No it isn't. Both Frank Lloyd Wright and Ayn Rand explicitly refuted such a claim: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lloyd_Wright#Cultural_Ref...
In any case, Lloyd Wright's buildings might well have pushed the envelope on art, but they've been criticised on technical grounds.
And the idea that "if you don't do anything you're told not to you'll never do anything new" really doesn't need an 800-page exposition by someone who demonstrates a complete lack of empathy for humans, a penchant for rape, and no particular talent as a writer.
The relationships between her characters are usually sadomasochistic, not sexual abuse. But even when it does appear it takes up barely ten pages in her novels.
> ... and no particular talent as a writer.
Ironically contrary to her message, the popularity of her books suggests otherwise.
I presented two cases where I assert popularity /\ !talent = T, ie. !popularity \/ talent = F, to show that !(popularity => talent).
Your response: "so you claim that Rand does not have popularity".
Er, wtf?
Can we just end this thread here before we get to the inevitable anticlimactic conclusion that people differ in opinion?
Only a small percentage of people buy books regularly. So to make a big bestseller you have to write a book that gets bought by that huge majority of people who don't read much. And usually their decisions are dominated by random extraneous factors: i.e. it's a biography of someone they admire, or is related to some doctrine they subscribe to, or contains facts they need or gossip they want to know about.
Think of the books you find in the houses of people who have hardly any books: the Bible, the Guinness Book of World Records, a Chilton car repair manual, a racy biography of Princess Di, a book of popular mysticism, a book about how to make money or lose weight. Those are the really big sellers.
(This question sounds smarmy, but I ask it earnestly.)
Good judges can tell who the good writers are, but there's no currently no independent way of telling who the good judges are.
Empirically the oscillations of opinion seem to settle down after a few hundred years. Even then there are probably errors. E.g. tragedies will tend to be more highly regarded than comedies, because they seem more serious.
I meant to write: "OK. And because of this Rand isn't a good writer?".
It's not a non sequitur, just a typo.
To save myself from repeating the same argument as the few threads above this, I'll just link to it:
> the popularity of her books suggests otherwise [my emphasis]
In other words, you weren't actually making the claim I thought you were - that popularity implies quality. So I'm sorry for missing your point originally.
I do disagree that popularity is evidence of quality; popularity is only evidence of broad appeal, and you'd still need to demonstrate a correlation between broad appeal and quality - I contend that no correlation exists. But that's a reasonable debate, not a logical fallacy.
But I have to ask - why didn't you tell me that I was refuting an argument you hadn't made...?
You sound like a BOFH - what is your basis for making such superficial, critical statements about highly creative people?
As to Lloyd Wright's skills as an architect (if that's what "superficial, critical statements about highly creative people" was referring to) - I do not dispute that he was highly creative, nor that he was the first great American architect. But his roofs habitually leaked, and there were other technical problems with his creations. Since buildings, whilst unquestionably being creative endeavours, are not purely expressive in purpose, technical failings are not trivialities; they'd have curtailed the career of a lesser architect.
Oddly enough, the same is true in software; there's lots of uninspired but technically competent software, there's rather less beautiful but technically unsound software; and very little code which is both beautiful and sound - but competence can keep a coder in the game even if they have no artistic flair.