435. Final Interpretation

An unprecedented artwork can be difficult to place. Encountering it for the first time, we give it a tentative interpretation, which offers some context and structure to what we are seeing. This provides us with some stability, which allows us to look closer and discover details and complexities we hadn’t noticed before. Often these complicate our initial interpretation, challenging us to consider the artwork in a different light.

Our inclination then might be to posit several interpretations, trying them on one by one to see what fits. Sometimes we will land on one that feels more substantial than the others, and feel assured that we have grasped the meaning of the work. But on other occasions, the artwork will resist any interpretation we give it. Here, our desire for a final and perfect interpretation is thwarted.

We might then turn to the artist, to see if we can glean something from them that would allow us to put more weight on one interpretation or another. We might even ask them what they believe they have created. The artist, however, might be hesitant to respond, knowing that any interpretation they supply would be given too much weight, thus reducing the possibilities of the work itself.

If the artist does comment on their work, they might offer multiple interpretations without placing any one above the others. In some cases, the artist might even declare that they do not know what the work means. Perhaps they created it only by following their intuitions and they genuinely do not know. Or perhaps the artist is still learning from the work, still discovering new ways to see and understand it.

Any final interpretation of an artwork would require perfect awareness, for only then would we be able to see all of the possibilities it contains. But perfect awareness is not something a human being is likely to achieve, for there is always more of both world and self to see. It follows that every artwork still contains some possibility not yet seen in it. Whatever meaning we assign to it is always tentative, always subject to revision, and always less than the artwork itself.