The artist’s importance in regard to meaning within a
work is found in the fact that it is through the artist that the work is
brought about. Though a seemingly obvious point following that the art object
is, and that it is the artist that makes it so, it must be explicitly stated
that the nature of the artist’s influence on the work has implications for the
interpretation of the work. This relationship (the artist’s responsibility for
the work’s interpretation) is derived from the simple fact that is the artist
who chose the material. Whether knowingly and intentionally, or intuitively and
in a state of flow, the artist provides a particular form to some matter or
substance – the work is instantiated by the artist. This provides the base
level for interpretation (it provides a thing to interpret the meaning of), and
respecting the object can be considered a sort of lower-bound of the range of
potential meanings for a work, as to disregard the actual character of the
object would to be to not talk about the object at all. Therefore, on a base
level, interpretations of the meaning of the work are grounded within the work’s
observable properties which qualify it.[1] One cannot legitimately interpret
a work if they disregard its details which would otherwise defy the given
interpretation or, in other words, do not take in the whole thing. However, the
artist’s delimiting of the work is not merely in being a cause of it coming
into being but additionally operates by placing a work into a historical-cultural
context. This does not mean that legitimate interpretation cannot be derived from
a subject which is foreign to that culture – one does not need to be a part of
the culture of 20th century France to appreciate and derive meaning
from the works of the composer Erik Satie. Alexander Nehamas gives an account
of the delimiting effect of the artist on the work but at the same time sympathizes
with the deconstructionist belief that works are better understood as time goes
on and more can be used in the interpretative process. These not being in
contradiction, then, one recognizes that the culture of the artist does not
provide special privilege to other members of the same or similar culture.
Instead, what is meant by this affixing of a historical cultural context,
provided by Nehamas, is that works cannot be infused with meanings which are
clearly foreign to the culture they were created in. This accounts neatly for
the perceived ability to evaluate different interpretations and be able to
dismiss some on the grounds of being irrelevant. Nehamas uses the example of
using connotations of words in a particular text (Kafka’s Metamorphosis specifically) which those words did not possess either
during or prior to the publishing of the work. The retrospective application of
connotations which were only later developed, while allowing for a seemingly satisfactory
interpretation to be produced, proves specious in light of the statement “those
words did not have the same meaning at the time the text was written.” Another
illustrative example is the mistake of some untrained listeners to refer to the
“furniture music” of Erik Satie as ambient music. This misstep is easy to
understand as both styles have similar aesthetic qualities and motivating
principles but Satie’s works are actually precursors to the genre later known
as ambient, and cannot be justifiably assimilated into the latter category for
both notable historical differences/motivations and a clear difference in the sonorities
utilized. Therefore a work is diachronic
up to its own historical-cultural context and with an upper-bound demarcated – most
easily measured by time – by its moment of actually coming to existence;
inversely it may be considered that the work exists with a limitless potential
of meaning until it is put into the world.
Turning
to the meaning itself then, as it exists once a work is actually in the word,
we can see that one may legitimately draw a wealth of meanings, not entirely compatible,
from a single work with respect to the aforementioned upper-bound of the work’s
context. The artist then does affix a singular meaning to a work (even the
artist’s interpretation of their own work is an interpretive effort which
places the artist in the same category as any other observer with no privilege
above any other), but delimits the potential meanings a work may have. Therefore,
while a work may possess multiple, equally legitimate, and incommensurable
meanings; it cannot mean simply anything – it must respect the bounds set to it
by the artist.
[1] The
concept of grounding here is related to the same concept written discussed by Martin
Heidegger but is not intentionally isomorphic with it. For more on the concept
of grounded and the compelling related concept of “world” see Heidegger’s essay
“The Origin of the Work of Art”
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