Intention is a necessary component of art.

Intention is a Necessary Component of Artwork

            When reading a good poem one experiences aesthetic satisfaction.  It is the words of the poem and the meaning behind those words that contribute to this experience.  Some combinations of words have the ability to provide more aesthetic satisfaction when compared to others.  This illustrates the relative scale for which aesthetic satisfaction is measured.  During the course of normal life when one engages in conversations with others there is a mutual understanding of the goal of the conversation.  The one who makes the utterance and the auditor have the desired goal of achieving a level of mutual understanding.   The auditor looks to capture the intent of the message and the author looks to create an utterance that embodies the message in a form understandable by the intended audience.  Noel Carrol, in his paper “Art, Intention, and Conversation” believes that the cases of interpreting messages and interpreting artwork share certain characteristics.  Carol is of the belief that creators of artwork and interpreters of artwork engage in a conversation.  There is some noble goal that is attempted by the interpreter of the artwork to understand the meaning of the creator.  On the other hand, the anti-intentionalist believes that the primary and only goal of artwork, specifically interpreting artwork, is to interpret the piece in a way that is most aesthetically pleasing.  In order to achieve this goal in the best way possible, according to the anti-intentionalist, you must hold the fundamental belief that authorial intent is separate from the actual piece of artwork.  This is because authorial intent when incorporated into the interpretation of the artwork potentially places a ceiling on the amount of aesthetic pleasure one could attain when interpreting an artwork.  If, as the anti-intentionalist does, you separate the artwork for the one meaning the author intended from the actual piece of art, you separate the ability of the authorial intent to eliminate other possible meanings (which may include the meaning that provides the most aesthetic pleasure). 

            According to Carroll, the idea of anti-intentionalism came to fruition during a time when literary critics were fond of attributing biographical qualities on novels.  These critics attempted to use the piece of artwork to ascertain an understanding of the biography of the author.  This ideology clearly is flawed, as there are cases in which the artwork shed little to no light on the biography of the author.  This is a case when even the intentionalist would suppose that the intention should be reexamined in its role of interpreting the artwork.  It is clearly plausible and in fact there are many examples where a novel did not have any biographical qualities.  Another case that supports the theory that renders authorial intent valueless is the case in which the supposed authorial intent clearly opposes the reality of the artwork.  The intentionalist would not hesitate to admit that this is not a good example to support appealing to the intent of the author and would suppose that most likely the author has made a mistake or we have made a mistake in interpreting the supposed intent of meaning given by the author.  Even in the less obvious case where it is unclear whether the author meant an allegorical or metaphorical meaning on a certain passage we suppose that we do not understand the author’s actual intent.  This seems like the appropriate and intuitively pleasing response as opposed to use this case as motivation to create a universal rule that stipulates that intent of the author is not relevant to interpreting artwork. 

            Often those attempting to use authorial intent to interpret artwork depend on the actual piece of artwork to determine the author’s intent. Perhaps this is because the author is not around to answer the question and the intent is unclear. This poses a problem and helps identify the fundamental belief the anti-intentionalist must hold.  This type of interpretation seems to be circular, which is an epistemic travesty; as you can’t use the piece to determine the meaning of the piece.  Additionally it seems as though in those cases where it is rendered impossible to ascertain authorial intent and the actual artwork does little to shed light on the authorial intent it would be impossible to interpret the piece unless you viewed the piece as a separate entity from the intent of the author.  This separation is a fundamental belief of the anti-intentionalist.

            My intuition has me feeling uncomfortable when I try to separate the authorial intent with the actual piece of artwork.   If the goal of artwork is for the interpreter to achieve the highest level of aesthetic satisfaction, at the exclusion of other goals when interpreting artwork, then the intention is in fact meaningless and ultimately a hindrance.  It narrows the plethora of possible logical interpretations down to the one that the author intended limiting the ability of the artwork and the interpreter to appeal to the interpretation, that may be different from authorial intent, that provides the most aesthetic satisfaction.

