to sink an enemy ship, and she is determined that they will do it together. And Ayn pointed this out to me: that I was responding to the abstraction of determination and heroism, and overlooking some of the unsavory concretes. It was selective awareness, on my part. I remember very clearly one thing she said: that this is an example of someone seeing past the bad directorial touches in the movie, seeing past the things that undercut the characters of both Hepburn and Bogart.

She was sympathetic about my desire to see something heroic in human behavior, but she pointed out what I had failed to see in the movie—or, more exactly, the aspects I dismissed or glossed over in my appraisal and, consequently, in my response.

ARI

So, it stopped being one of your favorites?

MARY ANN

No, not ever. But, once I saw and understood the things she was pointing out, I liked it less as a total movie.

ARI

Did you feel you had lost a value?

MARY ANN

I think I did feel that, in the beginning. But it was not because she encouraged me to give it up. There was never any suggestion of that. She was teaching me how to discriminate, how to introspect and understand which aspects of something I responded to. She was encouraging me to try to seek out the reasons for that response. And, of course, it applied to more than one’s response to a movie.

ARI

How did you feel when you saw it again?

MARY ANN

It was a long time before I saw it again—in those days, there weren’t any VCRs or videos to rent, and one had to wait until it came back on TV or to a movie theatre. And when I did see it again, I was much more perceptive about the negative aspects of the movie. But, my response to the abstraction—what I responded to initially—hasn’t changed.

ARI

Tell me about another discussion.

MARY ANN

There was one about a painting I discovered in college. It’s by Cézanne. It’s very simple—it shows a road next to a high wall, and there are tall trees along the road. The first time I saw a picture of it, I liked it immediately. I was curious to hear her reaction. I knew that she didn’t like Cézanne; I didn’t either, not the total of his work. But this painting was an exception for me. And I couldn’t put my finger on why my response to it was so strong. One evening, I took over a slide of it and a projector, showed her the painting, and asked her what she thought about it.

ARI

Why were her response and her thoughts important to you?

MARY ANN

Because when I like something, it’s an added pleasure to know that my friends like it, too. But, also, I knew that I was going to learn something. I didn’t know what, but there never was a discussion with her when I didn’t learn something.

ARI

And what happened?

MARY ANN

She asked me if I could tell her why I liked it. I don’t remember all that I said. I recall talking about two things: the secluded, peaceful setting, and the sharp contrast between sunlight and shade in the painting—what she called “stylized sunlight.” She said she could understand why I was responding to that aspect of it.

ARI

What did you learn?

MARY ANN

It was another example of that same approach she used with The African Queen: try to identify why you like something, and in which respect. Do you like the total? Which aspects appeal to you? What do they mean to you, personally? Ask yourself, is what you like really in the painting, or are you bringing something to it and responding to that?

ARI

Did you learn why you liked it?

MARY ANN

No, not in every respect. I agreed with her analysis of the sunlight and shade, and I did find that attractive. But there was something else I couldn’t name. When I told her this, she suggested that perhaps I was responding to something I was bringing to the painting, something that was triggered by an aspect of the work. I asked her how I could get at this “something”—whatever it was. And then she suggested that I begin by compiling a list of other art works I liked, and then ask myself if they had anything in common. That was the beginning of an odyssey for me that lasted a few years and took me all the way back to early childhood. Finally, I did understand why I loved the painting.

The value of that discussion was her stress on the importance of understanding the reasons behind artistic preferences. Doing so puts you in touch with yourself, and you identify your basic values in the process.

ARI

Did she like the painting?

MARY ANN

She was lukewarm. She liked the strong contrast between sunlight and shade, but she didn’t like the loose, sketchy style. However, in the discussion, she was focused on my responses and the reasons for them, not on hers.

ARI

I heard that you played some of your favorite Frank Sinatra recordings for her.

MARY ANN

This was the spring of 1980, after her husband died.¹ On one visit, I took all my favorite Sinatras to play for her, and so did Sue Ludel,² who was also a Sinatra fan. It was Sue’s idea. Ayn agreed to listen to them and comment.

ARI

Did she like any of them?

MARY ANN

She liked one very much, “Winners”—especially the lyrics; lines like “Here’s to the battle, whatever it’s for, to ask the best of ourselves, and give much more.” She didn’t like the swing arrangement of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” She said that the tempo destroyed the song, which had been written with a Latin beat. I remember verbatim her comment about one of my favorites, “Here’s That Rainy Day.” She said, disapprovingly, “Mary Ann, it has no melody!” I could see her point, but that didn’t change my mind about it. She asked me why I liked it. I said that the arrangement featured the purity of his voice and the clarity of every word he sang. And then she made some very perceptive and positive comments about his phrasing, his enunciation, the way he used his voice to convey the emotional quality of a song. She was not a Sinatra fan and hadn’t listened to his music over the years. But, when she did, she grasped what was unique about him.

ARI

Did she enjoy the session?

MARY ANN

For a while. But after about an hour of it, we had to stop. She said it was giving her a headache! Sue had brought over some gay operetta marches to play as an antidote. They cured the headache.

Frank O’Connor died in Manhattan on November 7, 1979. ↩
Sue Ludel, then married to Leonard Peikoff ↩