JAIC 1996, Volume 35, Number 3, Article 3 (pp.

197 to 218)
THE ARTIST'S INTENTIONS AND THE INTENTIONAL
FALLACY IN FINE ARTS CONSERVATION
STEVEN W. DYKSTRA
ABSTRACTA formal claim was made in the mid-20th century that the goal of art conservation is to
present the artwork as the artist intended it to be seen. Dispute over this claim among conservators and
art historians involved differences of perspective on the relative roles of science and art history in the
interpretation of artist's intent. A separate but concurrent debate among philosophers, art critics, and
literary critics was sparked by publication of The Intentional Fallacy, a scholarly article discrediting
appeals to the intentions of artists and authors in art and literary criticism. In this separate debate,
difficulty in the evaluation and application of artist's intent was traced to ambiguity of the term intent.
The author discusses 11 variations of its meaning and puts the issues surrounding artist's intent together
in the contexts of art conservation. He also presents more recent viewpoints in the social sciences that
associate issues of artist's intent with the role of the artist in the continued existence of the artwork. The
writings of contemporary philosophers contribute useful perspectives on the essential nature of art and
the autonomy of artworks from their creators. The author finds that the interpretation and application of
artist's intent is an interdisciplinary task and that its evaluation in conservation contexts is limited to
consideration of distinctive stylistic characteristics that demonstrate the correlated individuality of artists
and their work.
TITREL'intention de l'artiste et la tromperie intentionnelle dans la conservation des oeivres d'art.
RSUMAu milieu du 20e sicle, on prtendait que l'objectif de la restauration tait de rendre aux
oeuvres d'art l'aspect que l'artiste avait voulu leur donner. La controverse qui s'en suivit parmi les
restaurateurs et les historiens d'art suscita des diffrences de considration sur les rles relatifs de la
science et de l'histoire de l'art dans l'interprtation de l'intention de l'artiste. Un dbat spar mais
parallle parmi les philosophes, les critiques d'art et les critiques littraires fut dclench par la
publication d'un article rudit intitul The Intentional Fallacy, qui s'opposait cette rfrence aux
intentions des artistes et des auteurs dans la critique artistique et littraire. Dans ce dbat particulier, la
difficult de l'valuation et de l'application de l'intention de l'artiste provenait de l'ambigut mme du
terme intention. L'auteur examine 11 significations diffrnetes de ce mot, et il pose le problme de
l'intention de l'artiste dans les contextes lis au domaine de la restauration. En outre, il prsente des
points de vue plus recnts, tirs des sciences sociales qui associent les problmes de l'intention de
l'artiste celui de son rle dans l'existence continue de l'oeuvre d'art. Les ouvrages des philosophes
contemporains apportent des perspectives utiles sur la nature essentielle de l'art et de l'autonomie des
oeuvres vis--vis de leurs crateurs. L'auteur pense que l'interprtation et l'tude des intentions de
l'artiste est une tche interdisciplinaire, et que son valuation dans les contextes de la restauration doit
tre limite la considration des caractristiques stylistiques particulires qui dmontrent l'individualit
corrlative des artistes et de leurs oeuvres.
TTULO: La intencin del artista y la falacia intencional en la conservacin de objetos de arte.
RESUMEN: A mediados del siglo 20 fue hecha una afirmacin formal acerca de que el objetivo de la
conservacin de arte es presentar la obra para que sea vista de acuerdo a la intencin del artista. La
disputa sobre esta afirmacin entre conservadores e historiadores del arte comprendi diferencias de
perspectiva sobre los roles relativos de la ciencia y la historia del arte en la interpretacin de la intencin
del artista. Un debate entre filsofos, criticos de arte y crticos literarios, generado en forma
independiente pero concurrente con esta disputa, fue encendido por la publicacin de La Falacia
Internacional, un artculo erudito que desacredita el recurso de apelar a las intenciones de los artistas y
autores en las crticas del arte y la literatura. En este debate independiente, la dificultad en la evaluacin
y aplicacin de la intencin del artista fue adjudicada a la ambigedad del trmino intencin. El autor
discute 11 variaciones en el significado de este trmino, y coloca conjuntamente las cuestiones que
rodean a la intencin del artista dentro de los contextos de la conservacin de arte. Tambin presenta
puntos de cista mas recientes en el campo de las ciencias sociales que asocian las cuestiones relativas a
la intencin del artista con el rol que ste tiene en la existencia perdurable de la obra de arte. Los
escritos de filsofos contemporneos contribuyen con perspectivas tiles acerca de la naturalcza
esencial del arte y la autonoma de las obras de arte respecto de sus creadores. El autor encuentra que
la interpretacin y aplicacin de la intencin del artista es una tarea interdisciplinaria, y que su
evaluacin en contextos de conservacon esta limitada a consideraciones sobre caractristicas
estilsticas distintivas, que demuestran la correlativa individualidad de los artistas y sus obras.
1 INTRODUCTION
The restoration of fine art, as it is conceived and practiced in the West, is occasionally accompanied by
controversy. Since the Renaissance, various standards and principles of restoration practice have been
proposed and pursued, debated, and revised or discarded by succeeding generations. Among the most
prominently debated principles in the 20th century is the claim that the goal of art conservation should
be to present the artwork as the artist originally intended it to be seen. This idea emerged informally and
anonymously in the late 19th century after advances in scientific analysis raised the possibility of
identifying the artist's original materials and distinguishing them from later additions or alterations due to
age, nature, accident, or human intervention.
It was inevitable that science would be applied to art and art history. Scientific approaches to worldly
knowledge found increasing acceptance and recognition in the previous two centuries, and, by the early
19th century, the scientific perspective was formed into a system of philosophy based on the positive
data of sense experience. Positivism located the roots of truth and knowledge in positive, observable
scientific facts and their relations to each other and to natural law. In reaction, antipositivism arose to
proclaim and defend the validity of human experience and human knowledge beyond the analytic reach
of scientific method. Antipositivists concerned themselves with the soundness and cogency of
experience and knowledge in the personal and social realms, especially in what came to be known as
the social sciences. Debate between positivists and antipositivists received the most focused attention in
the fields of anthropology and sociology. By the end of the 19th century, positivism was so broadly
exercised and widespread that national differences in its application to art and art criticism were
apparent (Broude 1991). In art history and in the emerging discipline of art conservation, debate about
the role and influence of science and scientific technologies became involved with the concept of artist's
intent in the National Gallery cleaning controversy of the 1940s and 1950s, when a technologically
defined idea of following the artist's intentions was formalized as a principle of art conservation.
