The following text is compiled from Ingmar König's bachelor thesis Script. König develops thoughts about the process of interpretation in relation to looking at a work of art by opening the debate on the Intentism Movement founded by Vittorio Pelosi. His ideas oscillate between choosing the perspective of the artist and that of the viewer.
(compiled by Pamphlet)
The Interpretation of meaning
Immanuel Kant, stated that there are two types of thinking: Reason and Intellect, in German: Vernunftand Verstand, respectively. Reason is a type of thinking that does not produce definitive end results, no solutions. Intellect on the other hand, is a type of thinking in which the objective is to find truth and insight. It was Hannah Arendt who later made the connection between these and the terms Meaning and Knowledge. She described intellect as something that serves to meet our need for knowledge and her description of reason was the instrument in the unceasing quest for meaning. So if we define a physical artwork as the materialization of the genesis, thinking that has been rendered visible, then here are two types of thinking, and therefore there are at least two different types of art. There is the art that is produced by an artist, using his intellect to fulfil his need for knowledge, he wants answers, and his quest or the answer itself, could be the exhibition. At the other end there is the art that is born out of reason, the type of thinking that searches for meaning, an unceasing quest.
Research is the pursuit of knowledge, so we could say that artistic research does apply to those artists who use their intellect to make their artworks. Their works are readable, because facts are embedded in a logical story. Originating from the process of thinking their artwork came into existence, retrospectively the audience will be able to be guided back to the original thought or idea.
However, for the other group of artists, who actually use the other type of thinking, reason, as the instrument in the unceasing quest for meaning, it is the artwork itself that has to speak. This two dimensional approach will however serve no meaning, and will be evenly refutable and supportable. But it does pinpoint the eagerness we have to categorize everything based upon the ‘logic’ of binary oppositions. According to Jacques Derrida we cannot get past language (and culture), and through language any word or concept we articulate contains not only a positive but also its opposite.
In language every word is a vehicle of meaning, with its meaning to tell what it is. By describing what the meaning of a particular word is, we directly tell what this word does not means. This is so densely present in our language and thinking pattern, and that is why it is so hard for us to look at art without wondering what the genuine interpretation is. But the interpretation of art does not concern the search for meaning in an artwork if there already is a meaning to be found. So what is interpretation, being used in the arts, about then?
Ted Nelson has been referred to as an IT-sociolosopher, as he studied sociology and philosophy and is considered a pioneer of information technology. This following quotation is an excerpt from an video-interview.
My religion is human creative, its essentially a two-Gods system. You have God-the-author, and God-the-author has absolute power to arrange everything the way he or she wants you to see things. And God-the-reader has absolute power to tear the book in half, to throw it across the room, to rip off the pages, to fold them, to staple, to mutilate them or quote them, trans lucently, so that they remain connected. And thereby God-the-reader becomes God-the-author in an ever expanding chain of symmetrical relation
- Ted Nelson on the future of text
In this statement he uses the binary opposition between God-the-author and God-the-reader to depict how the intention of the author will influence the work, during the assembling, but once finished, the work is owned by the reader. Situated the farthest away from this view is the Intentism Movement, an artist collective founded by Vittorio Pelosi who publicized their manifesto in 2009, consisting of three main principles:
Intentists believe that the artist is free to convey his or her intended message.
Intentists believe a confused, hidden or denied intention leads to ZERO accountability.
Intentists believe that an omission of artist intention can lead to enforced restrictions on the artist and even censorship.
- Excerpt from the Intentism Manifesto
The first principle is followed by the assumption that European postmodernism gags the artist, Jacques Derrida promoted the multi-interpretational view on art, which according to the Intentists, will lead to art in which intention never be completely present. For Intentists this is hard to cope with, because the intention of the artist should directly translate to the one and only interpretation of a work of art. The second principle states that the intention of the artist should be clear to the audience. When this is not clear enough being presented, it will lead to zero accountability. The last principle deals with their conviction that when the intention of the artist is missing, any intention could be forced upon a work of art, and therefore the work itself could be easily censored if the artist does not stand up for his intention. The Intentism Movement believes that the meaning of an artwork can only be found by the explanation that came from the conscious decision of the artist. It makes the artist’s intentional, and thereby conscious, decision making responsible for the reception of his work.
Intentism redirects our attention from the discourse of critics and theorists to the artists whose thoughts and actions are the ultimate source of whatever is genuinely valuable in the arts.
- Paisley Livingston in 2011
According to Paisley Livingston it is the artist who should be back in power, instead of the critics and theorists. And according to the Intentism Movement, the artist should always be consciously aware of his intentions, and only creating works in which the intention is clearly present.
Ted Nelsons’ perspective on the author’s (artist’s) intention being less important once his artwork is presented to the world, derives from The Intentional Fallacy, written by William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley in 1946. This essay diametrically opposed to Paisley Livingston’s view, decries the assumption that the intention of the artist should be of influence in the way his work is interpreted. According to Wimsatt and Beardsley, his word should not be law. They introduced the idea that once the artist has completed his work, and presents it to the world, it belongs to the world and no longer exclusively to him. In the interpretation of his work he becomes just one critic among many, whose word should be respected but not taken as the final authority. This is authority however, controlling the reception of the artwork, and is exactly what the Intentists are trying to gain. Therefore the Intentism Movement’s approach is dogmatic in their active denial of freedom in art and interpretation.
The Interpretation of Art
We, as viewers, are the direct object in the disturbance caused by the curators assumption of the artists intention. I use the example of the Intentists to show the extreme idea of artists wanting to control the reception of the artwork. The freedom of art lies in the fact that the audience can still interpret a work of art in a different way than the artist intended, and this is where the power of the visual tactile language lies.
The Intentists preach about the accountability of the artist, his intention being the most important part of the artwork. Making the artist fully responsible and ever-aware of his intentions, and therefore in power. The artist should, in their opinion, never release artworks in which his intentions are not clearly visible. This method describes an absolute method for creating art. A conscious process that strives for almost objective works of art, which obviously is an impossible pursuit. The conscious is not superior to the unconscious. The fail-safe system we use to determine the integrity of our consciousness is our consciousness itself. We cannot unconsciously question our consciousness.
However, consciously questioning our consciousness is, apart from insincere, also impossible. The straightforward method preferred by the Intentists, will only create works to be interpret from within a certain framework, which fundamentally weakens the capabilities of art. Since tactile language crosses borders, otherwise left untouched when approached from within the written language. The theory used by Ted Nelson’s of God-the-author and God-the-reader is a much more appealing approach on how we should look at art.
There is no strict border and there are no certain rules concerning how to create art. And I believe it also shows that interpretation actually is just about the discovery of references; references to daily life, references to ones childhood, cultural references, political references, references to the artwork or an earlier version, photographs taken, reproductions, etc. The framework of references is different from viewer to viewer. There is no wrong reference to have. The swastika symbol will be interpreted differently by someone related to the Brahman caste from India than by anyone living in Israel.
AND or OR, and AND and OR
Postmodern symbolism is how I would like to call the effect an artwork can have on its viewers reference framework. References found in fine art can be compared to the finding of meaning of each and every single word in literature, by examining every word piece by piece. Words are conventional vehicles of meaning, literature has meaning in a way that other art forms do not. Arguably, every word, to be a word at all, must have a meaning. However, one would encounter a problem once the meaning of every single word is found, for the meaning of some words will change according their context. This phenomenon is called the hermeneutic circle. It refers to the idea that one’s understanding of a text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one’s understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. Neither the whole text nor any individual part can be understood without reference to one another. However, this circular character of interpretation does not make it impossible to interpret text, but announces that the meaning of a text must be found within its context. Since the arts are apart from text, and therefore apart from the restriction of the inescapable binary opposition formula, we do not have to deal with these limits of interpretation. We are aware of this, yet we’re finding ourselves often enough back in this pattern. Being used to this, it seems like it is hard to break with, we strive to explain and categorize everything. Life itself is already too uncertain to grasp and so many questions that we have are going to be left unanswered. So we feel relieved by everything we actually can explain by categorizing. And when we are looking for explanations, or answers, we are always looking for answer A or answer B. Sometimes we can combine two answers, which will still give us one answer: answer AB (answer A and Answer B).
I believe that there is something fundamentally wrong about the way we perceive and handle our information. We shouldn’t analyse everything by putting it into opposing categories. And it is the context of art, where if we choose to abandon our habit of categorizing, we can really benefit from it. How every word has its meaning, a work of art also has its components that have their references. However, assembled together, an installation artwork’s explanation isn’t necessarily the sum of all the references of the objects being placed in the installation. The objects have their meaning outside the installation, or refer to something with a meaning outside the installation, and simultaneously have a different meaning inside the installation. Abstractly said, we should accept the option as viewer, to conclude that we can have both opinion A and interpretation A together and apart from opinion B and interpretation B.