Instruction
set of principles
1. Artworks are always about something
2. subject matter + medium + Form +Context = Meaning
3. To interpret a work of art is to understand it in language.
4. Feeling are guides to interpretation.
5. the critical activities of describing, analyzing, interpreting, judging, and theorizing about works of art are interrelated and interdependent.
6. artworks attract multiple interpretations and it is not the goal of the interpretation to arrive at single, grand, unified, composite interpretations.
7. There is a range of interpretations any artworks will allow.
8. Meaning of the artworks is not limited to what their artists intended them to mean.
9. interpretations are not so much right, but are more or less reasonable, convincing, informative, and enlightening
10. interpretations imply a worldview.
11. good interpretations tell more about the artwork than they tell about the interpreter
12. the objects of interpretation are artwork, not artists
13. all art is in part about the world in which in emerged
14. all art is in part about other art
15. some interpretations are better than others.
16. good interpretations have coherence, correspondence, and inclusiveness.
17. interpreting art is an endeavor that both individual and communal
18. the admissibility of interpretations is ultimately determined by a community of interpreters and the community is self-correcting.
19. Good interpretations invite us to see for ourselves and continue on our own.