Give me 3 Reasons Why Critics Don't Want to Know the Artist's Intent

This is not to say that the artist wasn't experiencing an isolated burst of emotion when they made the music -- but often there are other catalysts for the stuff.

1. You're not writing about the artist's intentions, you're writing about your guess at the artist's intentions or that part of their intentions they choose to reveal. If the latter, it often means undue weight being given to musicians who happen also to be verbally articulate and historically clued-up.

2. I stopped trying to write about artistic intentions when I realised that a lot of music I liked didn't have any, or the only guessable intention was the profit-motive. Models of criticism based on intentionality would downgrade that kind of music as inferior to music where intention is stated or transparent. Which is fine and consistent except from my point of view would be entirely dishonest.

3. When a piece of music is played there are multiple intentions at work. There is the intention of the creator, the intention of the listener, and the intention of the selector (who might be creator or listener or a third party). I'm not opposed to discussion of artistic intentions but I think these other intentions should be given weight in criticism.

4. Writing about artistic intention shifts the focus of criticism towards the recording of music. Ignoring it shifts the focus towards playback of music - the moment of playback, its immediate impact and continued effect. This to my mind is an aspect of music that's equally important and easier to relate to.

1. Intent is less important than achievement. In darts, I can intend to hit a bull's eye but if I hit the wall instead I don't get any points. But art isn't darts (or a math quiz or an essay on the 7 yrs war), so ending up off the target can still yield good art.

2. Art that does exactly what the artist intends is just propaganda. More interesting art is made with unclear intentions than art that wants to send a specific message.

3. Isn't the art more important than the artist? Who cares what they think, what they intend to do? A piece of art should be about what it means to the people who view it not what it means to its creator.

Actually, like you, DLeone, I think artistic intent is sorely underestimated, and the obviousness of it is fairly underrated at all. I.e., most "enlightened" folk would tell you that it's impossible to guess an artist's intent, yet they have no trouble identifying a satire, irony, humour, postmodern cues, etc.--and will have lengthy discussions about them. If you don't know an artist's intent, how could you discuss satire or irony? Which is fully based on context and intent?

Having said that, I think the caveat is that most artists aren't that bright, and many a times what one perceives as intent really is much the negative space constructed by accident.

I'm not saying it's impossible to guess at an artists intent, but that your guess is part of your reaction to a work, not necessarily their construction of it.

Doesn't taking artistic intentions seriously put the critics' personal interpretation on the shelf a bit? Er.....which is probably the root of an argument in itself.

No -- because what an artist WANTS to make is not what they DO make. (Except money. That tends to be fairly direct).

I think the notion of the artist as some sort of out-of-control automaton with a spraygun is sort of ludicrous. I mean, I don't speak for all artists, but the ones I've met, who slave over works, spend months on one detail--they may not understand the full ennui or the deep-root meanings, but I'm fairly certain they intended the work to be the work in a great many ways.

That said, I think some art is designed to be noisy in the information theory sort of way, and that's totally cool. Italo Calvino mentioned something about that, I'm paraphrasing, but I think it goes like, "some art is designed for interpretation, some art ain't."

Hasn't there been a discussion about this already?

"they intend the work to be the work" - I don't think anyone's denying this, but this is all you can really say and it's not very useful. Especially in pop music, the number of artists who thoroughly and honestly explain their intentions is very close to nil. (i.e. I can't think of any). I think "ignoring artistic intention" is often interpreted as "contempt for the artist" which isn't neccessarily the case.

ignoring artistic intention actually gives the artist a lot more freedom (and implicitly this = respect) than demanding that they explain what they mean all the time.

1. You're not writing about the artist's intentions, you're writing about your guess at the artist's intentions or that part of their intentions they choose to reveal.

This makes sense. Though, there are occasions where the artist states in an interview (or sometimes even in the liner notes) what they were trying to do, and I get frustrated when it gets ignored. It's one thing to critique the concept, but to ignore one that the person has revealed seems inconsiderate. However, this may just be bad criticism (IMO), and not the norm at all.

Models of criticism based on intentionality would downgrade that kind of music as inferior to music where intention is stated or transparent.

The root of "rockist" criticism?

3. When a piece of music is played there are multiple intentions at work.

OK, but I was really only referring to the artist's.

4. Writing about artistic intention shifts the focus of criticism towards the recording of music. Ignoring it shifts the focus towards playback of music - the moment of playback, its immediate impact and continued effect. This to my mind is an aspect of music that's equally important and easier to relate to.

I think that is your best reason, if only because it seems closest to the reasoning that went into the music itself, as far as I know (key phrase?).

I'm still embargoed from using the r-word, but I think what you're talking about is more rooted in the stuff about 'verbally articulate' in my point 1.

If an artist has said something about intention or motivation in the liner notes and I've found it relevant to my experience of the record I'll mention that, sure. If not then I probably won't - I wouldn't ever deny an artist's stated intention or try to claim it was different from what it is. As for interviews, bleh, it's not my job as a critic to read the things. (Not that my job is being a critic, heh).

I think what's missing from a lot of music criticism is the sense in which a listener idenfities with and becomes the artist during their experience of music. That doesn't always happen but it sometimes does, and that's where intentionality can become important because the listener's play-acting of the artist is bound to have some assumed intentionalities in it.

THE OLD AUTHOR IS DEAD - LONG LIVE THE NEW AUTHOR.

Also an artist stating "oh I wanted to blah blah blah". How many times have we seen artists talk complete bollox knowingly to try and sell records/get credit? I mean what they say their intentions were is hardly reliable either is it.

Metal Machine Music is all about intentionality -- but WHICH ONE?

Similarly, I find the manics cover of "Suicide Is Painless" particularly GRATE because what it can mean, what it's supposed to mean, all that is mixed-up.

I think what's missing from a lot of music criticism is the sense in which a listener idenfities with and becomes the artist during their experience of music. That doesn't always happen but it sometimes does, and that's where intentionality can become important because the listener's play-acting of the artist is bound to have some assumed intentionalities in it.

Can you give examples where this has happened to you? Most great albums make me feel a certain way, or bring images into my head, though I can't recall role-playing as the artist (other than in a "I would have done this part differently" or "I will steal that idea for something" way). If it did happen to me, I would surely write about it in a review.

Well, in its simplest and most universal form I'm talking about air guitar :)

Actually I think listeners become the song or the music rather than the artist. I have rather odd ideas I suspect about what happens to a listener during the act of listening.