Simultaneously, in literary and philosophical circles, the concept of artist's intent became the direct
subject of another debate, unrelated to scientific and technological considerations. The phrase
intentional fallacy was coined in the title of an influential scholarly article claiming that artists' intentions
are neither available nor desirable as a standard for assessing art. The position established in The
Intentional Fallacy (Wimsatt and Beardsley 1946) became known as anti-intentionalism. Intentionalists
disagreed, arguing that any sense of the artist's intention, however obscure, can be a useful resource in
interpreting a work of art.
Philosophy is not often a forte of the pragmatic practitioner, concerned with empirical results. Unlike
philosophers, historians, and literary critics, art conservators did not separate along intentionalist and
anti-intentionalist lines. While other disciplines perceived their specific issues in terms of positivism
versus antipositivism and differing theories of art criticism and interpretation, conservators were
artificially and superficially separated into two ad hoc schoolsaesthetic conservators and scientific
conservators. The broader issues became mired in methodological disagreement, and the principle of
adherence to the artist's intentions was reduced to a casual tenet of conservation theory.
Most of the uncertainty and ambiguity surrounding artist's intentions can be directly attributed to the use
of the word intention when it is applied to artists and their work. The word is tightly tied to subtle and
diverse references to artistic biography and to competing theories of art, creativity, and aesthetics.
Unraveling the knotted meanings of this word is necessary for improved discussion of the idea and its
surrounding issues in the field of art conservation. Precise language and a deliberate understanding of the
role of the artist in the artwork allow artist's intent to be carefully comprehended and applied to art
conservation issues in a clear and constructive way.
Important contributions to this work come from philosophers working in the field of contemporary
hermeneutics, the specific subdiscipline of philosophy concerned with the processes of interpretation,
discourse, and humanistic understanding. In the past two decades, this work has shed new light on
artistic discourse, the role of the artist, and the fundamental nature of works of art. The nature of art,
artist's intentions, theory of the text, and theory of the work are all vital topics in contemporary
hermeneutics.
2 MATERIAL MORTALITY: THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM
Artists' intentions can have various levels of complexity and reference, but conservators quickly
recognize a familiar problem at the root of the surrounding issues. Time, grime, and mishap always
create conditions that obscure, alter, or destroy the character of the artist's original work. Paints dry,
crack, and flake; canvases sag; and panels split. Organic colorants may fade to translucence, and
metallic pigments can oxidize from red and green to black and brown. Additionally, one or more
restorers may have had a hand in the artwork by reinterpreting or attempting to reveal, repair, or
replace what the artist created, often with temporary effect. Eternally durable and changeless materials
are unavailable to artists and conservators alike. Natural processes and physical conditions eventually
alter the attributes of materials that succeed under the artist's hand or in the conservator's studio.
Conservators know how difficult it can be to predict or control these alterations, and it makes for wary
work. Regardless of the artist's clarity of purpose, all his or her material determinations are subject to
physical damage, decline, and decay. Artistic achievements are not and cannot be fixed forever in the
final physical result of artists' creative work.
Recent analytic research in art conservation makes the temporality of artists' materials painfully
apparent. A work of art that is carefully protected from grime, environmental and mechanical stress,
mishap, and restoration is nonetheless subject to chemical decomposition. Changes in materials begin in
the first instant of their use. Depending on the artist's choices, changes may be rapid or slow, but usually
chemical change becomes apparent within a quarter century.
Georges Seurat's La Grande Jatte (188486, Art Institute of Chicago) lost its initial luminous charm
within five years. Its yellow, orange, and green pigments were quick to decay into more stable, less
colorful chemical compounds (Fiedler 1984). Albert Pinkham Ryder's incessant reworking with
mixtures of varnish and paint was driven, in part, by quickly fading artistic effects (Svoboda and Van
Vooren 1989). Until his death, Ryder struggled with the appearance of The Tempest (1890s and later,
Detroit Institute of Arts), first exhibited to the public more than 25 years earlier. Today, many of his
paintings have deteriorated almost beyond recognition.
Twentieth-century art is not exempt from this effect. Joseph Albers's meticulously chosen and applied
paints exhibit differing types and rates of deterioration within the same painting (Garland 1983). Mark
Rothko mixed his paint for the Houston chapel to achieve a special paint surface quality that proved to
be exceptionally short lived (Mancusi-Ungaro 1981).
Some contemporary artists consciously disregard the quick mortality of the media they select,
suggesting that permanence is irrelevant to their work. Jasper Johns once joked that he would be a
richer man if he were the conservator of his encaustic paintings instead of their creator (quoted in Wyer
1988, 46). Robert Rauschenberg said, Art has risk built into it. I don't consider any material
unavailable to me (quoted in Wyer 1988, 46). Anselm Kiefer's works that include straw on the surface
deteriorate so readily that debris was reported to accumulate on an exhibition hall floor between regular
sweepings (Wyer 1988, 48).
The technical impossibility of stopping the deterioration of an artist's initial creation is clearly understood
today. In the face of desperate problems, lighthearted conservators may playfully wish for frigid,
lightless, airless storage vaults, perhaps deep in caves on the dark side of the moon! Equally playful is
the futuristic hypothesis that molecularly exact reproductions could substitute for artists' deteriorated
originals. There is a note of ironic humor in the realization that the next generation of conservators would
meet the deferred problems again when faced with conservation of the replica.
Because physical artworks are the primary grounds for representing artist's intentions, a paradox
occurs: physical materials decay, but artists' purposes, aims, goals, and objectives exist in a
psychological arena where they do not decompose or deteriorate. Eventually and inevitably artists'
materials lose fidelity in their allegiance and attachment to artist's intentions. Recognition of physical
decay or damage invites questions about the materials' reference to the artist's intent. These questions
can be surprisingly varied and complex, and there are equally various and complicated ways of
attempting to answer them.
