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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.

Type
Articles
Information
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

3 The Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges, Abbott, C. C. (ed.) (London: Oxford University Press, 1935), no. XCVII, 4 01 1883, 170–171.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.

7 Reported by Vachon, M., Puvis de Chavannes (Paris: Braun, Clément et Cie, 1896), 58.Google Scholar

8 See the comment so worded in , F. R. and Leavis, Q. D., Dickens the Novelist (London: Chatto and Windus, 1970), 163.Google Scholar

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

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11 See Richards, I. A., Practical Criticism (1929) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), poem vi, 83.Google Scholar

12 See the exhibition catalogue, G. Braque, London, Tate Gallery, September- November 1956, no. 30, Still Life with Dice, Pipe and Glasses, Eicholz collection (entry by D. Cooper).

13 ‘The Frontiers of Criticism’ (1956), On Poetry and Poets (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), 109–110.Google Scholar

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.

15 Empson, W., Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930) (New York: Noonday Press, 1955), 168Google Scholar, thinks that it actually intensifies the ambiguity here.

16 Op. cit., note 13, 109, and see Litz, A. Walton, ‘The Waste Land Fifty Years After’, Eliot in his Time, Litz, A. Walton (ed.) (Princeton University Press, 1972), 9–10.Google Scholar

17 Interview with Sylvester, David (1960), Living Arts I, No. 1 (Spring 1963), 10.Google Scholar

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20 See Austin, J. L. (reply to Wisdom's 1946 paper), op. cit., note 5, 65, 78.Google Scholar

21 See Searle, J. R., Speech Acts (Cambridge University Press, 1969), 141CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cook, J. W., ‘Wittgenstein on Privacy’, Philosophical Review 74 (1965), 285CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Alston, , op. cit., note 4, 223–224.Google Scholar

22 See White, A. R., ‘Mentioning the Unmentionable’ (1967), Symposium on J. L. Austin, Fann, K. T. (ed.) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), 224.Google Scholar

23 See Bateson, F. W., English Poetry: A Critical Introduction (London: Longmans, 1950), 8Google Scholar, and the exchanges between Wain, J., Robson, W. W. and Bateson, , ‘Intention and Blake's Jerusalem’, Essays in Criticism 2, No. 1 (01 1952), 105–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with subsequent contributions also by J. Bayley, No. 4 (October 1952), 455–456, and W. Empson, 3, No. 1 (January 1953), 116–119. Hobsbaum, P., A Theory of Communication (London: Macmillan, 1970), 210–211Google Scholar, reviews these interpretations and suggests that they are all, in general terms, compatible with one another.

24 See Murry, J. Middleton, Studies in Keats (London: Oxford University Press, 1930)Google Scholar, rev. and enlarged as Keats (New York: Noonday Press, 1955)Google Scholar, Ch. vii, and Leavis's, F. R. critical rejoinder, ‘Keats’, Scrutiny, 4, No. 4 (03 1936), 384–388Google Scholar, repr. in his Revaluation (New York: Norton, 1947), 253–257.Google Scholar For the punctuation of the last two lines of the Ode and the sense in which they should be taken as a unit, see Whitley, A., ‘The Message of the Grecian Urn’, Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin 5 (1953), 1–3Google Scholar; Wasserman, E. R., The Finer Tone: Keats's Major Poems (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1953), 58ff.Google Scholar Those four discussions are conveniently reprinted together in Lyon, H. T., Keats's Well-Read Urn: An Introduction to Literary Method (New York: Holt, 1958), text nos. 37, 45, 76–77.Google ScholarPetiet, E. C., On the Poetry of Keats (Cambridge University Press, 1957)Google Scholar, Appdx. vi, reviews some of these interpretations, and see also the correspondence in the Times Literary Supplement (02–04 1964), 112, 132, 153, 218, 317Google Scholar, as to whom the Urn addresses. Also more recently Jack, I., Keats and the Mirror of Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967)Google Scholar, Ch. vii and 287–289, n. 42; and Mincoff, M., ‘Beauty is Truth—Once More’, Modern Language Review 65 (1970), 267–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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).