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On the Artist's Privileged Status

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Mark Roskill
Mark Roskill
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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Extract

The topic of this paper is one more alluded to than actually studied, both in current philosophy of art and in the theory of criticism. There is a reason for this, which both clarifies the issue and suggests how it is to be approached. To suppose that the person responsible for a work of art has at least something interesting to say about it is only natural, and even commonplace. But granted this, the qualifications to be put on that assumption in individual and particular cases become of much greater interest. The major question would not then be whether or not, in an absolute sense, the artist is in a position to talk definitively about his own work, but rather on what basis or criteria a claim to that effect can be made to rest, and how far it extends in its implications.

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Articles
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Philosophy , Volume 54 , Issue 208 , April 1979 , pp. 187 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1979

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References

1 It forms part of a larger study of the artist's intentions. The most relevant preceding treatment of that subject is that of Cioffi, F., ‘Intention and Inter pretation in Criticism’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 64 (1963–1964), 85–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar, repr. in Collected Papers on Aesthetics, Barrett, C. (ed.) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1965), 161–183Google Scholar, and some of the same examples have been used as there so that they may be viewed from the present, differing standpoint. I have been much helped also by Gareth Matthews and Mary Sirridge.

2 Yeats, W. B., The Tower (New York: Macmillan, 1928), 110.Google Scholar

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6 ‘Practical’ intentions are discussed by Gang, T. M., ‘Intention’, Essays in Criticism, 7 (1957), 175–186CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but the examples he gives represent the purpose or raison d'être of a poem (its being written to a lady) and then by extension its tone and the theory behind it; he omits intentions that an artist might describe while working.

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9 Op. cit., note 3, letter no. LX, 26 May 1879, and cf. also nos XCVIII, XCIX.

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14 As brought up by Gendin, S., ‘The Artist's Intentions’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 23 (1963–1964), 193–196CrossRefGoogle Scholar; but his account of the sense of obligation is too broad, especially for the performing arts.

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25 See his letter to Sophia Hawthorne, 8 January 1852, The Letters of Herman Melville, Davis, M. R. and Gilman, W. H. (eds) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), 146.Google Scholar

26 See his ‘Thoughts after Lambeth’ (1931), Selected Essays (London: Faber and Faber, 1932), 314Google Scholar; and The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: A Facsimile of the Original Draft, Eliot, V. (ed.) (London: Faber and Faber, 1971), 1Google Scholar (report of an undated statement to Theodore Spencer).