3 POSITIVISM AND THE ARTIST'S INTENTIONS
Beginning in the later 19th century, science and the scientific method were introduced into the mix of
crafts and techniques used by serious art restorers. Scientific advances and refinements in scientific
method opened the possibility of uniform and analytic approaches to restoration problems and
processes. The use of scientific procedures promised relief from confusion and criticism caused by
idiosyncratic or arbitrary restoration practices in the past. An emphasis on preservation and the use of
knowledge in the physical and chemical sciences eventually came to distinguish the new discipline of art
conservation from the older trade of restoration. Applied to art and art conservation, positivism implied
that aesthetic and art historical apprehension had to be acquired candidly through the senses and be
based on frank observation and experiment. In the positivist's view, intuitions, impressions, insights,
suppositions, feelings, and the like are questionable and uncertain ways of understanding. Positive
knowledge depends on empirical science (Broude 1991, 114).
By the time the first American conservation laboratory was established at the Fogg Art Museum in
1928, it was simply accepted that the natural sciences were the model and method for describing the
standards by which artworks would be restored and maintained. Art conservation was understood to
be a matter of chemistry, physics, and mechanics, and it was the responsibility of professional
practitioners, working under strict guidelines based on a solid scientific foundation (Stout 1948, vivii).
Although science became an indispensable part of the conservator's training and perspective, it could
not become an exclusive approach. Science provided the means for developing technologies, detecting
significant facts, and matching them to theory. In practice, it could describe reliable means for achieving
certain ends, but it could not decide the suitability of those ends or justify them by scientific virtue alone.
Instead there was a belief that the authority of science and scientific technologies would complement the
art of restoration and lend it the type of credibility that was carved out in the natural sciences. There was
confidence that a measure of scientific objectivity would dispel any perceptions of art restoration as an
entirely interpretive and unrestrained process.
Scientific foundations notwithstanding, controversy embroiled the young discipline of art conservation
just as it had plagued earlier means and manners of restoration. In 1947, the National Gallery, London,
held a special exhibition of newly cleaned paintings, partly to demonstrate the results of serious scientific
conservation. Reactions to this exhibition were not universally favorable. Contrary and inflamed opinions
were expressed by the general public in letters to the Times and the Sunday Telegraph. In addition to
the public tumult, some distinguished art historians and respected critics also disputed the cleaning
results. Many of the most rational and scholarly arguments were eventually presented in the pages of
Burlington Magazine. Three months after the exhibition's opening, Burlington editors commented:
Though our most serious quarrel is with those who maintain that the national pictures have
been damaged, we still cling to the suspicion, which even this most reassuring Exhibition
cannot entirely dispel, that the responsible authorities set too much store by science, and
too little by that capricious barometer registering sensibility (Burlington Magazine 1947).
Helmut Ruhemann, the gallery's director of conservation, was a strong supporter of a positivist
approach. In response to demands and questions from an independent board of inquiry, conservators at
the National Gallery referred to technical evidence and scientific analysis done during the treatments to
argue that historical speculation and metaphysical clutter had created misconceptions about the true
appearance of old paintings. Ruhemann and the positivist conservators firmly believed that scientific
observation, study, and experimentation validated systematic art conservation technologies and that
consistent application of these technologies accurately exposed, preserved, and truthfully presented the
materials originally laid down by the artist. In this way, the intentions of the artist were served equitably,
without interpretive distortion. Ruhemann and his supporters defined and defended their position by
appealing to the artist's intentions as an authoritative principle. Conservators from the National Gallery
claimed: It is presumed to be beyond dispute that the aim of those entrusted with the care of paintings
is to present them as nearly as possible in the state in which the artist intended them to be seen
(MacLaren and Werner 1950, 189).
In its most dogmatic form, this claim implied that all artifacts of aging and all previous retouching should
be removed or remedied to the extent technologically possible without harming or obscuring the
remaining original paint. The conservator's job was to preserve and show to its best advantage every
original particle remaining of a painting, and in so doing he or she should be guided by the master's
intention (Ruhemann 1963, 202).
This technologically driven program for following the artist's intentions was supposed to represent an
objective, noninterpretive approach to restoration. It was questioned by conservators and art historians
with antipositivist leanings who insisted that artistic, aesthetic, and historical considerations were not
receiving enough attention in a narrow and insensitive conception of conservation goals. Cesare Brandi,
head of the Instituto del Restauro in Rome, told attendees at the 1948 International Council of
Museums meeting in Paris, We may often find ourselves in closer touch with the mind of the artist by
leaving the picture with its patina than by removing it (1949, 188). Paul Coremans of the Courtauld
Institute defended the cleaning of a Rubens in the 1947 exhibition but admitted, I do not claim to have
exhausted the subject, especially since my argument is confined to chemical, physical, and technical
considerations, and since the cleaning of old pictures should at the same time be judged in the light of
aesthetic criteria (1948, 261).
In reaction to Ruhemann's 1961 publication of a positivist approach to Leonardo DaVinci's use of
sfumato, art historian Ernst Gombrich revisited the issues raised by the 1947 exhibition and became
leader of the antipositivist opposition with a claim that strictly technical approaches to conservation
treatment yielded paintings whose condition and appearance were newly artificial and alien to any
human memory or recollection (Gombrich 1962). Art historical understanding and connoisseurship
should control the course of conservation treatment, he argued. New appearances should not be
discovered or determined by technical methods alone. Gombrich and his supporters insisted that
paintings should be restored with a comparative and discerning eye toward their faded colors, their
characteristic patina, and inevitable decay. They claimed that prudent aesthetic and historical
interpretations should have precedence over technologically determined expositions.