More importantly, I think, is a discussion about what the purpose of a critic should be, or maybe what the critic's role COULD be. Should it be to reflect on the masses, be a barometer? i.e., I usually read a movie review to see if I'll like the movie, in order to do that, I have to assume that the critic and I have somewhat similar tastes. (replace critic with best friend or neighbour or whoever's opinion you might listen to.) Or should a critic be at the forefront of the audience, making a prescriptive stance and guiding the public's taste? You could do both, I suppose, but it'd be hard to do both at the same time. And how much of it should just be "this is how I felt, when I heard the third song, I saw bluebirds." How useful is that to anyone not looking for creative writing 101?

I think that it's fairly useless to read a critic, as opposed to talk to my sister, if the critic is completely unversed in a certain genre and yet covers it. I.e. WIRE when they cover classical music. On the other hand, if understanding intent is impossible, thus a general consensus impossible, how could one ever claim to understand or be familiar with a genre? Without agreed upon conventions, and thus understanding the variations upon that convention, there's no such thing as a genre. This issue is sorta like navel-gazing, but it gets terribly complicated, but is very important, I think, to properly appreciating a critique of a work of art.

I hope you don't mind me turning the question back and asking why you believe the intent is so important? I read your first post, but I don't think your analogy holds well. Grading a paper is something you've asked for, the intention is something that you both agree upon in order to grade something (there's no point marking for just spelling, if you've agreed that it's an essay about a war). This isn't the case with an artistic production. Also I don'can't see any link between discounting goals and not accepting the skill or logic of a creation.

I think it's a good idea for a critic writing reviews to be as honest as possible about their versed-ness in the style under question. If you're reviewing a modern classical record in the Wire and you dont usually listen to modern classical records, then just say so, and people like me who don't normally listen to them either might find it useful, while people who do will turn the page.

Mickey's questions are pretty much why I don't often pretend to write reviews. The thing is classing experience-based criticism as 'creative writing 101' is too reductionist. I think writing about your own experiences can make for entertaining writing, of course, but it can also make for inspiring writing, if only by making the reader think about similar experiences they've had with music. And I for one find how music is used and consumed and fitted into the rest of life endlessly interesting, and personal testimony is a key part of examining that.

The question that's really being asked - who are critics writing for? The people who haven't heard the album and want to know if it's good, or the people who have and want to see if they can get more out of it, approach it from a new angle maybe.

I hope you don't mind me turning the question back and asking why you believe the intent is so important? I read your first post, but I don't think your analogy holds well. Grading a paper is something you've asked for, the intention is something that you both agree upon in order to grade something (there's no point marking for just spelling, if you've agreed that it's an essay about a war). This isn't the case with an artistic production. Also I don'can't see any link between discounting goals and not accepting the skill or logic of a creation.

My first post takes for granted that the artist has made intentions known, so critics would be able to judge how well they felt the artist "satisfied" any stated "goals". As far as skill/logic, this refers not really to musical technique (though it could, if the artist's goal involved the technique of making music, et al), and more to the skill that the artist has demonstrated in pulling off whatever it was they wanted to pull off. I think at the most extreme end of this viewpoint is a rather "cold" critique (perhaps attempting qualitative analysis of the music) which I'm not sure is possible or even appropriate most of the time. However, in many cases, I think it could be integrated (at least as a footnote) into a "fair" evaluation of the music.

schoenberg used to get rabid when ppl unearthed the tone row he had used to construct a work: eg felt the practical detail he had actually slaved over was - as knowledge in the part of the listenre - a DISTRACTION, eg a sidetrack into trainspotting and book-keeping

the history of 20th century classical music was to a considerable extent an attempt to leave the gravitational pull of the 19th-century (eg pre-nietzsche-freud-marx-mallarme-blah) theory of romantic intentionality

(the problem w. the wire is not so much too little grasp of the history per se as FAR too much reliance rough-guide jounalist'sshortcut to this history — but then it has a REAL BIG GIANT problem with the discussion of history and its mediation in all forms and styles i think) (but them i am a historian sorta so i would think that))

having spent upwards of ten years studying stockhausen's own writings on his music, i am quite happy to say fuck this, this is (mostly) pompous self-deluded rubbish which totally gets in the way of what's actually going on, of what he's actually DOING , as opposed to what he SAYS he's doing - but of course that too is an argument about intentionality...

stravinsky too is a big old fake artist when it came to discussion of what he was doing in his work: or perhaps better, a serious prestidigitator

(i wuv strav and stock btw)

Tom, I was being, of course, more than slightly facetious, but the point I was trying to make, besides the obvious one, is that there's no reason for me to read your "experiential" review rather than someone else's in the case of absolute relativism. Your "review" would have no more bearing or shed more light than anyone else's. For that matter, by argument, I would get the same relative information reading a Wheaties box. (Yes again, facetious.) But if you take relativism too far, it does become a joke. So the question isn't whether we agree to the grounding of certain terms (we wouldn't be writing if we didn't think that we understood each other at least more than we don't,) how does that affect our responsibility as critics?

Back to the original point, the things that would make me read experiential criticism would be, I suppose, good writing on your part- -but that would turn criticism more into a piece of "art" in and of itself, and less a reflection of a work. That's totally fine, but I think that skews the point of criticism. That's not to say that good criticism can't be art, but I hope the difference is obvious between that line of thinking and the former.

Well, my point would be that criticism is a creative act inasmuch as you're choosing words and trying to make those words do something, affect people in some way, and since so much music is also a critical act the lines between criticism and art are already entirely blurred - nothing much one can do. A 100-word bored review of, I don't know, the Chemical Brothers in Entertainment Weekly is most likely bad criticism and bad art. But art and criticism are different in a siamese-twin sense.

Again I'd have to come back to - who is the critic writing for? People who've not heard a record or people who have? In my experience, experiential criticism is much more useful and interesting for the second group. To take Lester Bangs' piece on Astral Weeks, probably the best-loved piece of experiential rock criticism out there: as someone who's never heard Astral Weeks it succeeds as writing and fails as useful criticism, i.e. it doesn't make me want to hear the record or not. If I had heard the record and knew it then Lester's words might spark all kinds of associations off in me and make me hear different things in it - and suddenly it would be useful, more so than a piece of writing which said "Astral Weeks is good, you should hear it."