            I believe that authorial intent is a fundamental component of a piece of art that differentiates it from other things.  Authorial intent is not all encompassing in determining what makes something art but provides a necessary part of the foundation that makes the creation art as opposed to something else.  Identifying the other components that are necessary to make something art is out of the scope of this paper.  I am merely trying to show the error that occurs when one tries to render authorial intent irrelevant to appropriate interpretation.  An interpreter attains a feeling of affinity towards artwork because it accomplished its intention to the best of its ability, on a relative scale, as well as encompassing aspects of creativity on a relative and very subjective scale.  What makes something creative or not, or more or less creative, is beyond the scope of this paper and I will not attempt to come up with a system that determines levels of creativity. 

The process of interpreting the meaning of artwork is fundamentally different then attributing meaning to things that are intention-less.  Perhaps we see a cloud that looks like it says “Happy Holidays” while we are lounging on the beach.  If there is just a cloud that happens to look like that, we would feel it merely a coincidence and the cloud actually has no meaning.  On the other hand if the cloud is in that form because a pilot was paid to fly his plane and released gases in a certain way as to write out that message in shapes that took the same form as clouds that would be an instance where the clouds do have meaning.  Intent is important, valuable, and necessary in interpreting some piece of artwork and attributing meaning.  The artwork was put into existence for a purpose; intent is the motivation that is responsible for the existence of the artwork.  It would seem very peculiar to, after the artwork is created with a specific meaning, impart your own unique meaning after the fact.  Doing so gives you too much interpretative power and in some way makes the artwork unduly yours as you put your meaning onto it.  A part of what makes the artwork great, meaning, has now become your meaning, and minimizes the credit that the author deserves.  The artist did something that is difficult, generating a creative instantiation of their goal, their intent.  We shouldn’t cheapen the artists craft by rendering them merely artisans of aesthetic entertainment, but rather view them as they should be viewed, contributors to culture and society, relaying their message in a different medium, through the noble skill of utilizing their creative talents. 

One might oppose my opinion by suggesting a case in which an artist creates something purely beautiful while intentionally withholding meaning.  I do not think this is actually a counterargument.  I would not suppose that an aspect of “good” artwork is that it was created with the intent of leaving the meaning up for interpretation or without ability to be interpreted at all.  This intentional ambiguity could be a noble goal of the artists and renders the artwork perhaps better because it allows the interpreter the opportunity to operate within the parameter intentionally set out by the creator, by imbuing their own meaning onto the artwork.  But in the case where the interpreter ignores the meaning set out by the author, or by appealing only to the meaning that provides the most aesthetic pleasure, they are engaging in a different activity, similar to observing something outside you that is aesthetically pleasing, such as symmetry in nature.  Both of these cases ignore the intention of the artist.  This is not good interpretation of artwork.

            The view that takes the opposite opinion on the fundamental belief of the anti-intentionalist, namely that authorial intent must be separate entity from the artwork, is what Caroll refers to as the neo-wittgensteninian view.  This view supposes that intention is a purpose, manifest in the artwork, which regulates the way the artwork is.  In order to discover intention once must analyze or dissect the artwork.  The attribute of this view that is different from the anti-intentionalist is that intention is a component that is discoverable in the artwork as opposed to a separate entity.  I am not sure where I stand on the neo-wittgensteninian view because it is plausible that my understanding of the role of authorial intent permits the discovery of the intent in the artwork.  Whether authorial intent is discoverable in the actual artwork or whether it is a separate entity is not in the scope of this paper.  Rather I suppose that intent is what makes the artwork art, a necessary component of the creation, and valuable in interpreting the piece.

            I disagree that the goal of interpreting artwork, at the exclusion of any other goals, is to discover the interpretation that gives the interpreter the most aesthetic pleasure.  This strips the author of the satisfaction, responsibility, and connection to the art.  I agree with Carroll that the ant-intentionalist proposition that aesthetically pleasing interpretation overrules all other goals of interpreting artwork is flawed.  I believe that this allows the interpreter to strip some value attributes from the author as well as minimizes the craft and makes it too easy to create something that would be considered art.  It is a very selfish understanding of the role interpretation of the appropriate way to interpret art.  In order to adequately appreciate a piece of art one must appeal to the meaning intended by the author.