The National Gallery cleaning controversy, which also became known as the Ruhemann-Gombrich
debate, revolved around issues of artist's intentions. Both camps invoked these issues in their arguments
(Carrier 1985, 29192). On Gombrich's side, the general claim was that a technologically driven
approach does not necessarily respect artistic or historical consideration of an artist's work (Gombrich
1963). Argument from historical research asserted that certain Old Masters anticipated the aging of
their work, intending them to darken and fade (Kurz 1962, 1963). Connoisseurship and aesthetic
observation suggested that purposeful artistic effects, perhaps the use of tinted varnishes and glazes,
were not recognized by positivist methods and techniques (Rees-Jones 1962). Additionally, paintings
change in time, Gombrich and his supporters argued, and in a way that is not retractable; they cannot be
returned to their original order and state as they appeared in the hands of their makers. Referring
indirectly to the cleaning of Titian's Virgin and Child with Saints John & Catherine, Gombrich
remarked, One should have thought it is common ground that Titian is dead and that we cannot ask
him what his intention was (Gombrich 1962, 54). The National Gallery cleaning controversy deflated
somewhat after Ruhemann's camp contrived a mocking pun accusing Gombrich and followers of
fascination with dirty pictures (Walden 1985, 118).
In 1977, a similar controversy erupted at the National Gallery of Art in Washington over the cleaning of
paintings, especially one attributed to Rembrandt. By this time, the differences between positivist and
antipositivist approaches divided the art conservation profession into scientific and aesthetic camps, at
least in the perception of the communications media and its public (Hochfield 1976, 1978). John
Brealey, conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was cast to represent the aesthetic
antipositivist approach (Tompkins 1987): What we don't do here is try to make believe the whole thing
is scientific, wear white coats and use Formica tables and pretend we're dealing with absolutes (quoted
in Glueck 1980). Scientific or purist conservators were less willing to entertain media attention. Their
research, techniques, and analyses were supported by publication in technical and professional journals,
and when invited to counter their antagonists and critics, they often chose to remain nameless (McGill
1987). Although their rhetoric was adamant and their arguments were sound, aesthetic conservators
could not reduce the power and status of the scientific approach. The personal authority of individual
erudition was essential to the aes-thetic conservators' position. Its personal source and subjective
premises did not hold against the impersonal authority of science.
The controversy and debate between conservators refocused and intensified the uncomfortable
atmosphere of ad hominem argument that has surrounded restoration issues for centuries. Titian, for
instance, restored several masterpieces in his day and employed a personal insult to criticize Sebastiano
del Piombo's retouching of the famous rooms at the Vatican, originally painted by Raphael (Dolce
[1577] 1970, 2223). Eugne Delacroix claimed that restoration was vandalism perpetrated by
miserable daubers who destroyed artworks by usurping the place of real artists, substituting new work
for the originals (1948, 104). Speaking of the individual erudition necessary for the aesthetic
conservator's work, one conservator remarked:
[There] is an implicit tendency for the method to create prima donna restorers, who, as
they are actively changing old masters, must lay claim to great sensitivity and a highly
perceptive eye. This can lead to futile discussions since, to disagree with an individual of
such capacities, simply confirms your own lack of those qualities (Hedley 1985, 19).
Conservators, art historians, and critics with less polemical responses to controversy avoided the
sharpened horns of this dilemma between scientific and aesthetic methods. Many believed that scientific
authority and art historical weight can often be balanced in conservation work. Another conservator
recalled Erwin Panofsky's tribute to Paul Coremans, who more than anyone else encouraged the art
historical lamb to dwell with the scientific wolf, quoting Coremans's words:
We intend to grant an equal importance to the elements of appreciation in the areas
historic, aesthetic, scientific and technical. We believe, in effect, that it is erroneous and
baneful to raise a barrier between knowledge called scientific, the result of observation and
of the interpretation of the facts, and the knowledge called intuitive, born from
contemplation. We have, on the contrary, the conviction that only their association, their
interpenetration, always in a more profound way, will permit us to progress towards
treatments ever more effective and more respectful of the objects (quoted in Weil 1984,
91).
In the long lingering aftermath of the National Gallery cleaning controversy, it eventually became clear
that the positivist postulation about serving the artist's intentions was hollow. A strict, technologically
driven approach achieved only a scientifically bona fide presentation of authentic materiala
presentation that did not necessarily reveal the artist's original creation, support conventions of
connoisseurship, or fulfill art historical research and precedent.
4 THE INTENTIONAL FALLACY: INTENTIONALISM VS. ANTI-
INTENTIONALISM
Mid-century debate among conservators and art historians about standards, principles, and the artist's
intent was contemporaneous with a parallel debate in literary and philosophical circles. However, there
was little if any crossover on this subject between the art conservation profession and the disciplines of
art criticism, literary criticism, and the philosophy of art. In these other disciplines, discourse on the
intentions of artists and authors and intentionality in general were less polemical, more orderly, and more
prolific. A debate between intentionalists and anti-intentionalists was inspired by Wimsatt and
Beardsley's essay, The Intentional Fallacy, appearing in the Sewanee Review (1946). This debate
ultimately arrived at the description of many subtle conceptual differences packed into the seemingly
simple abstraction intent. The word and its exact reference in a given context became a subject and a
problem in itself.
The intentional fallacy is not an error of formal logic like the circular argument or begging the question.
Instead, it represents the claim that artist's intent is neither available nor desirable as a standard for
assessing artistic works: mistaken justification occurs when readers or beholders attribute scientific,
critical, or historical interpretations to the mentality of the author or artist. This justification appears
mistaken because these interpretations have sources that are several steps removed from the artist's
thought. Only the work was directly created by the artist, not the interpretations derived from it by
beholders. The intentional fallacy applies when critics, historians, or conservators associate their
analyses and interpretations with the artist's work and equate their conclusions with the artist's aims.
Simply stated, the intentional fallacy insists that our interpretations are our own and we are mistaken if
we identify them with the artist instead of ourselves.
Wimsatt and Beardsley's article framed the topic of artist's intent in a way that provoked discussions
and invited critiques. In the following years, a number of scholarly articles were published drawing
examples to support or contradict its application to specific literary and artistic cases. Controversy,
confusion, and excitement grew and the intentional fallacy gained a certain notoriety as a burdensome
stumbling block in art and literary criticism. Within a decade, the proliferation of commentators on this
topic led to the organization of a symposium on Intention and Interpretation in Art at the annual
meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, in 1955. The purpose of the
symposium was to air and clarify intentionalist and anti-intentionalist views.
