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Intention vs. Consequence

I don’t really care about the intentions of an artist when I look at his or her work. I believe the only thing that is relevant when observing a work of art is the content/form and how it relates to its context.

{ 2 } Comments

  1. Minke Elisa Brands | December 8, 2010 at 15:08 | Permalink

    I totally agree. On the other hand it can be very interesting to follow an artists development and his or her changing intentions.

  2. Kenneth Flak | December 9, 2010 at 12:01 | Permalink

    Absolutely. Following the intentions can be very, very interesting, but I prefer to view them separately from the artwork. Hoever: If the intention is clearly stated in connection with the work it should probably be seen as a part of the work itself, and, in that way it will become relevant…Especially since I don’t really believe that a stated intention is the same as the “real” intention of the artist. One can only guess at the complex interactions going on in an artist’s mind before creating a work. Most of these processes are probably not even available to the artists themselves… It follows then, that whatever an artist declare to be the intention of the work is a construct in the same way as the work itself (and can, then, be viewed as belonging to the same complex of manifest phenomena: Stuff that we can talk about, in other words…)

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