If you like the record under consideration, all possible intentions are endlessly interesting - yours, theirs, your invention of theirs, their invention of yours.

If you don't, all intentions are equally worthless.

I back Mr Ewing in general, as a parcel sorta.

As for the question - why read my experiential criticism and not others'? Im not sure I understand how you're using relativism here. The point of relativism is that the value of things depends on the context of the observer, not that all things are therefore equal to any observer. So relativism says that you make your choice between me and the cereal packet, but you can't then assume that choice is the appropriate one for anyone else. (And we've definitely had *this* discussion before!).

(My basic answer, anyway, is "because you know me", and "know" here might just mean reading one piece of mine and liking it enough to remember my name or the URL. This is the really great thing about the Internet - it allows experiential criticism to be broadcast without needing an audience to back it up.)

Sorry I'm quite tired today so may just not be understanding you!

1. Everyone has a different idea of what art should be. The critic will naturally be more interested in how well the work measures up to her own ideal of what art should be than in how well it measures up to the artist's ideal. Perhaps this is hubris, but the critic will not willingly subordinate her aesthetic apparatus to that of the artist. The primary question will always be, "Is it any good?" The question of how good the artist thinks it is will always be secondary at best.

2. When trying to understand the artist's intent, you are necessarily going to be dealing with limited information. Even in the cases where the artist has stated their intentions, complete understanding of the artist's viewpoint is not possible - it will always be subject to differing interpretations and there is always the possibility that the artist will say, "You misunderstood me." Why make a hard task even harder by trying to speak for the artist? Easier to let the art speak for itself.

3. Just because.

Heehee, I think we just had a point of relativistic angst here. I agree with your second point, Tom. I think that there's probably a lot more room for the experiential review if you've already heard a piece. I wonder if I'd call that criticism though.

To me, the essence of pop-relativism is "don't tell me what it means, my opinion is as valid as yours because we're not psychic." And as such, extrapolating as a useful means of communication from the perceiver means that I have no clue what anything means, insomuchas all the guidelines have been removed from content. Does blue mean blue? And what does "blue" mean in that sentence? And what does that sentence mean in that paragraph, etc. That would have no point. It would be like me saying "I like cheese." And you having no right to assume that I like cheese, because under the auspices of the 70's semi-demi-pomo state of mind, you have no clue where I'm coming from.

The response to that comparison is usually, "that's ridiculous, there has to be some agreed upon convention." And that's where the stickywicket comes in. Once we've agreed that there must be some convention, then all bets are off as to why it is that we musn't try our best to guess the artist's intent. Bear in mind that I'm not advocating that we don't internalise art.

Also, I think that guessing an artist's intent in music is very different than visual art which is again very different than writing. And for me, I'm far more used to thinking about it in terms of writing and then visual art. The most difficult issue for me is to figure out what it means to guess an artist's "intent" in music.

My first post takes for granted that the artist has made intentions known, so critics would be able to judge how well they felt the artist "satisfied" any stated "goals". As far as skill/logic, this refers not really to musical technique (though it could, if the artist's goal involved the technique of making music, et al), and more to the skill that the artist has demonstrated in pulling off whatever it was they wanted to pull off. I think at the most extreme end of this viewpoint is a rather "cold" critique (perhaps attempting qualitative analysis of the music) which I'm not sure is possible or even appropriate most of the time. However, in many cases, I think it could be integrated (at least as a footnote) into a "fair" evaluation of the music.

I don't see how the artist's opinion of his or her work is relevant to how the work should be evaluated. What you seem to be arguing for is this scheme:

1. Artist has idea of what work of art should be 2. Artist creates work of art 3. Art is judged by artist as a success or failure based upon how close the work comes to the idea.

This seems to be wholly pointless to me, for a multitude of reasons. First, I've never known an artist who has a fully-formed idea of what she's trying to accomplish at the outset--usually, there is a root idea and the work develops from there, and at the end the artist is either happy with the finished product or dissatisfied with it. Second, I view the artist's feelings about the work as a major distraction -- some perfectionists are never satisfied with their creations, despite the fact that the listener might view them as wonderful. Third, I think a work of art is far more interesting when it is interpreted in complete disregard of the author's intention -- a rather silly example of this is some listeners' obsessive interpretation of lyrics, which may or may not have anything to do with what the author thought he or she was writing about. Finally, I think that most listeners don't actually experience music as an identification with the artist -- even the Bangs piece has virtually nothing to do with Van Morrisson or his intentions. In fact, there's a specific part of the piece where Lester writes:

Morrison has said in at least one interview that the song has nothing to do with any kind of transvestite - at least as far as he knows, he is quick to add - but that's bullshit.

Here, the writer is expressly rejecting the musician's interpretation of the work of art, and the work is far more interesting as a result.

Overall though, I just think it's really weird that apparently no one in this thread has engaged with critical theory literature on this topic. Author-centered theories of interpretation have been under sustained attack in academia and in pop music writing for at least the last thirty years if not longer. The author was proclaimed dead in the sixties, for crying out loud. Why try and bring him back now?

J, I think that the pure relativistic strand of 60's lit crit has come under attack as well. I forget what they call it, resembling something like new sincerity? the very notion of speciation, queer theory, etc.--some are now arguing that it further marginalises works and reduces meaning. I could be wrong though, it's been a few years since I visited that field. One rather fun book is The Postmodern Pooh. It's drawn some vitrolic from the Stanley Fish school, not the least of which because Fish was parodied, but it's still a good read.

Hmm. Well yes there must be agreed-upon conventions. The mistake is to assume that these conventions are descriptions of a basic reality rather than a contract between participants in a discussion, which is what I think they are. And aspects of a contract are open to negotiation: so artistic intention used to be part of the contract and then some people started saying it wasn't and now it's up for grabs. And if you start saying that blue isn't blue anymore for you, then you're putting another part of the contract open to negotiation - nothing wrong with that, except other people can then say, right, your demands now stop there being a point to the contract at all, and 'break' the contract - i.e. end the conversation ;).

So basically my position is - cultural relativism is theoretically absolute, but in practical terms it suits us to pretend that it isn't, and cultural discourse on whatever scale works on a two-tier basis, both negotiating the place of objects within the agreed framework, and continually negotiating the framework itself at the same time.

