# Interpreting works of art **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [August 26, 2024, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253 "2024-08-26T15:28:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/21 "2024-08-28T17:10:47Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Bankrolling a superhero flick while personally preferring impenetrable art films isn’t some sort of moral hypocrisy. It is if you assume that because _he_ thinks an impenetrable art film is good, it is. And that’s the point. > [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > The fact that someone made a film has no relevance to whether or not it’s actually good. That maybe true, but if a good movie is dismissed by a critic (as often happens) it’s hard for the average movie-goer not to be swayed by that. If a critic doesn’t understand a movie and gives it bad marks, it can negatively affect the gross. I think that’s unfair. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/22 "2024-08-28T17:24:44Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > It is if you assume that because _he_ thinks an impenetrable art film is good, it is. And that’s the point. Sorry, I don’t follow what you’re trying to say. You can like “impenetrable art films” while also understanding that “impenetrable art films” tend to not make much money. Making bad films isn’t a moral failing, so bankrolling movie you think suck, but which you know will make you money, isn’t immoral. > [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > That maybe true, but if a good movie is dismissed by a critic (as often happens) it’s hard for the average movie-goer not to be swayed by that. If a critic doesn’t understand a movie and gives it bad marks, it can negatively affect the gross. I think that’s unfair. But if a _bad_ movie is dismissed by a critic, it prevents average movie-goers from spending money on a shitty product. If I’m dropping upwards of $20 for a night out at the theaters, isn’t it unfair if I don’t have any tools to determine if the film is any good before I go see it? ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/23 "2024-08-28T17:36:54Z")
It’s not always about the money. Did Ebert get a lot of $$$ for _Ultra-Vixens?_ ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/24 "2024-08-28T17:51:05Z")
My complaint about interpreting works of art is the other way. Say I write a story about, or paint a picture of, say, my dog. It looks nice, but I didn’t have a deeper meaning in mind. Then someone comes along and writes a paper about how my art is all about how I was really art-ing about losing my virginity, or or something, and they “prove” it. When I say, no it was just my dog, no one believes me, they believe the critic, because…he’s got a reputation. I think the artist does know what his art was about. Not everything is deep-seated freudian issues. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Now the artist isn’t obliged to tell us, but he should be the final word as to what his art is about. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/25 "2024-08-28T17:59:44Z")
> [@f.coli](#): > > He was annoyed by that answer, but it made me wonder if that is the correct way to interpret any and all works of art. Why is the opinion of the late Roger Ebert more valid about a movie any better than mine? I saw a movie where a person hid a stolen Pollock in a container car by removing it from its frame, folding it a little, and placing it in a corner. He added a few empty paint cans and a barrel with some used brushes in it. Though inspected, the Pollock eluded detection because it looked like a large discarded paint rag. Though a Pollock can sell for more than a hundred million dollars, that is kind of how it looks to me, too. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/26 "2024-08-28T18:00:59Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > he should be the final word as to what his art is about. I agree with you, except for this last bit. The artists is the _first_ word for what their art is about. Each viewer of the art has their own reaction to it. The artist doesn’t get to determine that, other than what they put into the art itself. But no viewer can speak for the artist, only themselves. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/27 "2024-08-28T18:02:58Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Then someone comes along and writes a paper about how my art is all about how I was really art-ing about losing my virginity, or or something, and they “prove” it. When I say, no it was just my dog, no one believes me, they believe the critic, because…he’s got a reputation. Anyone can be wrong and we can point to many real-life examples, but how did he acquire such a reputation in the first place if he is prone to “proving” bullshit? ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/28 "2024-08-28T19:04:34Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > isn’t it unfair if I don’t have any tools to determine if the film is any good before I go see it? Maybe, but that’s life. The problem is that there isn’t an objective standard. I’ve spent $20 to movies he’s raved about and walked out on them. It cuts both ways. The point is (IMHO), there is no measure against which we can judge how competent he is at criticizing movies. He didn’t pass any test. He didn’t go to film school and often other critics disagree with him. ETA: I don’t hate the guy, I just don’t agree with the pedestal he’s been put upon. I believe movies should be reviewed at release and critiques should be judged several years later. He’s been monumentally wrong in the past. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/29 "2024-08-28T19:22:43Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > Maybe, but that’s life. It’s also life that sometimes you spend a lot of time and effort on something, and people still don’t like it. Nobody is owed an audience. > [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > The point is (IMHO), there is no measure against which we can judge how competent he is at criticizing movies. Sure there is. You go see the movie yourself, and see if your opinion matches up with his. If they consistently don’t match, then stop reading Roger Ebert reviews and find a critic who more closely matches your taste. > [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > I believe movies should be reviewed at release and critiques should be judged several years later. He’s been monumentally wrong in the past. How can “I didn’t like this movie,” ever be “wrong?” And why are critiques okay “several years” after release, but not when its actually in movie theaters where people are spending their money on it? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/30 "2024-08-28T20:18:33Z")
