From one, many.
If I were writing a new constitution for audience engagement strategies, that’s the motto I’d apply to our official seal. When it comes to interpreting a work of art, the notion that our goal is to work toward the one true meaning is psychologically, cognitively and culturally misguided. We should instead be celebrating the wide variety of meanings that surface when audiences are invited into the interpretive process.
The standard opposition to this line of thinking is that ill-informed audiences will champion sub-standard work and reject more daring, more aesthetically valuable work. That, left to their own devices, the general public will get it wrong. Look at Le Sacre du printemps, one might argue. Or Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise.” Or Ibsen’s Ghosts.
But if we think about meaning making as an action, and if we think about that action as part of a wider network of human encounters, maybe we can adjust our perspective enough to acknowledge that we don’t need to arrive at one true meaning. Instead, we need to participate in an experience-telling process. Social activist and educational reformer bell hooks reminds us that the opportunity to articulate and share personal experience “affords a privileged critical location from which to speak” without denying others the same. In this way, we avoid the trap of master narratives of authority “which privilege some voices by denying voice to others.”
Avoiding the master (grand) narrative complex is a good idea, not only because grand narratives are by definition elitist, but also because the conversation is so much more dynamic when it is made up of a multitude of voices.
In the end, what is the danger of participating in a conversation in which not everything that gets said is brilliant, or fully informed, or in line with what the artist or the arts establishment intends. Back in 1913 some (admittedly extraordinarily vocal) members of the audience for the Rite of Spring got it “wrong.” And here we are, still listening to it. Still dancing to it. Still interpreting it.
*Today’s post is part of a series of ideas, quotes and short provocations collected under the “What is this Thing Called Meaning?” banner. Please check backward for related and contextualizing entries.
What is the danger? How about the awarding of grants and stipends by panels of non professionals who “get it wrong”? How about a art competition such as ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, MI where one year the popular vote prize of $250K went to a banal 13ft mosaic of Christ on the Cross? How about our societal investment in the arts via foundational, public, and private support that is based on vague principles of engagement and community involvement rather than on aesthetic quality?
While I am in no way a conservative, Bible-belt elitist republican, I feel that the author’s views smack of a misguided, view that militant libertarians have elevated as their credo for just about everything.
All art cannot be anything to anybody or whatever anyone chooses to make of it. Admittedly, such a perspective can legitimately be taken in numerous modern, non-figurative works in the visual arts or in non-programmatic music, it doesn’t apply to the vast majority of art.
Dante’s Divine Comedy is, perhaps, one of the most complex pieces of poetic literature in Western art in terms of layered semantics and symbolism (I don’t know enough about Eastern art to make comparisons). Likewise, Shakespeare is a master of the double-entendre whose plays and poetry can be twisted in manifold ways to extract meaning which is often close to the opposite of the naked words.
Yet if I tried to convince any reasonably thinking and intelligent person that Dante was a hidden atheistic master of alchemy who espoused proto-Protestant ideology 50 years before Wycliffe did, I’d get laughed at. And rightly so. Likewise, if I proposed that Shakespeare was a closet republican anti-monarchist who inspired Oliver Cromwell to become a class revolutionary (as Trotsky claimed Cromwell was), I’d get laughed at too. And rightly so.
The visual arts allow for even less liberty of interpretation, except in notable cases such as Bosch (one art historian has devoted a book to proving that he was the last of the Cathars) or completely abstractionist works by, e.g., Pollock or Mark di Suvero that truly can be anything to anybody. Most other painters from Cimabue to Chagall only allow for a more or less finite set of interpretations about theology, history or aesthetics lest one chances venturing into the ridiculous.
Indeed, if any art can be subjected to Mz. Conner’s approach, it would be nonfigurative music if one takes an absolutist view like Hanslick did in his musical criticisms. Yet even Hanslick’s claim that music without words can not be viewed as representing anything beyond compositional rules or systems and itself is in fact a “master (grand) narrative complex.”
Wagner certainly didn’t agree with that view, and highly figurative “programmatic” can be dated back at least as far back as to fricassees like Les Cris de Paris, Le chant des oiseaux or La Bataille (Escoutez tous gentilz), by Clément Janequin (c. 1485 – 1558). Citing Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring as an instance when “the general public will g[o]t it wrong” is utterly ludicrous.