Meanwhile, yes - criticism is still criticism if you already know the work being criticised. If you read a book of literary criticism about Shakespeare, for instance, the author needn't assume familiarity with Shakespeare but to do so wouldn't exclude them from being critics.

I'm not sure the validity of the original premise (that CRITICS don't want to know the artists intent). I may be operating on a different definition of Critic to most folks, but I think the wider external factors are far too often examined by critics. Intention, Authenticity, 'relevance to the kids on the street', 'reporting from the front line', 4Real-ness, etc.

I'm defining a Critic as a particular style of writer, traditionally print based and still hidebound by the conventions of print in terms of the relationshiop with the reader. I don't accept that 'we are all Critics'.

Almost all of it usually results in poor writing, or rather, writing I find tiresome, it is rarely informative in a way that can illuminate the recording - even though knowledge IN THE LISTENER of the 'back story' can be interesting.

Most of the answers here seem to be about why LISTENERS may or may not need to know the artists intent.

Me, I like to know the artists intent, I like to know as much of the surroundings of a piece of work as I can - basically I like the gossip. I try real hard to not actually let it preventing me enjoying a good tune though. Some of my favourite records are made by people I wouldn't let babysit for me - so I guess I'm kinda glad I don't know the intent of some of my favourites.

1. Artist has idea of what work of art should be 2. Artist creates work of art 3. Art is judged by artist as a success or failure based upon how close the work comes to the idea.

All of this happens almost every time music is made. However, I'm generally referring to a 4th step where someone other than the artist is evaluating the music, and for whatever reason, discarding the significance (if any) of your step #1. It's not that the artist's idea of what the music is translates to how someone hears it (and like many folks have pointed out, the artist's ideas may not even be fully formed until *after* the piece is created), nor to the "value" a critic attributes to the music. I'm really just arguing against the notion that this first step has *no* bearing on the judgement of the music.

I'm really just arguing against the notion that this first step has *no* bearing on the judgement of the music

I think that in many cases it is interesting and useful to know what the artist intended to do. This is particularly true when the artist is attempting to do something unconventional, experimental, or unique. Among the many varieties of useless reviews are the reviews in which the reviewer clearly has no clue what the artist was trying to do and basically misses the point entirely. This would be akin to a 1940s jazz critic complaining of Charlie Parker that "he plays too many notes." Clearly this type of reviewer is an idiot. Paying attention to the artist's intentions may help to avoid this type of ignorance.

Would the same critic not be an idiot if they did understand what Parker was doing and still though it didn't work because of an excess of notes? Are critics who say Yngwie Malmsteen plays too many notes idiots?

Would the same critic not be an idiot if they did understand what Parker was doing and still though it didn't work because of an excess of notes? Are critics who say Yngwie Malmsteen plays too many notes idiots?

Yes to the first question, no to the second. That is because in Parker's case the notes serve a higher aesthetic purpose, whereas in Malmsteen's case they do not.

But how do *you* know that? ;-)

Try telling Yngwie that. His artistic and aesthetic intentions are pretty skyscraping I'd bet. My own opinion is that a critic who is being honest about their knowledge and reactions can't ever be an idiot.

Actually an interesting point here - a lot of the leeway we're willing to give artistic intention is based on how much we like or respect the finished product.

Perhaps the term "idiot" is too strong. However, I would be more inclined to lose respect for a reviewer if (1) they trashed an artist that I liked, and (2) they did so without any apparent understanding of what the artist was trying to accomplish. If they at least show understanding of what the artist intended, then I can more easily respect their decision to reject his or her results.

Undoubtedly, Malmsteen would disagree with my judgment. He is entitled to his view, as I am entitled to mine. However, I refuse to fall back on a theoretical position of total relativism. Even if the assumption of the existence of absolute standards is only a consensual fiction, it still provides a useful framework for discussion, and I am loathe to discard it. Therefore, I maintain my view that Malmsteen's music is bad in an objective sense.

It always makes me laugh how people inevitably start going on about "well, how can we agree on what is blue or red, man" in these relativism discussions (who knew Wittgenstein was so well read?), and yet somehow we never have any trouble agreeing on such things in real life... and a good thing too, otherwise people would die crossing the street all the time...

In other words, the range of interpretation is a long, long way from the infinite that hardcore relativists usually like to cite.

I ain't never read no Wittgenstein, so I'm sure what I have to say is pig-ignorant, but when I talk about relativism I'm talking about relativism in terms of the unquantifiable. Colour is quantifiable, just like the number of notes Malmsteen plays is quantifiable (no matter HOW fast the dude shreds!) - what is unquantifiable is the cultural value we then attach to the colour or the number of notes.

In terms of crossing the street, then, you can't say, "red is green and green is red" (unless you're colour-blind perhaps), but you can say i will cross on red and stay on green, I reject these cultural values. All you're then doing is breaking a part of the cultural contract: the fact that this may well have immediate practical and fatal consequences and no conceivable benefits might make you stupid but it doesn't make you objectively wrong - if everyone else had decided to go along with you there would have been no consequences at all. Value judgements about art and pop music, thankfully, have very few practical consequences so we can negotiate those parts of the contract (many notes = good) with impunity.

I think, because of the nature of art, there are many many different types of works of art. Some are amazing just on the surface, and some you have to dig deep into (looking at the artists intent, thier political protest, thier parody, humor, etc.) and as well thier are types of art that span either of these with different degrees. Sometimes an artist would want you to know the intent, and they have some way of getting it known, and sometimes they don't, but you find out anyway, etc. The combinations are endless. With this in mind, all art is good depending on how the viewer takes it in. (I was at the Whitney museum biennial exibit yesterday, and there were many works there that I hated, but I like the way i hated them, and therefore liked them.) The idea of the critic comes in to try and define what's good. (I think this is impossible to do) but people still know if something is good. (This idea from Zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance) So I feel that a critic is officially useless, but still helpful. and a good critic should be able to identify if a work has quality.

The problem when artistic intent is married to technical skill is that Yngwie can deflect most criticism. O.Nate hears an Yngwie record (I'm assuming you HAVE heard one) and thinks, this is rubbish. By his own dicta above he has however to take into account Yngwie's artistic intentions, which AFAIK are rooted in the traditions of baroque classical music, updated for the electric guitar. If O.Nate says, well OK I understand what you're trying to do Yngwie but it's still shit, Yngwie can reply, "You're not technically qualified to actually understand my intentions". What then does the intentionalist critic do!?