Could anybody here name a prominent art critic writing today? What about in the past? An architecture critic? How about a book critic? Not a reviewer, a literary theorist who writes criticism? OK, what about a film critic. Again, not a reviewer, an actual critic, someone who has a theory of composition that films are evaluated in terms of? Roger Ebert was a daily columnist reviewing movies for his newspaper who chanced into a local tv show on a dying PBS station. (There’s a book on the subject. [Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever](https://www.amazon.com/Opposable-Thumbs-Siskel-Changed-Forever/dp/0593540158)) He was nuts about films and wanted to transfer that enthusiasm to the general public. Insisting that his was the only right opinion was not part of his persona. He became a film critic when he started taking films apart to show how they worked, in everything from direction to acting to cinematography, but he didn’t do that in his columns or tv bits. Two different approaches to the vast overarching subject of film. Reviews are not criticism. I did/did not like it has no weight whatsoever, yet people, who, usually rightly, value economy in evaluation as much as economy in pricing, seldom bother to sift through context to learn whether that valuation has any real meaning to them. You can easily find takedowns of RottenTomatoes saying that its lumping of hundreds of reviews into a single fresh/rotten score has ruined reviewing because people have no reason to read the individual, hopefully complex and expressive, reviews. Criticism is difficult to read. It depends familiarity with theory and is often expressed in language that is not understandable without immersion into the critic’s other works and numerous other works in the field. And like every other academic discipline, writers of criticism only get recognition if they overturn everything the previous generation thought, so you have to know that as well. I’ve been to the Rockwell Museum. It’s great. I highly recommend it. I’ve also been to other museums containing art by his contemporaries. Much of that is great, too. Making judgements about abstract art without seeing the originals is a fool’s game. Pollack, BTW, did not throw paint randomly onto a canvas. [He had a distinctive style that set him apart from imitators and forgers](https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/02/computer-algorithm-can-accurately-identify-jackson-pollock-paintings/). [curmudgeon mode]You can have an opinion of whether his paintings are good or not, but please don’t inflict it on me unless you have some knowledge of what you’re talking about.[/curmudgeon mode] ---
**Author:** ![Toxgoddess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Toxgoddess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toxgoddess)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/31 "2024-08-28T20:56:23Z")
That is exactly how they look. My dad was a painter. Of houses, not portraits. He had many used, dripped-on , covered-with-paint speckles drop cloths in our garage my whole childhood. When I viewed Pollock works in art textbooks, that’s what they looked like on the page to me. I assumed they would look different, more meaningful or impressive, in person. Then I saw a Pollock at the MOMA in New York. Nope. Just like Dad’s drop cloths. All I could think was “Who’s kidding who???” And if Dad had only known…we could’ve grown up rich!!! Ah well… ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/32 "2024-08-28T21:03:52Z")
There was an art critic Lucy Lippard whose writing was as dense as anything parodied in the more recent [hoax of academic writing including the paper “Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks.](https://reason.com/2018/10/03/dog-rape-hoax-papers-pluckrose-lindsay/) Granted, Lippard was examining the then new art form of Conceptual Art; not readily accessible to the Lady from Dubuque, but her reviews were like Baedekers written only in the language of the lands they described. Then there’s the ego-driven writer who makes it too slapdash, as if the reader is a Hollywood producer sitting in on a pitch: “It’s like if Duchamp got his hands on AI!” Suitable for the dismissive reader who’s equally more interested in their own ego: “Duchamp? Never heard of him!” Or, alternatively, the gatekeeper: “Of course, non-Francophones can’t truly understand [L.H.O.O.Q.](https://www.nortonsimon.org/art/detail/P.1969.094)” Maybe you recall that line by William Hurt’s character in _The Big Chill_: “You’re so analytical! Sometimes you just have to let art… flow… over you.” Yes, it’s fun and enriching to learn about the background of things, but it’s also okay to not worry about what you like. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2024, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/33 "2024-08-28T21:29:19Z")
> [@Jebbilene](#): > > Didn’t the poet create the whole poem to express their meaning? They just went to all this effort to put these words together in the best way they could manage, and then someone is like “Nope, not good enough. Use different words to say what you mean.” Exactly this. Discussions like these infuriated Hemingway. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2024, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/34 "2024-08-29T11:49:44Z")
> [@Toxgoddess](#): > > He had many used, dripped-on , covered-with-paint speckles drop cloths in our garage my whole childhood. Yes, “drop cloths” is the proper term, not “paint rags”. I couldn’t remember the proper term when I was posting. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2024, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/35 "2024-08-29T11:59:48Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Making judgements about abstract art without seeing the originals is a fool’s game. There’s no magic essence that makes the originals special. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2024, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/36 "2024-08-29T13:41:58Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > Though inspected, the Pollock eluded detection because it looked like a large discarded paint rag. Though a Pollock can sell for more than a hundred million dollars, that is kind of how it looks to me, too. That’s what I thought until I actually saw them in person at MOMA. In reality they are massively large and almost 3D, the paint is so thick. A picture doesn’t do them justice at all. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2024, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/37 "2024-08-29T13:43:18Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > How can “I didn’t like this movie,” ever be “wrong?” That not how Ebert criticizes movies. If he did, I wouldn’t have an issue. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2024, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/38 "2024-08-29T13:54:07Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > That not how Ebert criticizes movies. If he did, I wouldn’t have an issue. Can you give an example where his reviews were objectively wrong? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2024, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/39 "2024-08-29T14:15:30Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > That not how Ebert criticizes movies. Is this one of those situations where, if a critic doesn’t precede every statement with an “I” statement, he’s assumed to be speaking objective truth and not giving a subjective opinion? I assure you, every review Roger Ebert ever wrote was about his subjective experience viewing the film, and he never pretended otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2024, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253/40 "2024-08-29T14:33:05Z")
We can all point to instances where Ebert was wrong or missed something— it’s not like it never happened— but he always explained his experience and reasoning, and sometimes he did later revise a review if necessary. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/interpreting-works-of-art/1006253.md?page=3)