Anti-intentionalists argued that the relevance of the artist's intent is found only in the artwork, not in the
inner workings of the artist's psyche. If the artist's intentions are carried out successfully, the artwork
shows what the artist was trying to do. If the artist did not accomplish what was intended, the unrealized
intentions remain undisclosed in that work. To attempt to find intentions elsewhere is to move away
from the work at hand in pursuit of psychological speculations that have nothing to do with the aesthetic
features of the work itself (Hungerland 1955).
Intentionalists countered that artists' personalities, intellectual approaches, psychological stances, and
creative attitudes all affect the disposition of the artworks they create. Awareness of these factors
shapes our perspective when we wish to make critical or analytic interpretations. These considerations
do not take us away from the artwork, but rather they bring it closer. If their influence is denied or
refused, our resources for interpretation are desperately impoverished (Aiken 1955).
In the philosopher's language, Ruhemann and the other conservation positivists were anti-intentionalists
who found their guiding evidence in the artwork alone. The approach espoused by Gombrich and his
followers characterized them as intentionalists in their insistence that artistic, aesthetic, and historical
interpretations must also be considered in conservation work.
During and after the symposium, it was widely acknowledged on both sides that the debate was vexed
by words and phrases that frequently proved to have indefinite references to different facets or aspects
of intent. Part of the problem was precisiontalking about the same thing in arguments about artist's
intent. Careful and extensive explanation was necessary to make it clear exactly what about artist's
intentions was under discussion. The emphasis of debate among philosophers, historians, and critics
shifted to the identification and description of various conceptual differences within the broader
abstraction of artist's intent.
5 VARIATIONS OF MEANING OF ARTISTIC INTENT
In Criticism and the Problem of Intention, Richard Kuhns (1960) identifies 11 distinct variations of
meaning carried by the term intent when it refers to artists and their work. Discussion in the following
subsections will put the 11 meanings in the context of art conservation, demonstrating that talk about
artist's intentions may refer to artistic biography or to competing theories of creativity and aesthetics.
Additionally, artist's intentions can be confused with effects that artworks create on their own. In
conservation contexts, the different meanings associated with artist's intent frame important questions
about the concepts involved and their applicability to conservation work.
Kuhns first addresses the idea that artists aim at a result, separating it into four different senses related to
artists' motives and differing theories about the nature of creativity. Discussed in sections 5.14, these
four senses of intentbiographical motives, aims vs. outcomes, expression in media, and inherent
creative spiritprovide distinct perspectives on creativity and the artist's purposes, and they raise
important questions about setting conservation goals: Can only one of these perspectives be applied to
every case? Can we agree on how to draw from these different perspectives and apply them to each
case? What general assumptions do we make about artistic motivations and creative processes, and
how do they affect our preconceptions when we discuss artist's intent?
Kuhns next considers the artist's intention as the conveying of a meaning and divides it into three senses
of communication, articulation, and expression, discussed in sections 5.57. These three perspectives
on the artist's intended meanings view art as an instance of discoursean occasion when somehow,
something is communicated to someone. Kuhns's analysis is concerned with distinguishing and
identifying various senses of intention and not with the conservator's need for useful explanation. It
remains unclear how these types of communications are constituted and what they entail. From the
conservator's viewpoint, these are the deepest questions about artist's intent and the intentional fallacy:
What are the qualities and meanings in fine art that are most clearly attributable to the artist, and how do
they come from the artist into our awareness? What can we know of the artist's intent, its importance,
and the process of its communication to us? Recent work by hermeneutical philosophers to open this
vein of questioning is discussed in section 6, The Role of the Artist.
Kuhns continues his analysis by observing that the term intention is sometimes used in reference to an
artwork's overall effect. He describes three senses in which a work of art is seen as an active,
intentional presenceits aesthetic expression, its appeal for reference and characterization, and its
aesthetic agencyand relates them to differing art theories, discussed in sections 5.810. Kuhns
associates the last and otherwise unrelated sense of artist's intent with ideas about the moral justification
of art, discussed in section 5.11. These final segments of the analysis suggest that the apparent agency
of an artwork itself can be confused with the artist's intent. Kuhns concludes that the various usages of
intention show how misleading it is to speak in simple terms about artist's intentions or the intentional
fallacy. For the conservator, Kuhns's analysis indexes the broad spectrum of approaches and issues
involved with artist's intent.
5.1 BIOGRAPHICAL MOTIVES
Ulterior motives can be found for any artist's creative work. He or she may be seeking fame or profit or
competitive success in the creation of an artwork. The satisfaction of patrons, emotional catharsis, and
the desire to establish or contribute to a body of related work are typically cited as germinal artists'
intentions. These first aspects of the artist's aims are primarily biographical. When curators, critics, and
art historians approach an artwork with this perspective on artists' intentions, they are motivated by the
desire to find evidence of artistic, social, political, economic, or perhaps romantic influences in the
artist's life. These influences relate to artists' personal circumstances and careers. However, to equate an
artist's work with his or her life is to see the work and the life as a single object (Kris 1952). When
confronted with the physical nature of the work of art, the conservator is likely to find that the artist's life
and career are parenthetical to the specific characteristics of his or her particular creative products.
5.2 AIMS VS. OUTCOMES
When we think that the artist aims at a certain result, we may be thinking that the artist conceives the
work in his or her head and is confronted with the problem of realizing it in a chosen medium. This way
of thinking divides artistic creativity into two parts: purely technical skill with media follows a purely
mental formulation of the work. The creative plan and purpose behind a work of art are considered
separately and distinctly from artistic expertise and the efficacy of media. The evaluation and
conservation of a work of art will require an assessment of how well the artist accomplished what he or
she set out to do.
If this perspective on creativity is adopted, pentimenti in a painting may be seen as disfigurements that
distract from the design and purpose of the artist's creative conception. They are technical errors or
media defects that were inadequately concealed by the artist or revealed later by material deterioration.