In practical terms of course nobody cares if a critical pariah like Yngwie gets his intentions derided or even denied.

Some people talk a good fight, and some just fight well. There are plenty of articulate movie directors who will explain at great length all of their artistic intentions and thematic concerns and complex use of motif and all sorts of other things.

I heard a John Ford interview once, in which he was asked what he was trying to achieve with a film. He said "A cheque. I was trying to achieve forty thousand dollars."

Almost all of John Ford's films are better than those of almost anyone else. QED.

Heh, artfully dodged Tom. (Although the ability to quantify is a little bit of a blind alley I think; we can quantify red all we like but still a poet will do a better job of expressing what it actually looks like to an observer--tell that to Malsteem).

Really what I am getting at is that your contract metaphor sounds much too civilized and malleable. There are all kinds of different contracts, created at all different times in history, with all sorts of degrees of enforcability. (At the far end of the scale, gravity may indeed be relative, but as long as you live on Earth, good luck trying to reinterpret it). Cultural contracts are definitely at the more fluxible end of things, but even so are not always to be renegotiate on a whim--you better be a great lawyer...

(Argh, why do I always get sucked into this debate)

Anyway, I do think an artist's intent matters--it's just nowhere near the last word. The first way to judge a work of art is on its own terms. If you don't understand what it's trying to do in the first place, you're in no position to rebut or reinterpret it. Of course, the best critics are not the consumer guides but those who can then take that piece of art and make something else with it...

What then does the intentionalist critic do!?

This is an interesting point, and I think you've uncovered a very real problem for the intentionalist critic who wants to maintain the language of objective standards. I do want to maintain the language of objective standards; however, I am not an intentionalist critic of the sort you describe. Despite what I wrote above, I don't think that the critic is required to understand the artist's intentions before they can critique his music. All I am really saying in what I wrote above is that an understanding of the artist's intentions can serve as rhetorical ammunition for the critic who wishes to defend his critical stance. While it makes the critic's stance more persuasive, it does not - and cannot - prove that the critic is right or wrong. The critic could be right about the music being bad even if they don't understand the artist's intentions. Conversely, they could be wrong about the music being good even if they do understand the artist's intentions.

Actually an interesting point here - a lot of the leeway we're willing to give artistic intention is based on how much we like or respect the finished product.

That's THE interesting point. This idea of some truth to the artist's intention is really fictional, and just a way for the listener to smuggle in his or her own feelings about the work. So why bother?

Moreover, while "death of the author" theory has come under attack in recent years, there's been no counter-theory advanced--the attacks tend to take the form of mocking straw men (cf. "The Pooh Perplex," "The Postmodern Pooh") that avoid engaging with the theories ostensibly being criticized. The only thoughful critique I've come into contact with is "Against Deconstruction," but even that book does not rebut the deconstructive argument itself, instead focusing on the application of the argument and the effects that the argument has on traditional concepts of meaning.

(The relativism debate - which I always get sucked into too - is a no- hoper because it's of so little practical use when you're actually debating real records. All that can happen is a relativist says "Britney is better than the Beatles" and an anti-relativist says "You can't say that" and the relativist says "I just did". Or the anti-relativist says "Anyone who doesn't like the Beatles is objectively wrong" and the relativist says "You can't say that" and etc. etc. Away from those futile exchanges it's fun as a cranial workout but I bet that nobody's ever discovered anything interesting about music from reading the ILM threads that get bogged down in it!)

Tom really does care about intent.

Why are most "anti-relativists" convinced that if we ignore the intent of the author that the whole world blows up?

I don't have anything else to add.

Are we confusing interpretation with intent here?

Probably another thread (if there is any mercy): I intended to say something with my post, and you interpretted it as saying something close to what I was thinking -- though I was really just frustrated to read reviews that seem to view the intent of the artist as almost a distraction rather than another factor to consider when they write about the music. "Destress" vs "discount" is probably where we're thinking differently.

I will say that the reluctance of many artists to spell out exactly what they are going for in their music can be strange (especially given that I do think most artists have at least "something" in mind before they start). Maybe if masses of people starting committing suicide because they were inspired by "Yellow Submarine", McCartney wouldn't be so ambiguous about what he wanted to do with it. (Not that interpretation is necessarily confined to intent in any form.)

Another big unaddressed question here is the extent to which art is also product anyway. If the two are different and utility is irrelevant to art then the reviewer-tester dichotomy makes sense. If the two are the same thing then the conflation of roles static-cling points out seems entirely appropriate. My suspicion is that the two are separate but not separable - the two concepts always exist in the same object. Which is also apt seeing as the entirely intention-free critic and the entirely experience-free critic are also non-existent but useful constructs.

While agreeing with the point that the two critical approaches under discussion cannot be finally seperated, I would summarize them somewhat differently. Since it's impossible to avoid either artistic intention or critical interpretation, how about we just ditch that as the axis on which everything turns.

A "product review" is primarily concerned with telling you whether something is good or bad, with rating it, two thumbs up or down.

In "artistic critique" (bad descriptive term for this, but), rating is of secondary or no concern. The primary concern here is making connections beyond the work of art, whether to history, to personal experience, to other works of art or (if you're Adorno) to the oppressive hegemony of global capitalism.

Now, if only I could draw a semiotic square (sorry, self-deprecating philsophy geek joke)

(re adorno: that final "or" shd be an "and")

OK, so I haven't really read Dialectic of Enlightenment.

Tom, I'm not trying to stick a dull label on anyone, because as you say - hardly anyone actually does such a literal product test. But ok, I think what I'm primarily trying to say is that, assuming the critic cares to fully 'get' a thing, some things literally cannot be fully appreciated for what they are unless the critic is at least making an attempt to interpret the intent behind them. Incidentally, I think that the actual intent is probably less important. But let's go back to Duchamp's urinal for a second - I'm sure that you could stand in a gallery and look at the urinal and write a thousand thoughts on your feelings about that specific urinal, or your thoughts on urinals in general, quite possibly a wonderful read, who can say? But in the end, unless you at some point at least wonder why *Duchamp* put that urinal there, you won't have grasped why it is in fact there. You'll not be evaluating his art - you'll be making your own. (IRL both are done - we agree) However, if the purely experiential review were the black and white standard, surely 'the critic' would make 'the artist' obsolete and irrelevant? I'm feeling like I'm teetering on the edge of a deep murky pit by saying some of these things, but it's as if the experiential type of critique levels the importance of all expression - placing none above others. This sounds fantastically democratic, but also takes all the thrill out of it. I think I am most interested in the art itself when critics either defer to the artist, confer with the artist, or kick the artist's ass. Not when they sidestep them to talk about how *they* are feeling about the art. I mean, I might care, I might find that interesting, but that'll be because of who the critic is - and that's not so much about the art at all. But let's not make rules. Rules are boring.

