Armavirumque, Aug 27, 2003 07:24 PM

’Gutsy arts journal re-born online’?

by James Panero

What does Ayn Rand have to say about art? I haven’t a clue.

A revived magazine called ARISTOS seems to have the answers, however. Here is a press release that crossed my desk:

New York City / August 27, 2003

"GUTSY" ARTS JOURNAL RE-BORN ONLINE

’Aristos,’ an online review of the arts with a contrarian viewpoint, was launched earlier this year at http://www.aristos.org. The editors are Louis Torres and Michelle Marder Kamhi.

The online review---which covers all the arts, as well as the philosophy of art---succeeds the editors’ print journal of the same name. Published from 1982 to 1997, the journal was virtually alone in challenging both modernist and postmodernist scholarship and criticism, and in arguing that much "contemporary art" does not qualify as art at all.

It also championed the work of neglected traditionalist painters and sculptors, among others.

’Aristos’ was praised by Jacques Barzun (for the "pleasure and instruction" he found in it); by Library Journal (for its "quality and unique viewpoint"); and by Magazines for Libraries (for its "scholarly but gutsy" articles, carrying "more weight than those found in more substantial periodicals").

Publication was suspended in 1997, so that the editors could complete and publicize their book What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand (Open Court, 2000)--reviewed by Roger Kimball in The Public Interest, Spring 2001 (see the authors’ response at http://www.aristos.org/editors/resp-pi.htm)...

Armavirumque readers should know that Roger’s review for The Public Interest has been revised into a chapter of Art’s Prospect (Ivan R. Dee). For the few poor souls who don’t yet own a copy of Art’s Prospect--and just what’s your excuse, anyhow?--here it that chapter in PDF format.