It is seldom clear that faded color, cracking, loss of structural integrity, and other normal effects of age
and decay correlate with an artist's original aims and conceptions. Any technical flaw or unanticipated
result is a shortcoming not in accord with the artist's original intent. In conservation treatment, this
conception of the artist's intent may be used to justify a call for compensation of all damages and
artifacts of aging, whether caused by the artist's choice and use of materials and by natural deterioration
or by accidents of later circumstance. Although some conservation treatments may successfully re-
create or preserve a like new appearance, it is often impossible to reach for an ageless and flawless
representation of the artist's initial conception.
5.3 EXPRESSION IN MEDIA
In another conception of artistic creativity, the artist is allowed a degree of suspense between aiming at
a specific effect and finding its precise expression in the medium. The characteristics of the chosen
media are thought to influence the development and realization of the artist's creative idea. Under this
theory, the medium has something like a franchise on the artist's aims, granted by the artist when they
were invested into material form.
In this perspective, a pentimento becomes an incidental disclosure that reveals the course of the artist's
creative effort. As a coincidental feature of a painting, curators and conservators might treat it as a
disfigurement, subject to a degree of retouching. Or the pentimento could be accepted as a casually
significant happenstance and left as it appears. This way of thinking about creativity and intent
encourages a belief that the artist's true intentions for the work can be picked out from the interference
caused by changes in the condition of the media. With this idea in mind, curators and conservators set
treatment goals that seek to combine preservation with a lasting balance between compensation for loss
and damage and the frank presentation of aged or deteriorated artist's materials. Adoption of this
perspective implies that critics and conservators will make judgments regarding the extent or degree to
which the condition of the media represents the artist's creative intent.
Tradition and practicality seem to determine how this approach is applied. Traditionally in older
artworks, some varieties of deterioration are commonly accepted despite their deviation from the artist's
original conception while other instances of decay within the same work are not. In baroque painting,
especially landscapes, there is a tendency to concede the appearance of brown paints that we know
were originally green, but the pale transparent hues of paints once tinted with fugitive red lakes
immediately suggest color reinforcement. In practice, the desire to keep compensation to a minimum
tends to allow only the most efficient efforts to unveil aspects of the artist's intent. In the baroque
paintings, there is compelling economy of treatment in a decision to touch up red accents and leave
browned landscape backgrounds alone.
5.4 INHERENT CREATIVE SPIRIT
Another conception of artistic creativity maintains that artists have intentions that are broadly purposive,
not just specifically purposeful in the same sense as the previous two cases. Artistic creativity appears
as a personal quality, like fertility, and artworks are produced when creative persons consort with
governable materials. In the creative moment, artistic spirit and physical substance merge and
incorporate. From this perspective, artists and their media share equal responsibility for bringing forth
their aims and inclinations.
With this approach to artist's intent and creativity in mind, curators, critics, art historians, and
conservators view the choice, use, and physical characteristics of the artist's materials to have
significance equal to the artistic effectiveness of their control. Ideas about intent are focused on the
artist's creative participation with the media. In painting, the concept of pentimenti becomes irrelevant.
All the paint has equal importance and authority in any effect, whatever layer, whether carefully
contrived or haphazardly applied. Conservation plans and treatment goals will prioritize preservation,
protection from circumstantial damage, and the retardation of decay. Only the most disfiguring losses
due to insult or accident become candidates for compensation.
Modern and contemporary art attracts this perspective on artistic work because it offers a liberal
perspective on artistic purpose and accepts virtually anything into the realm of artist's materials. Living
contemporary artists apply this perspective to their own efforts when they emphasize the importance of
their participation with media and their freedom to choose materials. In a distorted adaptation, this
emphasis can suggest that the chosen materials have extraneous characteristics not pertaining to the
artist's endeavors and accomplishments.
When the artist's intent is defined by participation with materials, it is subject to their fate. A hallmark of
this perspective is the belief that the artist's participation is necessary for genuine compensation. In the
absence of the artist, a decision for compensation admits a need for pretense because the critical
element of the artist's participation is lacking. Any damage or loss could be deemed fundamentally
beyond compensation because a piece of the artist's original participation is distorted or missing.
5.5 THE ARTIST'S SPEAKING
In thinking that the artist aims at a certain result, we may be thinking of meanings that the artist wishes to
convey. In one sense, artists are interlocutors who say something to beholders through their work. This
way of thinking about the artist's intended meaning makes an analogy between artwork and language,
specifically literature, where a text may be thought to be a form of the author's speaking. In the
philosophy of literary criticism and interpretation, this assumption is highly questionable because texts
can draw their voices and meanings from realms outside the author's personal domain. Literary works
appear in the medium of written language, but a work of fine art, although it may be considered a text of
some kind, is not a work of language.
In this way of thinking about artist's intent, language metaphors are common. We may want to hear or
read what the artist is saying to us, but we are forced to discuss the perceived messages in our own
words. For conservators, critics, and art historians, the intentional fallacy clearly comes into play when
we use our own perceptions and phrases to put the artist's meanings into wordsmeanings that are, by
nature, unspoken in the work of art.
5.6 THE ARTIST'S TELLING
In another sense of conveyed meaning, artists are prime beholders uniquely situated to be ideal
interpreters of the meaning that their work conveys. The artist is an expositor of the work rather than an
interlocutor. The situation of the previous sense is strangely reversed. The artwork itself expresses
something, but it is the artist who tells beholders what he or she means it to say.
Contemporary art lends itself to this approach in the form of consultation with living artists. A typical
example of the methodology is provided by Davenport (1995), who reports the results of treatment-
specific consultations, artist interviews, and artists' written responses to a questionnaire. Davenport
acknowledges that competing theories of art and creativity can determine how much authority is given to
artists for interpreting and explaining their work. Results from eight artists show that they embrace or
decline this authority idiosyncratically, with substantive vacillation in their individual replies. The following
excerpts illustrate the range of variation. Adrian Piper: I don't feel that I have privileged access to the
ultimate meaning of my work. I think that is determined by social context and history and so forth
(quoted in Davenport 1995, 46). Petah Coyne: There's a period when I'm connected with a piece, at
least four or five years. Then at a certain point you become almost in awe of it, and you don't know
how you could get back into that flow (p. 50). Fred Sandback: Who should be the primary source of
determining how a work should look over time? Well, sure, I should be. This is my game and I want it
played my way. But the question becomes interesting as I begin to fade out of the picture (p. 51).
