Talk:Nick Gaetano

Not a Romantic Realist by any stretch of the imagination

It seems only with a sense of extreme irony that Nick Gaetano was ever selected to illustrate Ayn Rand's novels. The choice must have been based, not on the understanding Rand's ideas, but rather for the superficial reason that Gaetano's work is imitative of the Art Deco style. This being said, there is nothing about Gaetano's work that fits the criterea of "Romantic Realist" and whoever made the claim in Gaetano's article should back it up with references (which is not possible). Rand's book on aesthetics and romantic realism, The Romantic Manifesto outlines clearly (from a philosophical standpoint) what defines something as Romantic Realism and being chosen for the cover of an Objectivist book is not mentioned (for good reason).

Further evidence that Gaetano's work is not "Romantic Realism" is that the styles, artists and principles Gaetano imitates, for example cubism, impressionism and abstraction, are all things Ayn Rand considered terrible and immoral--definitely not the "romanticism" of her own style, definition and liking. She considered the styles Gaetano borrows to be the exact opposite of a rational style calling them mysticism and naturalism--an aesthetic contrary to her own. If one were to read The Romantic Manifesto or The Fountainhead and then follow it up with a look at Gaetano's website, the contrast is obvious. Another reason his work is not Romantic Realism is by the very fact that his work is imitative which smacks of the infamous "second-hander", Peter Keating, in The Fountainhead.

Justinjuicebox (talk) 05:53, 18 November 2007 (UTC)