Interpretation

Recently I asked a group of students pursuing their MFA degree to read the essay "Against Interpretation" by the late Susan Sontag.

Wikipedia introduces this work with the following notes:

Against Interpretation and Other Essays is a collection of essays by Susan Sontag published in 1966. It includes some of Sontag's best-known works, including "On Style," "Notes on 'Camp'," and the titular essay "Against Interpretation." In the last, Sontag argues that in the new critical approach to aesthetics the spiritual importance of art is being replaced by the emphasis on the intellect. Rather than recognizing great creative works as possible sources of energy, she argues, contemporary critics were all too often taking art's transcendental power for granted, and focusing instead on their own intellectually constructed abstractions like "form" and "content." In effect, she wrote, interpretation had become "the intellect's revenge upon art." The essay famously finishes with the words, "in place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art".

There were various responses from the group.  I added the following:


I was a part of a group of  a dozen faculty members that worked on developing a new Critical Thinking course for the university. We met over the summer trying to create a course that looked at the ways that various disciplines approach critical thinking and ideas. When it was my turn, I spoke about the viewpoints of the artist and artistic intent in the topic that we were approaching that day. After speaking, a colleague from the English Department said, "He could care less about artists and their intent, all that matters is the interpretation of the viewer."  I found the comment a little shocking, especially from a member of the English Department. He then went on to explain that we will never know what an artist truly intended or was thinking, all the essays by art historians are scholarly guesses at best. He stated that he has read at least thirty-one different interpretations of Tom Sawyer that range from musings on boyish pranks to the novel being a gay fairy tale. In his eyes, it was not important what the artist intended but the response generated by the audience. The artist does not necessarily need to share his or her motivation, what is important is that the work resonates with the audience causing them to be moved. This caused me to think very differently about interpretation.... My thoughts are my own and my own motivation.  Sometimes I will give the viewer an inkling into my inner-thoughts and sometimes will guard my thoughts. The most important thing is not whether or not they feel the same things that I do, but that they are moved. This is a much more liberating method of working. Keep true to your own motivation!  Personal work is always much more powerful!