This temptation is hotly decried by other critics as “the intentional fallacy”—the fallacy (if it is a fallacy) of believing that whichever way the artist intended it is by definition the way it really is. Works of art should stand on their own, without help from their creators. If the artist’s intentions are not sufficiently realized within the work, forcing the recipient to go outside for help, this is held to be an artistic defect. Moreover, once the work has been completed and presented to the world, it belongs to the world and no longer exclusively to the artist, and in its interpretation the artist now becomes just one critic among many, whose word should be respected but not taken as the final authority. Perhaps other critics can think of better interpretations than the artist did, which give a greater aesthetic reward in subsequent encounters with the work; perhaps there are even acceptable interpretations (such as Freudian interpretations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet) that the artist could not possibly have thought of at the time.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe set forth three criteria for critics to consider in interpreting and evaluating a work of art: (1) What was the artist trying to do? (2) Did the artist do it? (3) Was it worth doing? The first of the three is intentionalistic, and, says the intentionalist, surely this is plausible: artists can hardly be blamed for failing to do what they had no intention of doing. It must first be known, then, what they were trying to do.
But the anti-intentionalist points out that the intention makes no difference, only the product does. If the ballerina excuses her fall in the middle of the dance by saying that she intended it, the dance is just as marred aesthetically as if she had fallen accidentally.
The persistent questioner might ask, however, if there are not at least some works of art in which the intentions of the artist have to be known? Suppose that a contemporary critic reads a dull, stodgy, moralistic Victorian novel and says at the end, “What an excellent parody of a Victorian novel!” But it was not a parody. Its intentions were deadly serious—and should not this be known in order to interpret and evaluate it properly? Not at all, replies the anti-intentionalist. All the critic has to say is, “As a Victorian novel, this is deadly dull; as a parody of a Victorian novel, it is brilliant; if the author intended it in the former way, so much the worse for the author”—the work can still be praised for being a brilliant parody, even if it wasn’t intended as one.
Still, the intentionalist has a point: sometimes the clue to unlocking an otherwise intransigent work may come from the artist’s statement of intention, and a plausible interpretation might be unobtainable without it. Such a suggestion might have come from a reader (or viewer or listener) rather than the artist, but there is no point in disdaining helpful hints, regardless of their source. If the suggestion does come from the artist, that is nothing against it. Perhaps a work is less aesthetically perfect because it requires outside clues to its interpretation, but few works of art even approach perfection, and they may yet amply repay attention, all the more if some plausible suggestion comes from the outside. The 20th-century Russian composer Sergey Prokofiev intended his Classical Symphony to be a playful homage to the classical symphonic form developed by Haydn, and, regardless of whether the suggestion that it be construed this way came from Prokofiev or from someone else, if it is rewarding to listen to it in this way, then no one gains by refusing to accept the suggestion. A statement of intention is not the only key to unlocking the secrets of works of art, but it is one key among many, and there appears to be no good reason why it should not be used. The mediums of art
In the context of every work of art there are three items to consider:
1. The genesis of the work of art.
2. The artifact, or work of art, which is a publicly available object or thing made by the artist and viewed by the audience.
3. The effects of the work of art upon the audience.
The first item comprises all the artist’s mental states, both conscious and unconscious, in the creation of the work, including the artist’s intention with regard to the work, as well as all the factors that led to these states of mind—for example, the spirit of the age, the socioeconomic conditions of the times, exchanges of ideas with other artists, and so forth. Whatever factors helped to form the work of art in the artist’s mind fall under this heading. The experiences undergone by the artist in the creation of the work constitute the artistic experience.
The third item includes all the effects of the work of art upon those who experience it, including both aesthetic and nonaesthetic reactions, the influence of the work of art upon the culture, on the state of knowledge, on current morality, and the like. The experience that involves the observer’s attention to the work of art for its own sake and not for the sake of some ulterior end is called aesthetic, but of course art has many effects that are not aesthetic. The aesthetic experience belongs to the consumer of art, as opposed to the artistic experience, which belongs to the creator of art.
The second item is what is usually called the work of art itself. According to some writers, such as the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce (1866–1952), the work of art exists only in the mind of the artist, and the physical artifact then counts as an effect of the work of art. But in ordinary usage, as well as the usage of most philosophers of art, the work of art is identified with the physical artifact, as it exists in the physical medium. What goes on in the creator’s mind is already contained in the first item.
Every work of art occurs in a medium; that is, there is some physical object or series of events by which the work is communicated to the recipient (listener, observer, reader) by means of the senses. In painting, the medium is paint; in sculpture, such materials as stone or wood or plastic. It might at first be thought that the medium of music consists of the musical score on which the composer writes the notes, but the written notes are not music; they are a set of visual cues for the production of the tones to be emitted by the various instruments. If every player had a perfect memory, there would be no need for the written score; indeed, music existed long before there were any written scores and was played or sung from memory from one year or generation to the next. It could be said more plausibly that the medium of music consists of the physical sound waves by means of which the sound sensations enter the consciousness of the listener. The medium of literature can truly be said to be words, yet not words as abstract entities conceived in the mind but words as spoken (in oral presentation) or written. The physical medium of literature, then, is either auditory or visual, although what is conveyed through the medium is not. Classifying arts by their mediums
There are many ways of classifying the arts—by their purpose, by their intentions, by their effects. But the most usual and the most fundamental method of classifying the arts is by their mediums: Visual art
This includes two-dimensional visual arts such as drawing and painting and also three-dimensional visual arts such as sculpture and architecture. Some of these should doubtless be called visuo-tactual art: buildings are ordinarily touched as well as seen, sculptures could be more fully appreciated if touched as well as seen, and even paintings may sometimes have enough three-dimensionality to repay touch experience. At any rate, all these arts appeal first and foremost, though not exclusively, to the sense of sight, and the artifact is an object in the visual medium. Auditory art