First of all, it is still debated whether it was the music or – rather – Nijinsky’s strange choreography that caused the riot in 1913. If it was the music (as Casella claimed), then it was probably more due to the fact that the music contained so many unusual note combinations that Monteux had to ask the musicians to stop interrupting when they thought they had found mistakes in the score, saying he would tell them if something was played incorrectly. According to Doris Monteux, “The musicians thought it absolutely crazy. At one point, a climactic brass fortissimo, the orchestra broke up in nervous laughter at the sound, causing Stravinsky to intervene angrily.”
Gustav Linor, writing in the leading theatrical magazine Comoedia, thought the performance was superb, especially that of Maria Piltz; the disturbances, while deplorable, were merely “a rowdy debate” between two ill-mannered factions.” Calvocoressi failed to observe any direct hostility to the composer—unlike, he said, the premiere of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902. Certainly subsequent performances of “Le Sacre” immediately following the riotous premiere did not cause cacophony except from the orchestra pit, though naturally, there were people who commented negatively about it. But Stravinsky’s career didn’t go into a nosedive as Antheil’s did after the New York premiere of Ballet mecanique, nor did Stravinsky flounder in obscurity like Schubert did during his lifetime, even though Schubert is one of the greatest composers of memorable tonal melodies that ever lived.
Music before Janequin’s time can quite comfortably be fitted into three narratives (or rather, genres): Religious, dance or song. Even 15th century parody/chanson masses do not contain a “hidden message” even if Pedro Bermudez’s Misa de Bomba is constructed around a cantus firmus from Mateo Flecha el Viejo’s ensalada La Bomba. If I proposed that the “real” meaning behind Bermudez’s mass was a Lutheran desire to blow up the established order of the Catholic church and burn it down to its foundations, I would get laughed at. And rightly so.
I would argue that all art, though music in particular, requires a certain level of education (whether formal or self-taught) if grand narratives are not, by definition, to become dumbed-down, simplistic or downright wrong. Conversation is indeed so much more dynamic when it is made up of a multitude of voices – but these voices need to understand context and history if that conversation is not to devolve into chit-chat between soccer moms or bowling dads.
There is a reason why the arts are having a difficult time in the US today. Understanding art requires a modicum of intelligence; not mere Marxist revolution and re-interpretation according to one’s personal and invented dogmas. Since arts are no longer taught in schools, fewer and fewer people understand them and are able to actually converse about them intelligently.
Claiming that what anyone says about art is valid is one of the main fallacies why the arts are not funded and in decline today. And those claiming that arts don’t need to be taught, learned and funded because they’re merely “having fun” are the biggest blockheads in the society and politics of our day.
I think the author’s acknowledgment that there is no master narrative, and that there is space for multiple narratives and individual meaning-making actually addresses, head on, the biggest problem facing the arts- the lack of public value and public benefit from arts experiences. This lack is not, as the two earlier commenters infer, in the intelligence of the public. I find that assumption abhorrent. People simply don’t see themselves reflected in the art world and most, when they hear the words ‘art’ or ‘artist,’ automatically think “not me.” I have heard this time and time again- from family members to civic leaders: “arts = not me.” The modern public is alienated from art and arts institutions (but not from art-making and creativity).
Those of us working at the intersection of art production and public value understand that the public is not a slave to this master narrative of value, but is free to choose and make their own. Our struggling arts org tell us they are voting with their dollars and feet. If art-making were as integrated as sports in our culture, and as participatory- meaning people engaged in discussing it and socializing around it- people would have a much deeper connection to the art world. (Mz. Conner has talked about this at length). Quality arts education gives people the hands on experience. But where in our culture do we make room for the public to deeply engage with the ideas, techniques and stories within an art piece, and where do they get to integrate those elements into something that is meaningful for them. In my mind, the public completes the circuit of value. The art object is not inherently valuable, but the meanings and experiences people have in communion with it are. And I don’t think people want to be told what is valuable- they are manipulated and harangued by value arguments all the time, I think they want deeper communion, which means agency in determining value as well.
This doesn’t mean making art that pleases a public. But it does mean recognizing that the public has a role to play in determining value, The idea that people should support and participate in the arts because “its good for them,” is patronizing and about as appealing as taking vitamins. Those in the art world that want public support should be concerned with creating public value. And its starts with having some respect for and curiosity about said public.