Here's a question for the non-intentionalists: If our experience of the work is the only thing that matters, if the person of the artist is irrelevant, then how can we come to terms with the continuity that exists between different works from an artist's oeuvre? Does it make any sense to talk of a "Dylan album" for instance? Or to classify Mozart's work into an "early" and a "late" period? If the artist is irrelevant, then there is no reason to classify works of art by artist. We might just as reasonably talk about "albums that begin with the letter 'A'" as "Dylan albums". Why is one classification more useful or interesting than the other?

b-b-but static! humph! See that big picture up above a little ways? I posted it because it's a very recent example I have of seeing an artist whose intention i hadn't the faintest idea about (I'm not even sure i got his name right) yet still absolutely LURVED. In fact, I liked it so much that I never got around to reading the marketing blurb tacked to the wall/floor wherever it was - potentially packed with insight into working methods or his own reflections about "upending normative constructions of falling over" - because I had other more important things to do... like LOOK at this THING... (and try to keep my balance) The only ones I did read about were, oddly, works that didn't grab me, didn't do much for me -- like I was looking for some reason to be interested.

"I believe the works of William Shakespeare were actually written by another man... also named William Shakespeare." - Mark Twain (?)

O.Nate - Very interesting! I'm going to have to think about that one for a while. I suspect that there's a way to discuss the similarities / differences and successes / failures of "Dylan albums" without referring to Dylan's intent -- say, how the production on "Time Out of Mind" sounds vs. the production on "Blonde on Blonde"--but if the author doesn't matter at all why not compare the respective sounds of "Time Out of Mind" and "Loveless"?

It seems to me that the problem is that the "non-intentionalist" argument is being misconstrued again; I don't think anyone has argued that the author *doesn't have* an intent, we've just been arguing that the author's intent isn't reliable or interesting to comment on when trying to examine a record. Presumably, Dylan had different sounds in mind for TOoM than for BoB, but in neither case can we say with any confidence what those "different sounds" were, or how the final product compares to those sounds.

Still, I think there's probably more to your question that I'm going to have to puzzle through.

Time to stress again what I've admitted over and over on this thread - you can't actually escape authorial intention as a critical tool, even if I'd argue that what you're talking about is another part of your reaction not the author's 'real intent'. All I'm saying is that there are lots of other critical tools and if you give some of them more weight you get different and interesting results. So with Dylan albums yes you can compare one Dylan record with the next one he made chronologically but you can also compare one Dylan record with the next one (by anyone) you play chronologically.

how can we come to terms with the continuity that exists between different works from an artist's oeuvre?

Easy, you shuffle the tracks in your mp3 player and destroy the vision of the album as a unified statement. Which was starting to slowly collapse anyway.

well i'm not an anti-intentionalist in any sense, so i don't have to struggle w. o-nate's question: what i'm stressing is that you get to what the artist wanted (as in the effect s/he wanted to bring about in you) by attending to what the artist DID instead of what s/he SAYS s/he did (or what important and infulential ppl atg the time say s/he did).

Suppose the artist's intention is to produce an emotional = intellectual effect (or more likely, a sequence of such effects). Is it the case that this effect can also be produced by interrogating the artist (or in more likely, speculating on the results of such an interrogating) as to what the the hell they thought they were "trying" to do?

A comedian tells a joke. The audience laughs.
An unreconstructed militant intentionalist asks the comedian what his intentions were. The comedian says "I wanted to make people laugh." UMI (pressing the point): "But this is what you really want to be doing, isn't it, explaining yourself to me?" Comedian: "Not really." UMI: "Then you are claiming that nothing means anything."

Do you actually respect the artist's intention by loudly and insistently announcing their intention? (Intentionalists always seem — for example — precisely to miss the main and obvious point of the joke of Duchamp's urinal...)

next step in the ned-process: take all the notes in any given song and SHUFFLE THEM!!

People used to say that about the shuffle function on CDs too.

The album isn't going anywhere.

Ben - sounds like a thread to me.

Intentionawhatsist? Am I one of those? Listen, I'm not talking about marketing blurbs. Knowing why someone else or even the artist themselves has said that a thing is what it is, isn't the only way of gauging the intent. Sometimes a big background story is going to add a lot, sometimes it's going to take away.

Tracer, in the case of your picture there, I fully sympathise with not reading the blurb. If my art was packing that kind of visual punch that got a message across without words - I'd almost resent the blurb. But I'd still hope that the viewer is experiencing what I intended and realising that it's no accident (before this goes off on another tangent - I'm not saying that accidents can't be incorporated into art - simply that art isn't created by accident alone). Wasn't it at least clear to you that some form of disorientation was part of the intent? You liked it because it managed to do something to you, and also probably because it did it on purpose, no? If the 'on purpose' bit really does nothing for you, I'll say it's probably much cheaper to stand on the sidewalk and get woozy looking up at the big buildings. Does that sound snarky? I hope not.

Shuffling notes = a good thing, surely. More possibilities.

People used to say that about the shuffle function on CDs too. The album isn't going anywhere.

Key and urgent difference: in the past, you had to buy the CDs anyway. Here you don't -- indeed, once you have the one or two songs you figure you'd like from the album anyway, you might go no further. The album will continue on, but will it always be so predominant? I'm thinking not.

Phew, it does seem that I'm managed to ruffle some feathers here--and I take it as a matter of course that we are all gentlepeople, and that we are only fuming in the domain and spirit of discourse. As I seem to be one of the few "intentionalists"--interesting how mislabelled relativists feel free to use those terms, I must defend my (un)chosen lot.

Again, to illustrate a point, how does Tom or Mark know what I mean by "creative writing 101"? According to the destruction of the author, I could have any number of meanings. One could argue that it's quite obvious, and let's assume that stands, I'll allow that little bit of intentionality to creep in. Let's take another example- -why would Mark assume that "'Saying "Frankfurt = the only context in which to read Adorno' as a (slightly desperate) way to detoxify Ben's Adorno bomb" is an assumption of the intention of why I said Frankfurt. In fact, I meant that Adorno is but one of a large number of aesthetic theorists, and not necessarily the killer that Mark seems to apply he is. Frankfurt was merely some context for those who do not know who Adorno is. Not to mention that without context/intention, history would have no place. I could have said it for a million reasons--according to the absolution of context, which figures into intention quite readily.

How do we understand any number of paintings, works by Francis Bacon, Rauschenberg, Klein, without understanding their context/motivation? One could argue that they appreciate them, like Static mentioned, on a purely contextless basis, but that would seriously shortchange them. In an ironic way, that was Duchamp's point, or my assumption of his point--that anything can be art, but precisely that measure which it implies is the will or intention of it to be such. His "intent" was to show such an idea.

The frustration is that of course one assumes things, one has to in order to communicate. Intention is one of them. We do it on the assumption that what we assume is correct, otherwise we wouldn't assume it. We'd assume something else. Our choices, while we may keep in mind that it perhaps has a degree of error, are not some fuzzy delineation--we're quite clear on the intent.

And Mark, I would rephrase the comedian's intent. I think the intent would be the hook of the joke, not the comedian's intent in pleasing the audience. The "militant" intentionalist, not a cheap dig, by any means, would say, "that was funny not because his name rhymes with Adam Sandler, that was funny because the joke, which was intended as a bait-and-switch routine, was funny."

For clarification, I believe that, in our case, intentionality doesn't rob the art of beauty, transcendence. And it certainly does not rob the perceiver of having any number of emotional responses to the art. All it means is that it is a crucial part of maximising one's enjoyment to try and see what the artist intended, if there is such an intention to be gained. If not, or if it's hopeless, so be it. Again, somewhere waaaay back there, I (mis)quoted Calvino regarding the issue of interpretation of intent--but I think that there's quite a lot of value to that statement.

As one last analogy, which I'm sure I'll be blasted for, I offer up this sacrificial lamb. Art has structure, or has developed certain structures, rigid or no, in many of the ways in which we communicate. To me, not to try to understand the context of the art, which includes the period in which it's made, what trends influence it, etc.--which all assumes something on the part of the creator, mind you--is like reading poem in Swahili without speaking the language. Sure you could claim that you understood some emotional valence, and perhaps you have a valid claim, but could you delineate the difference between a poem of love and a poem of sorrow just from the characters? How much richer would it be to read it understanding the language? And before everyone starts doing the slamdance with my noggin, I mean this obviously as a metaphor, but one that works in that one who doesn't understand sonata form or Western harmony, may miss out on a great deal of what makes a classical piece great, leaving a far less rich experience. That doesn't mean that we can always avail ourselves the tools to understand fully, nor does it mean that full understanding is more valid, but it does mean that having the attempt allows one to make that critical judgment far more easily.

And further, I think that both sides are starting to melt, as I didn't recall any notice of recidivism back into gray until somewhere past the middle of this thread, where I started to notice some poster (I don't remember which,) now saying that there was never any doubt that the author's intention is there. I have no idea what that means if it means that we can still disregard it, but that's at least some sort of mutation.

Whoop, I lopped off a bit regarding the Frankfurt part, making it terribly ungrammatical, I apologise.

get woozy looking up at the big buildings

and how do you know i don't do this?? :) That someone had spent hours - nay, months - creating such a perfectly "out" facsimile was totally part of the thrill. Absolutely. I'm not saying otherwise! We all wandered around it, slackjawed, thinking HOW DID HE DO IT? but... that just kind of runs out pretty quick, doesn't it? I don't know; it does for me. Clearly, he HAD done it, and the present was NOW, and there I was standing in front of it.

To answer the question: 1. Dylan Thomas reading his own poetry. 2. E.E. Cummings reading his own poetry. 3. Samuel Beckett's production of "Krapp's Last Tape". Each competes with the others for white-hot leaden awfulness.

(Tracer, this Whitney Biennial looks amazing! I obv can't go so I'm looking at this review from www.artnet.com. That Tim Hawkinson piece titled "Emoter" seems like tons 'o fun, too.)

Mickey, I didn't realize you didn't actually mean that shit about Adorno meaning whatever we want him to mean (but also still think, from this new perspective, that it was a bit of an extreme caricature of what some people had said).

Ned, I agree.

The album will continue on, but will it always be so predominant? I'm thinking not.

There's a big leap from "Death of the Album" to "Death of the Artist". Even in the forthcoming album-free cyber-future, RealJukebox will still allow us to sort our MP3's by Artist.

>>> the artist intends the work to be the work. i.e. the artist does not try, he/she does. [Tom E]

This is an important corrective to all kinds of other talk - but still it's not altogether true. 'Artists' of various kinds (certainly pop songwriters, maybe other 'artists' too) can have all kinds of intention which just don't quite come off. Part of the reality of creativity is about that kind of PRODUCTIVE FAILURE. You don't make quite what you wanted, but maybe you make something else. Intention is real (we agree) but confused and multiple (we agree); indeed its confusion may be one reason why it's so hard to 'realize' it every time.

Mickey - sorry if my feathers have seemed ruffled, I find the discussion frustrating but not as useless as I perhaps implied earlier. My recidivism, though, started with my first post, point 3, where I said "I'm not opposed to discussion of artistic intentions". :)

(I perhaps unfairly then took your post to be discounting the worth of experiential writing about art in general, and maybe got a bit more aggressive afterwards.)

(Mitch almost everything else was totally junk; go on a Friday when you can get in for free)

but mickey, your Swahili theory is built so much on the assumption that the intention is a communication of some kind of capsule "idea", that painting or music are kinds of speech and that the critic's role is a kind of translation, and that once you got the translation you can HURRAH finally chuck away the pesky painting or the piece of music because we have GOT TO WHAT THE ARTIST WAS ACTUALLY TRYING TO SAY. But he wrote a poem (or whatever) because he was NOT intending to put out a nice unambiguous press release about his feelings or the weather; he was doing something other than that. I don't understand your indifference to this aspect of his "intention".

