On 9/18/05, Shel Belinkoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Yeah, I think it does. It implies that you had some clear intention in the > creation of the work, and that the result met your expectations. Of > course, sometimes there's the fortuitous accident, but overall, to me at > least, knowing why you like your own work indicates an understanding of > what you've done, and the ability to perhaps honestly critique it. >
But, what difference does it make to you, as a viewer, knowing what the intention of an artist might have been when a work was created? If I go to an art gallery, it matters not a whit what was going through the artist's mind during the conception and creation of his/her work. There it is, up on a wall, and I look at it. I like it, or I don't. I may "get into it", and stare for hours. I may wonder what the artist was "trying to say", but I get that from the work, not from the artist. What I "get" may be far different than what (if anything) the artist was trying to say, but that doesn't invalidate the work or the artist. Again, not to beat a dead horse (but you keep bringing these things up), I don't think that it's up to an artist to critique his/her own work - that's for critics. An artist creates art (or in my case, "a photographer creates photographs"). If I could explain why I liked some of my photos, I'd probably be a writer, not a photographer. Or a critic. cheers, frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson
