For the second 'Pentathlon' of the semester, I decided to watch a Ted Ed video on the interpretation of art. It was a short watch, but it raised a lot of interesting questions. The video opened by describing a situation; you and your friend are at an art gallery looking at a painting. You think it is about love, but your friend thinks it's about war. You google it and find out that it was a reproduction of a painting that the artist made in first grade and she just chose her favorite colors. You are then asked who is right? Should the artist's intent change your ideas?
You are then introduced to several viewpoints. The first being that of W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, who argued that the artist's intent doesn't matter, calling it the 'Intentional Fallacy'. They give an analogy saying that 'we don't think of a chef's intent when we are deciding if their food is good or not, we either like it or we don't.'
The second viewpoint is that of Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels, who rejected the Intentional Fallacy, saying that an artist's interpretation is the only possible interpretation. They say that an intentional creator is what makes a work subject to understanding at all.
The video then describes these mindsets as a spectrum and asks the viewer where they fall on this spectrum.
I feel like I fall more on the 'artist's intent mattering' side of the spectrum. Since they created the work, their input can give a lot of valuable insight into the work. After all, they are the closest to the work.
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