selections from an unsent online debate

(THEM) I feel that intentionalism is intrinsic to a piece of art

(ME) Valuable, perhaps, but I don't know about intrinsic. Keep in mind, viewing a piece in terms of its conscious theoretical constructs and purposes is a western (and recent) approach. What intention is there to be found in anonymous works found by ancient artists, or cross-cultural exhibits of "artifacts"? The best we can manage is to use our knowledge of the object's cultural context to try to figure out how to read it, but this is no more than what we do with contemporary, domestic works. Intention can play a part in this, and perhaps a valuable part, but my original point was that it is dispensible. Works of art do not necessarily become illegible text without the high art priest intervening to tell us what god is saying.

Art functions because it places itself within a tradition of signs and techniques. These are not reinvented with every single work.

(THEM) ...and to try to divest art from the intentions of the artist alienates that individual from the very experience they are trying to achieve.

(ME) Perhaps. I would argue that if a piece is successful, in the manner that the artist attempted to make it so, then it will properly speak to the viewer without the filter of his explanation. More on this below...

(THEM) Whats the use of doing something if people are simply going to interpret it the way they want to?

(ME) People do that anyway. Knowing the intention of the artist simply gives you one more thing to judge, so you can not only say "I really don't like the juxtaposition of those colors", but also, "I think that he was smoking crack to think that there's a commentary on war in this." Intention works as an equation to be solved: the artist creates an object that is to be seen by an audience so as to elicit a desired experience. Object + audience = experience. The only static quantity in this is the object (within bounds...I'm not going to go into that here). The audience obviously changes every time a new person steps in front of it, or another day passes and the cultural context changes. The experience then changes with that audience. What is a successful intention? Perhaps it is simply one that creates an object that is capable of eliciting the desired experience despite the dynamics of the viewer. But what if the interaction of object and audience produces an experience that was not predicted or purposed, but is considered highly valuable regardless? I guess then we can get into arguments about whether or not we can credit the artist if his work ends up accomplishing something that he didn't forsee, or about how much work the audience might be doing in a particular case. But why can't the artist discover what his work elicits along with the audience? What if he tries to use it to discover something about himself?

dlf
1999

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