Investigations like Davenport's make it clear that there is no consensus among living artists regarding any
status as privileged or ideal expositors of their work.
There is an obvious proprietary element in the relationship between artists and their work, and there are
statutory laws about copyright and authorship that protect artists' interests in this respect. However,
artists' rights are difficult to apply to the meaning or the interpretation of their work. Psychological
properties, moods, and meanings that the artist wishes to convey or explain are not fixed or objective.
The artist's personal internal states and understandings are subjective, and to be shared they must be
apprehended and recognized subjectively by each individual beholder.
When artists choose to dictate the meaning, sense, and import of their work, they assume the burden of
proof in defending their assertions. Their choice and use of media may fail to support their aspirations or
cease to sustain their immediate achievements. History may reveal unrecognized circumstances or
uncover surprising horizons. Beholders can judge the artist's claims against their own apprehension and
choose how much to be convinced of the artist's credibility in his or her stated purposes. A decision to
grant artists superior authority about the disposition, meaning, and purpose of their work diminishes or
denies the relative roles played by their media, by art historical contexts, and by beholders'
apprehensions. Conservators, art historians, and critics are not obliged to take the artist's assertions or
explanations without question.
5.7 THE ARTIST'S EXPRESSIVE CHARACTER
Another way of thinking about how an artist's meanings and purposes are conveyed considers his or her
work to represent an expressive system. This approach maintains that artists' personalities and
worldviews are reflected by their work and represented in it. The mind behind the work is a necessary
part of the work. We recognize artists' expressive systems or individual styles in the same way that we
recognize and categorize people's personalities and attitudes through their body language and manner of
speech. Seemingly anthropomorphic remarks associating attributes of an artwork with the mood or
personality of its artist usually come from this perspective. Claims that Vincent van Gogh's work
expresses agitation or that Jan Vermeer's work expresses serenity rely on this view.
Personal intuition, psychological insight, and sympathetic understanding all play a part in recognizing the
artist's expressive character or style. However, recognition is not the primary problem faced by the
conservator concerned with the physical work of art. To make decisions about compensation and the
treatment of material decay that are sensitive to the artist's expressive character, it is necessary to
understand the scope and function of this mind behind the work. For conservators, the deepest
underlying questions about artist's intent are concerned with its scope and function and ask for
clarification of the role of the artist in the artwork.
5.8 THE ARTWORK'S AESTHETIC EXPRESSION
In art-related discussion, it is sometimes said that the artwork itself exhibits an intention, related by
Kuhns to organicist, Gestalt, and idealist theories of art. In a variety of common contexts, intentions of
the artwork can be confused with artist's intent. These next three perspectives on intention in art
demonstrate how and why attributes of art itself are accidentally ascribed to artists.
In the first of these theoretical perspectives, the work of art is seen as a purposive organic whole. It
encompasses a complex but necessary interrelationship of parts, similar to that in living things. Like an
organism, it is a kind of individual, and as a singular entity, it seems to be composed for some end. It
embodies some knowledge or truth or meaning it aims to express. Kuhns (1960, 9) quotes the
observation from Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment (1790) that we can make the fundamental
nature of art intelligible to ourselves only by postulating a source of will and purpose. Objectively, an
artwork is an inanimate thing, but there is an overwhelming tendency to find an expressive entity within
it. Artist's intent has a reflexive relationship with the nature of art. This approach to art interpretation has
little direct bearing on art conservation except to suggest the difficulty of distinguishing the artist's part
from the whole of art.
As an older theoretical approach, this perspective on art reflects the contemporary hermeneutical idea
that a work of art is a potential event of discourse, dependent upon a beholder to happen (Gadamer
1975; Ricoeur 1981). When beholders bring their receptive tendencies to art, communication occurs.
Because beholders are necessary to realize and fulfill an artwork's existence, comprehensive
conservation measures will enhance access to it. This is why a cave on the dark side of the moon is not
an appropriate answer to the desperate preservation needs of the most fragile works of art.
5.9 THE ARTWORK'S APPEAL FOR REFERENCE AND
CHARACTERIZATION
In Kuhns's application of Gestalt art theory, a work of art may be thought to have an intention because
it makes analytic demands. It makes a claim on its beholders by inviting or asking for characterization
and classification. The power of an artwork to make an appeal for relevance is determined by its ability
to point to some reality common to a beholder and itself (Gadamer 1975; Ricoeur 1981). For the
conservator and art historian, the artwork's demand for a common ground of reference can be
dangerously seductive. Han van Meegeren's forged Vermeers, for example, had a 1930s and 1940s
look, including a near-likeness of Marlene Dietrich unquestioned by many experts at that time (Walden
1985).
The situation of the experts who accepted van Meegeren's Vermeers was similar to that of Professor
Hauser of Berlin, who in 1911 restored the painting once popularly known as Rembrandt's Mill. When
The Mill (now in the National Gallery of Art) was purchased in England by the American collector
P.A.B. Widener, his dealer sent the famous painting to Hauser before importing it to the United States.
Like most turn-of-the-century restorers, critics, and art historians, Hauser had definite preconceptions
about how Rembrandt paintings should look. It was understood that Hauser would improve the
painting's condition by making it conform to the appearance of many other paintings that shared broad
attributions to Rembrandt in that period (Wheelock 1977).
In a broader sense, historical periods, aesthetic styles, and genres of art have purposes that go beyond
those of individual artists. Panofsky uses the term intention in this way in connection with his thesis that
each historical period in Western civilization had its own special outlooks, assumptions, attitudes, and
concerns. For example, he maintains that the development of perspective in the painting of the Middle
Ages was intended to situate previously unconnected images in a unifying context (Panofsky [1927]
1991). Baxandall specifies this meaning of intention in art (1985, 4173), using specific artists' works to
illustrate the sense in which intention refers to a picture's relation to its circumstances (p. 72). The
various purposes of period, cultural style, and genre are easily equated with artists' individual efforts.