Yes the polarities on this thread have dissolved a bit, which is good. However:

i. I think you're still walking right into the trap in my comedian story.
ii. I still find the idea of an artist who is UNexcited by the UNEXPECTED stuff his/her work does on contact with someone else's head really a bit odd and unlikely. Such ppl should be in another profession: journalism maybe.
iii. And you still don't get — well, anyway, haven't stated — the POINT of the joke in the Duchamp urinal thing. (It's not funny if I explain it so I'm not going to...)
iv. The Adorno bomb would have been a bomb in this thread whoever said it, even J.Mascis.

(oh, and re ruffled feathers: i was in a temper wiv me dayjob not this thread; plus in a hurry, same reason)

Mickey, I think your Swahili poetry comparison is a bit off base (even despite your disclaimer). The ability to speak a language is a fairly rigid (by which I mean it's less subject to debate or equivocation) criterion, and so is the ability to avail oneself of accepted critical tools for appreciating 'high' music. But this is only because high music, like language, has taken on the air of received knowledge - one must study closely before one can understand it, let alone practice it.

In comparison the world of pop (by which I mean broadly rock, pop, dance etc.) not only accepts but venerates artists who have *small* record collections, imperfect musical abilities, little knowledge of their own broader context or indeed what they might themselves be doing. You can still speak of the artist's intention in this situation, but to suggest that a listener requires more knowledge or understanding than the artist necessarily requires in order to enjoy the music 'properly' glosses over a rather large inconsistency.

On the appreciation of the ouevre question, I would have thought this at least was easy: I have Dylan Album A, which I recognise by the voice, the lyrics, the type of songs and not least of all the name of the artist on the front cover. I have Dylan Album B, whose artist name is identical to Dylan Album A, but whose title is different, whose voice is slightly different, whose type of songs may well be very different. I compare and contrast. I talk about which one means more to me. I talk about why I think this might be. I even might venture so far as to say which I think is 'better'. I don't need to read a Dylan interview to do any of this, but in not taking into account his intentions nor did I have to destroy his ouevre, namely because his ouevre exists to the extent that I place all my (hypothetical) Dylan albums together on the shelf.

Also an issue here is the essentially anonymous nature of the presentation of much music - how does one factor in the artist's *true* intention when listening to music in a club?

(sorry Mitch just noticed you can't go. funniest story from my trip: enormous white table covered in tiny fillips of black mechanical parts arranged Just So. As I'm peering over to get a closer look I am shooed back by a harried security guard who points down to the floor at a strip of black tape ringing the table, which is supposed to indicate that we can go no further. I feel irritated with her but don't know why until I hear a friendly-sounding man explain to her that no one can SEE the tape because it's BLACK tape on a BLACK floor, surrounding a piece that's all about decorative contrast.... guh. Did they expect us to FEEL the tape through our shoes?? There's somthing about that story that sums up the Biennial but I can't quite articulate it.)

In a club? You dance of course.

Or you don't.

It's odd to me that when people give an example of intention in this thread, it always seems to be in the form of causing a physical effect on the listener/viewer--dance, laugh etc.

Are you implying that there is no emotion or thought process involved in laughing? (or dancing for that matter)

It's odd to me that when people give an example of intention in this thread, it always seems to be in the form of causing a physical effect on the listener/viewer--dance, laugh etc.

Not me, Ben, I talked about how Bach wanted to spell his name.

No. I was thinking more that, as often as not, artistic intent probably has nothing to do with the audience at all--causing an effect on the artistic materials at hand seems an equally likely motivation.

Yes, Dleone--formal intentionality.

yeah, i write violin concertos all day and i don't care if anybody ever hears them because i love it so :P

ditto schoenberg way up thread re tone-rows, except he ALSO didn't like people getting all caught up in that because it detracted from the effects he was after

to be honest i think this can be another blind, tho: yes it's kind of a pretextual pathway, for why this choice rather than that — the Necessity of the Material blah blah — but it's also because that's the way to run 20 times round the garden w/o thinking of the silver fox, you're focussed on something local and practical and under-the-fingers real, and that frees up your intuition, yr unconscious, your HIDDEN intention (eg hidden from you, for the listeners to discover).

"ditto" here in its variant sense, of "unlike what the poster above just wrote"

RealJukebox will still allow us to sort our MP3's by Artist.

Yes -- but we don't *have* to, see.

1. Because the artist may not have one.

2. Because the intent may be too complex, esoteric, personal, eldridge for anyone else to grasp.

3. Because thre may be more than one intent, and these may even be working at cross-purposes.

Well, you did ask. I think all of this is interesting material in its own right and well worth a critical delve, whatever Derrida or his mates might want to say. I do, however, think that 1. could be a bit of a problem for the critic, especially if s/he doesn't think such a state is possible.

So far as I can tell from my reading, modern and postmodern thought doesn't reject intentionality, just makes it more complex. The 'father' of postmodern thought, Nietzsche, famously analysed Plato using an 'ad hominem' argument - Plato said worldly forms were ugly shadows of the heavenly ones because he was so ugly. So, biography and intention sheds light on the work - but you don't have to treat the author as a Genius whose brilliance radiates enduringly through every moment of their life and every statement (qua some 19th century writing).

Nietzsche, Derrida, Barthes, Susan Howe - a lot of their writing goes against the (supposed) modernist emphasis on the 'work in itself' or the 'work as a unity' and makes the explicit political point that the text in itself doesn't exist but is a product of society, the author's personal problems and intentions, the reader's personal problems and intentions. I guess the 'death of the author' is supposed to be interpreted as 'the death of an omniscient author.' They're basically saying 'what we need is a great big melting pot' only they're a bit shy.

'People who aren't verbally articulate' should just shut the fuck up. 'Death of the author' = reductionism on part of crits whose devotion to the general abandonment of the concept of individualism, substituting whatever orthodoxy of the day for actual research/analysis. (i.e., "I'm shit but if I convince people that 'artists' are equally shit but favored by the ruling class and that's the only reason peoplee listen to their records instead of reading my Marxist interpretation of it", i.e. yet another way for Europeans to justify their own cowardice and worthlessness)

b-but foucault = abt exactly as marxist as YOU dave q!

I really should've read the last paragraph in maryann's post(seems OTM) before posting that last bit of murk

Great thread that deserves a revival.

1. because there is no way of knowing what those intentions are (and artists lie about intentions all the time, so interviews don't help).
2. because intentions never insure accomplishments.
3. because the work may well succeed in a completely unintended way.

pretty simple question, when you get down to it.