The Artist's Role in Shaping Meaning

The artist plays many roles in relation to his/her work. The artist brings the artwork to life and gives it to the world; however I do not think that artists designate one sole meaning to their works. Rather, I think that the role of the artist is to express to her audience that she needed to bring this “thing” whether it be a piece of music, a painting or a bird’s nest into being, and that the pure need to create the thing itself, that can’t be explained, is the significance of the work. Her role in shaping the work is finding the rule that she used to create it, and the actual wonderful act of creating it, but the artist’s job isn’t to tell you what the meaning is but rather to say “this is/was important to me, is it important to you? How or why? While our discussion on Kant was what really motivated this mode of thinking, Carroll’s idea of communication solidified my interpretation.  Carroll argues that a piece of work or an artwork itself is like an ordinary conversation. An artist is trying to tell the world something and she does so through art. Looking at an artwork, interpreting an artwork is like having a  conversation with the artist and trying to understand the message that he or she is trying to communicate. Because language has a definite meaning and it is meant to communicate, he argues that we should have some one concrete meaning within the work to appeal to. In addition to being able to appeal to her artistic intention, he seems to argue that our own reaction is of importance to us as well. He argues that as long as we’re considering the artistic context as a kind of conversation, we can be concerned with on one hand that the artist’s message comes through but that on the other hand, we hold up our end of the conversation as well.  He points out that for some audiences, it is important not to be tricked or fooled by the actual meaning of the piece or personally tricked by one’s own interpretation. As viewers, we want to find the one true meaning or the intention of the author, and thus we have a tendency to disregard interpretations that can’t be directly linked back to the author or what one thinks the creator’s message may be. However, what is problematic with this argument is that you can’t ever pinpoint the exact meaning of a piece. If an artwork is purely conversational then how can we ever be sure we’re translating it correctly or fully grasping the conversation? Even further, I find an issue with arguing that art is just an ordinary conversation with a distinct intention. If it is as simple as that, why not just have a conversation? Artists create works because it’s not that simple. I think that challenge is what Carroll doesn’t fully grasp, and his arguments against anti-intensionalism don’t convince me.  Rather, I find the artist’s role more as in expressing the need to communicate. Their role in shaping the meaning of a work is to express that they needed to create this, but the why  isn’t important in relation to one singular why or in relation to what it actually meant to them in reality.  I could stand in front of a piece of art, or listen to a piece of music over and over again and search and search for the one true meaning, but I have no frame of reference but my own experiences to base meaning off of. Yes, we can reference historical contexts and research the artist, but that doesn’t provide the source of true intention, unless of course you have a purely authentic interview or for instance Van Gogh’s account of why he painted the pair of shoes. Then, yes, I think one can argue that there was direct intention, and we can now say with certainty what it was.  But would the artists themselves argue that their meaning was the only meaning that the artwork could ever hold? I don’t think so. I think artists seem to portray more often than not, that there work dictates them, not the other way around.  For example, look at Ben Butler’s cloud pieces. He said himself that he didn’t have a distinct meaning or vision for each piece, but rather he let the process guide him to his conclusion. He had the idea of the shifting rocks in the blueberry fields and then began a process of creating. I found this directly applicable to Kant. I think this point is reified through Kant’s interpretation of the genius. Kant writes that even the genius can’t explain the process she uses to create a piece of fine art. It’s something that you apprehend through the senses but can’t find completely intelligible. Perhaps the artist’s role is to ensure that no adequate, definite concept can ever be given? She finds a rule in nature and turns it into a rule for freedom that can be used as a mechanism to communicate, but the subject of the communication or its intentional meaning isn’t important. The rule is important though, as Ben pointed out (his process was very important) and also taste is very important. Somebody can’t blindly paint or start randomly hitting cords on a piano. If I started carving with a hot knife, I’d probably end up with more stitches. There is a controlled process that exists that Kant describes as “laborious” and a “slow and even painful process of improvement,” but it doesn’t have to reach to a distinct concept.   What if, as I think Kant is trying to suggest, the artist’s role is simply to communicate through art that artworks can’t ever be completely understood? Kant writes that the genius’s role is nothing else than “the faculty of presenting aesthetic ideas.” But by an aesthetic idea, he means “that representation of the imagination which induces much thought, yet without the possibility of any definite thought whatever concept, being adequate to it, and which language, consequently, can never get quite on level terms with or render completely intelligible.” What if Kant is saying here that the artist’s role in creating is to appeal to a concept and to provoke thought that can never be fully understood or if it can be in one’s mind, can never be intelligibly explained? And if the genius himself can’t ever fully explain it, then in my interpretation it stands to reason, that there can be more than one direct meaning, and that perhaps the meaning, just in itself, misses something about the purpose of the creation and the creation process.  Because I think the meaning of a work is up to interpretation and can’t be directed to one pure intention, but that also maybe the end meaning isn’t what’s important in the first place, I found  a hard time agreeing with Nehamas. However, I did find some interest/ reconciliation in his idea of the author “guiding interpretation” For Nehamas, the meaning of a work comes from the “postulated author” referring to the meaning that the text manifests. However the author is not, as one may assume, the writer of the text. Rather he is “in” the text not “of” the text. Nehamas writes that the author is “also distinct from its historical writer. The author is postulated as the agent whose actions account for the text’s features; he is a character, a hypothesis which is accepted provisionally, guides interpretation and is in turn modified in its’ light.”  “Guiding interpretation” seems to be the key here because the meaning of the text is based in what it could have meant to the writer not what it actually meant to the writer in reality. However, Nehamas points out that the meaning can’t just stem from anything either. It has to be relevant or possible historically. For example, he writes “the principle is that a text does not mean what its writer could not, historically, have meant by it... we cannot attribute to particular words meanings which they came to have only after the writers death.” While I don’t think that you can find one implied meaning, I do think there can be certain aspects of a work that the artist has “guided” the viewer through and that those little tidbits can be helpful in creating a frame of reference and for ruling out absurd, historically incorrect interpretations. However, I still hold true to my argument that what’s truly special about a work is it’s need to be born in the first place, and that that need and the artist’s need to communicate that to other people through their art is their role.