On Nov 28, 2009, at 9:05 AM, [email protected] wrote:
I like your phrase, "propriety of intent."
> The painter is left defenseless against the intent seekers who want to know
what the meaning is, and on being told that it is the existnce of this
cup,will then say that the work is an act of craft, not art, since the painter
seems to have had no intent and no intellectual basis for the painting.
The painter's defense to the intent-seeker is, "So? That's your problem." Or,
"So? That's your work to do." Moreover, it is quite unfair for a viewer to say
that the cup painter "had no intellectual basis for the painting." Aside from
the fact that the critic probably does not know what the artist's
"intellectual basis" was, it still has a significant intellectual component.
It's quite an intellectual act to invent, form, and finish an illusory image.
What your artist did to make it is quite impressive; but what he did not do,
apparently, was to strew a lot of erstwhile philosophical context around the
image of the cup.
Intent is an important factor, one that cannot be dismissed. Intent is
future-oriented, and that is what makes humans distinctly different from any
other creature (as far as we know with any definiteness, etc. and other
pan-species caveats as appropriate). In making things, humans make them with
the (typical) expectation that the object will retain a large amount of
comprehensible form, so that others can encounter the object in a reasonably
predictable way. ("Encounter," not "understand" or "perceive" or other
concluding judgment.)
When a person forms an artifact, he forms it with known interpretive models in
mind. Whether he adheres 99% to the rules and canons of presentation and by
doing so guides the viewer to some interpretive conclusion or whether he
chooses a much smaller range of known cues to interpretation, his creative
actions prepose the work for its reception by others. All reactions by viewers
not the artist come from the viewers' own previously formed interpretive
schemes and frameworks. "What is that?" "Oh, how beautiful." "Yuck. Derivative
Kincade." Etc.
The only thing the work of art is a perfect and exact exemplar of is itself.
After that, other interpretations and perceptions are a matter of range and
scope: Does the work "map" onto the interpretation (or conversely, does the
interpretation "map" onto the work) in an acceptable or seemingly fit way?
Interpretations ("meanings") are like bed sheets or table cloths: they may or
may not fit the mattress or table they are laid upon. The table or mattress
is, in this analogy, "reality" and it peeks out here and there and lets us
know that there is more to it than is covered in your philosophy or painting.
When William says, "the best approach regarding intentionality, which is the
container word for meaning, is to avoid intentionality, to try to contradict
meaning at every turn," I do not take that to mean to sabotage or thwart
"meaning," but rather to disregard it, to deny its primacy, to ignore or be
insensitive to preconditioned meanings that might already attach, not to
connect the dots, and let the viewer do that ... because the viewer will, in
any case.
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Michael Brady
[email protected]
http://considerthepreposition.blogspot.com/
http://thinkinglikeadesigner.blogspot.com/
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