Do an artist's intentions matter?

[JChrome]

YES
and
MAYBE
and
NO

Yes, it matters to the artist. (but not always)
Maybe, if the art makes me feel something, I might care to learn the artists intention.
No, if the art does not make me feel anything, the artist intention is irrelevant.

I think the question "Does the Artists intention Matter?" is an incomplete question. To whom does it matter? To the audience? To the artist?

But then I don't think you can answer in binary Y/N form either. It's a question of how much.

[Jmarmck]

As to the artist. Sure it matters. As you all noted it is what drives the creation. As to the viewer, maybe not. A person appreciates a piece of art for what it does to them. It is an intensely personal and unknowable thing, very ethereal thing to grasp. In my opinion, the only way the photographer can portray the intent is by means other than photographic. A title is a perfect example. That is the only way photographer is able to insert any connection to the intention to the viewer: plant a seed, if you will.

But you may say image content is the main method of communicating intent. Take a cartographer. The intention of the map is to transfer the map message to the viewer. I won't go into the "average map viewer" BS, but there are tools cartographers use to relay the proper message, symbolism, colors, legends, titles, etc. These are very solid concepts that influence the reader. The most helpful of the cartographers tools is an understanding of how people see and read, what relationships are most common i.e. blue is cold, red is hot. The same exists in photography as well but not nearly in such a literal sense as a map.

Despite all the efforts to relay a message there are people who will see it for what they think and not what is intended. It is the individuals essence that determine if the intent is successfully transferred. Add to that the fickle nature of the human emotion. There are countless discussion of how a weak image taken today may be powerful in the future.

So given all that I will say no.

[djdister]

An artist's intention might make an interesting backstory, but it rarely helps my appreciation or lack of appreciation of the work. And sometimes, when an artist expresses his "intent" in writing to accompany the artwork, I lose all interest in the artwork. Often it is better to try not to explain a visual work through mere words.

[Heroique]

Okay, time to say the "F" word.

Freud.

There, I said it, and I'm remorseful for omitting his name in my earlier post, right after Shaw.

If we take his ideas into account (short of swallowing them whole), intentions are everything, whether you're conscious of them or not. That's right. One's biographically-based intentions not only create art work, they interpret art work, too. If you don't fully understand these intentions – yours and other people's – you might very well enjoy art (by you and others) to some degree, but you will never fully understand it. Never. Let's just say it's going to take some responsible self-analysis, or expensive professional analysis before you do.

You want to enjoy art with a full understanding? Then hit the couch!

[Jim Galli]

Okay, time to say the "F" word.

Freud.

There, I said it, and I'm remorseful for omitting his name in my earlier post, right after Shaw.

If we take his ideas into account (short of swallowing them whole), intentions are everything, whether you're conscious of them or not. That's right. One's biographically-based intentions not only create art work, they interpret art work, too. If you don't fully understand these intentions – yours and other people's – you might very well enjoy art (by you and others) to some degree, but you will never fully understand it. Never. Let's just say it's going to take some responsible self-analysis, or expensive professional analysis before you do.

You want to enjoy art with a full understanding? Then hit the couch!

And . . . if you think sigmund was entirely wrong about almost everything . . and you have no respect for him or his theories . .

Then what?

[JChrome]

And . . . if you think sigmund was entirely wrong about almost everything . . and you have no respect for him or his theories . .

Then what?

Easy. one should first offer substantive reasons and criticisms that buck Freud's theories. Then, one offers another framework to use (and there are many other psychological theorists to use).

So you don't respect Freud's work. Then whose work do you respect and why?

[Darin Boville]

Easy. one should first offer substantive reasons and criticisms that buck Freud's theories. Then, one offers another framework to use (and there are many other psychological theorists to use).

So you don't respect Freud's work. Then whose work do you respect and why?

My impression is that Freud's work is still highly respected in university English departments.

--Darin

[Jim Galli]

Easy. one should first offer substantive reasons and criticisms that buck Freud's theories. Then, one offers another framework to use (and there are many other psychological theorists to use).

So you don't respect Freud's work. Then whose work do you respect and why?

Won't be going there any time soon on this forum. Sorry.

[Heroique]

Easy. one should first offer substantive reasons and criticisms that buck Freud's theories. Then, one offers another framework to use (and there are many other psychological theorists to use).

So you don't respect Freud's work. Then whose work do you respect and why?

Very well said.

For anyone interested, three easy-to-find works to sample Freud's typical brilliance about the mental act of artistic creation would be:

Creative Writers and Day Dreaming
Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood
The Moses of Michelangelo

I'll repeat "brilliant," and add "deeply influential" and "justly controversial."

[paulr]

If anyone thinks intentions matter, don't be embarrassed, you have many of the greatest thinkers about art in Western civilization on your side.

I'll take Dryden, Diderot, Goethe, Coleridge, Carlyle, Ruskin, Delacroix, Berlioz, Poe, Yeats, Wilde, Shaw, etc., over [what's that French guy's name?] any day.

I think by "that French guy" you mean T.S. Eliot, Wimsatt and Beardsley, Welleck and Warren, Jacques Derrida, Cleanth Brooks, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Gilles Delleuze, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault ...

Before you dismiss these guys, you might want to read the arguments. The seminal ones are Wimsatt and Beardsley's "Intentional Fallacy" and Barthes' "The Death of the Author." The ideas are more nuanced than just "intention doesn't matter." If you read them, I seriously doubt you'll continue to put so much credence in your assumptions about any artist's intention.