There can be a wrong appreciation for what was the artist’s INTENT. If we asked an author what message he was trying to convey in his story/poem, then that is it. There is no other way around it. It was his INTENT and nothing more.
Interpretation, is purely subjective. I could read LOTR and it could be to me a story about overcoming adversity. It could be to my sister a story about loyalty. It could be to my brother a story about the dangers of unchecked power.
We have this kind of debate all day long in a very popular text - the Constitution. We can’t ask the founding fathers what their INTENT was, so we are subject to INTERPRET it. That interpretation varies from one person reading it, to another. From one generation, to the next. Etc.
There’s a wonderful Borges short story about this very idea - when a man sets out to rewrite ‘Don Quixote’ word for word, but from a twentieth century perspective.
The point of the story is that the answer to your question is ‘yes’. Two people can’t have exactly the same motivations, etc to create a text, and therefore the texts are different in meaning.
That said, like any discipline, the vast majority of post-modern critical writing is nonsense (speaking as someone who suffered through it at university).
Correct (in my interpretation) - we are distinguishing between divining what the artist wanted to say, and what any person gets out of a work of art.
I think of the satire of Bob Dylan in National Lampoon (who seemed to hate his guts) “Poet of my generation? Heck, I was just picking words that rhymed!”
So essentially, each person’s interpretation is a new (or add-on) “work of art”, which if shared with you, might modify your interpretation (so all interpretations are works-in-progress). Similarly, understanding the artist’s intent might make you look at a work differently and change your interpretation.
Shakespeare, for example, wrote products that were heavily modulated by the politics of the time. Elizabeth’s grandfather, Henry VII had a very tenuous claim to the throne. (IIRC, he married a widow of the King, then won the civil war). Since that time, any public suggestion that their legitimacy was questionable was dealt with harshly; those historical plays tended to be propaganda pieces to help cement the legitimacy of the Tudors, such as the demonizing of Richard III, who was on the other side of the War of the Roses. Re-read those plays with that in mind, and you may see new nuances in the meaning, more between-the-lines details.
Similarly, a lot of the meaning of early art is lost on you if you do not know the context - bible stories, greek mythology, allegories, etc. You may think, for example, that an artist was saying something about his time with an odd painting depicting Roman or biblical characters in contemporary garb; but perhaps the middle ages artist had no idea what Romans or Greeks wore in ancient time, and likely his audience wouldn’t understand either. It’s not like there were widely circulated authoritative picture books. (Plato contemplating the bust of Homer, by Rembrandt - why is Plato dressed as a successful Dutch merchant?)
Context - A portrait of James I ascending to heaven flanked by truth and Justice (in flowing garb, semi-naked for audience tit-illation) is normal for its time. The same picture of Nikolai Ceaucescu is tacky and megalomaniac.
Are you sure this is exactly what you’ve seen claimed? I’m not saying you’re mistaken, there are people who claim just what you’ve said, but there are also many who hear the claim “there’s no ‘correct’ interpretation for a work of art” and assume this means “each person’s interpretation upon experiencing a piece of art is equally valid”. These are two different ideas and one can accept the former without the latter.
It’s possible to believe that art is all a matter of interpretation but not believe that all interpretations are equal. I think most people would agree that some interpretations are just plain stupid. Some interpretations can be better than others without any one interpretation being recognized as the one truth.
Even if we could all agree that the one “correct” interpretation was whatever the creator intended, how could we know what the original intent really was? Shakespeare didn’t leave us a diary describing the intent behind his works. Even if he had, we couldn’t know if he was being totally honest and forthcoming about everything.
There are also living artists who have changed their minds about what their own work means, and others who have said they had no special meaning in mind at all. People often ask about the meaning behind popular songs on here, and the only official explanation for many mysterious song lyrics is “it just sounded good” or “I was totally high when I wrote that.” IIRC, David Bowie has said that some of his lyrics are the result of shuffling around slips of paper with words on them, like those magnetic poetry kits. Paul Simon has said he has no idea what mama saw that was against the law in “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”. So if the creator’s intent is all that matters, how can this line be “correctly” interpreted?
Here’s an example where I can speak authoritatively about the author’s intent because I was the author. I am not by any means a great writer of fiction, it’s one of those things I’ve always wished I had a knack for but never really did. I’ve written a few short stories though, and managed to do one for a writing class in college that I was very pleased with and that impressed my professor and classmates. I wound up submitting it to the annual literary magazine, and it was published. So quite a few people I knew read this story and told me what they thought about it.
Now, I had intentionally written this story with an ambiguous ending. The narrator seemed unreliable, and I meant it to be up to the reader whether the narrator was just crazy or if A was really true. So according to my original intent there’s room for more than one “correct” interpretation. But to my surprise, everyone who commented on the ending of this story seemed to ignore A. They realized that the narrator believed A, but that wasn’t what they found interesting. Instead people told me they liked how it was left uncertain whether the narrator was just crazy or if B was really true. Heck, some didn’t even feel it was a mystery, they said “Oh, so it was really B all along!”
Interpretation B had never even occurred to me. It did not cross my mind at any point in the writing process. Since I’m the author, one might argue that interpretation B is thus totally wrong. But you know what? There’s room in the story to see B there (it’s not that different from my original idea A, just involving another character), nothing in the text contradicts it, and I have to say myself that it’s a good interpretation…maybe even better than what I originally intended. If I forgot about this story and found it among my papers years later I might think that B actually had been my original intent. So speaking as the author of this story, I don’t think interpretation B is incorrect at all.
But aren’t they the same thing, for all intents and purposes, for the rest of the world?
Also, what if the artist failed to express what they were trying to with a piece of art? Does the artwork ‘mean’ what they wanted it to mean, or what it appears to mean?
Art is a process, i.e. a relationship between object and subject. If you change the subject, then you change the process. Therefore artistic “meaning” is necessarily in constant flux.
Very much the best illustration of the point made before by so many here. Statements like “Shakespeare portrays Henry positively” are a possible, but not the only reading available, and in fact I would personally subscribe to the idea that Shakespeare is highly ambivalent about the way he shows Henry. So which one is the right interpretation?
In the world of literary criticism, the intent of the author has been dismissed as meaningless for a couple of generations. Citing the author’s intention even has a derogatory name: the Intentional Fallacy.
All that proves is that critics think they know best, and I think we already knew that. It’s definitely true that artists don’t always understand what they were doing, though. John Lennon was apt to misunderstand and shit on most of the Beatles’ output when he was in a bad mood.
This book, The Rape of the Masters, seems germane to the discussion. I saw the author speak, but I haven’t read the book so I can’t attest to its quality.
I am wary of any argument that can be summed up essentially as “Things were better before,” and that (judging from the jacket synopsis here) is what this book is doing. To paraphrase: “Back in the day, before th’ LIBERALS took control of the colleges,” which is the foundation of Kimball’s whole schtick, “they used to teach art the RIGHT WAY. Now they want our children to think that all art is about penises and stuff!”
The fact is that in your average art history survey, your World Art 101, which is what most students who go for art history as a humanities elective will be exposed to, the sorts of ideas described in the quote above don’t really come up. What you get is ten minutes on Courbet as the leading figure in the Realist movement and how what he was doing was a radical departure from the predominant styles of the day. You get half an hour, maybe, on the Arnolfini Wedding as an important Northern Renaissance piece, light and shadow, realistic detail, maybe some time spent discussing the Hockney-Falco Thesis, but little more.
Art History majors, and especially Art History grad students, will naturally learn about Freudianism, Feminism, Marxism, Structuralism and all the other various “isms” that make up the field of art criticism. But that’s what such degrees are all about - learning the infinite variety of interpretations and critiques for any given work of art, and how to formulate one’s own.
To say “Oh noes, the LIBERALS are teaching our kids that art is about sex!” seems disingenuous at best.
I’m wary of that stuff too. But as someone who is quite liberal himself, some of the idiocacy that is paraded around in art history of cultural anthropology, makes me look like Mussolini. I think that book is more of an attack on the mindset of the "this piece of art is really about the struggles of an oppressed indiginous female against the hegemony of those evil, capatlist, male chauvanist, cultural imperialist, westerners " kind of thing.
Of course, Freud’s theories are based on the stories he dreamed up to explain the problems of traumatized patients while avoiding accusing some of the top families of Vienna of child molestation (a definite career-limiting move!); and on his obsession with his mother and sister. So psychology took a 100-year detour to avoid admitting abuse happens.
The classic Mark Twain quote - “a dog is that which is recognized as a dog by other dogs”. So too, art is defined as that which is recognized as art by people who can recognize art.
So - how real is an interpretation of a work based on a complete misconception? Anne McCaffrey (Dragon series of books) had a story collection entitled “Get of the Unicorn” which some clever copy editor fixed to say “Get Off the Unicorn”. (Get is old English for child, as in “beget”). Totally different message, totally different interpretation, because a insufficiently educated middleman took it upon himself to add a letter.
I tend to see the truth as usual, as lying somewhere in the middle. Artist’s intent is tempered by their times, their experience and their psychology. Context is important. For example, Tolkein may have always insisted different, but wouldn’t Lord of the Rings be somehow influenced by the fact that his whole world had just been through the most titanic struggle between good and evil? Or Hemmingway’s fatalism related to the fact that WWI was essentially a futile waste of a generation killed for no reason, leaving many borders about where they started?
There might be a category called “found art”, where something novel is found, often in the mundane seen a different way. Novel and unorthodox interpretations of art might be a form of found art.
But in the end, art is there to please us, to make us think; a puzzle for the senses to get us to consider something different.
It’s definitely true that artists don’t always understand what they were doing, though. John Lennon was apt to misunderstand and shit on most of the Beatles’ output when he was in a bad mood.