5.10 THE ARTWORK'S AESTHETIC AGENCY
In its reference to Kuhns's analysis, idealist art theory maintains that a work of art in itself possesses the
means and ability to act toward particular effects. For theologically inclined idealists, this quality may
represent a metaphysical power or the presence of divine will or inspiration. Ritual or religious works
may be thought to possess specific qualities in this respect. Beyond spiritual effects, works of art are
also credited with emotional effects, psychological effects, social and political effects, and in more
materialistic senses, optical, visual, and simply decorative, ornamental effects. This is the most common
and least specific reference of the term intention when applied to works of art. In this sense we say
that an artwork is meant to be displayed or seen in one way or anotherthat it works better in a
certain light, on a pedestal, in a period frame, or in a particular interpretive environment or setting.
Taken collectively, the overall effects created by a particular work of art denote its aesthetic intentions.
The highly variable nature of the effects created by a single artwork suggest the difficulty of discussing its
aesthetic intention in an exacting way. In a section of Kuhns's essay following the completion of his
analysis, he works toward an improved definition of the artwork's intention by offering the concept of
focal effect to summarize the most constant and sustained of the many and variable effects created by
an individual work of art.
Kuhns's attempt to reconsider and rehabilitate notions of intention is weakened because he does not use
the term aesthetic intention to refer to the intentions of a work of art. Instead, in a few potentially
ambiguous passages he refers to the intent of the artwork as artistic intention. Consider the confusion
created in this paragraph about the subject matter of art criticism:
However, we are concerned with the intention of the work in the proper artistic sense of
intention: what the work sustains as a certain kind of experience, its focal effect. The
artistic intention may or may not be what the maker was aiming at. His intention,
psychologically speaking, may have been quite different from what the work effects. But it
is the artistic intention that matters for criticism. It may be that the intention of the work is
what the maker would inevitably effect with his handling of the medium because of social
and cultural factors, but this, too, is extraneous to criticism (Kuhns 1960, 22).
Dictionaries support the reference of artistic to both art and artists, while references of aesthetic are
given to the theory and philosophy of art and beauty, beauty itself, and people's sensitivity to art and
beauty. In our ordinary language, all of an artwork's different effects can be called either aesthetic
effects or artistic effects. The potential for ambiguity and confusion in Kuhns's paragraph demonstrates
that we have no universal, commonly understood habit of language for distinguishing between our
aesthetic impressions of meaning, grace, and quality and our appreciation of the artistic skills,
techniques, and mastery that create them. However, this distinction is critical in art professional
discourse. When we wish to turn our attention strictly to artist's actions, deeds, and efforts, our
references to artist's intent need to be clearly and consistently defined. Careless or confused attribution
of an artwork's focal effects to the artist instead of the work is one of the greatest pitfalls in discussing
artist's intent.
In any discussion of the artist's intent, as conservators we should be clear whether we are talking about
artistic characteristics, the strategy and facility of the artist's work, or aesthetic characteristics, the
meaning and beauty that may emerge from effects created by a work of art. A helpful clarification
comes with an analogy between the artist and a puppeteer: hand motions, pulling of strings, and other
technical tricks of puppetry are more easily distinguished from the evocative nature and drama of the
puppet's dance. If we consistently and specifically use the word artistic to be indicative of artists, and
not of art in general, our use of the word aesthetic will be strengthened in its reference to the effects of
artworks themselves. Failure to make this distinction is the most frequent cause of ambiguous or inexact
references when issues of intent are raised.
5.11 MORAL EFFECT OF THE ARTWORK
Kuhns finds one last sense of intention in art, which does not fit into any of the previous categories or
examples. In this sense, a work of art in all its artistic and aesthetic qualities is subject to evaluation of
what it ought to do or be. It has an intention in that it exhibits moral and intellectual content. The
purpose, meaning, and value of an artwork are judged by the end it achieves and/or the ends for which
it may have been created. In the case of Robert Mapplethorpe's Self-Portrait, 1978 (1978, estate of
Robert Mapplethorpe), the moral intentions of both the artwork and the artist became subjects of
agitated debate.
Conservators confront issues of moral intent when faced with artworks that were altered to improve
their modesty. In past periods of prudery, drapery was added to nudes and carnal scenes were veiled
by the addition of landscape elements or other accouterments. Decisions to retain or remove these
additions may involve assessment of their artistic, aesthetic, and moral intentions and the moral intentions
of conservators themselves (Beck 1993). Surface cleaning and removal of aged coatings may invite
consideration of moral intent when treatment reveals hidden details, modeling or flesh tones suggestive
of licentious meaning. The moral character of portrait subjects and other depicted persons, their piety,
nobility, rationality, and so forth, may also become the subjects of this meaning of intent.
5.12 RESULT OF KUHNS'S ANALYSIS
When it was published, Kuhns's description of the meanings and references of intent was more a
summary than a complete revelation. Although it provided necessary and welcome analysis and
contributed to clarification of the issues, it did not attempt to achieve any final resolution of the debate
between intentionalists and anti-intentionalists. Its importance was in providing reference to the
continuing variety and proliferation of scholarly articles on this subject. Attempts to discredit and discard
the intentional fallacy continued to emphasize its ambiguity (Lyas 1983).
Exhaustive summaries of intentionalist and anti-intentionalist positions, with detailed analyses and
discussions, were published by Juhl (1980) and Margolis (1980). These in-depth studies consolidated
the issues, leaving bare several core questions: What, if any, is the importance of artist's intent? What
can be known with certainty about it? And how do we come to know it? Ambiguity surrounding artist's
intent became recognized not just as a word and reference problem but as a manifestation of uncertainty
about the fundamental nature of a work of art and the artist's role in it. After 35 years of scholarly
attention, questions about artist's intent boiled down to questions about the essential nature of art itself.
6 THE ROLE OF THE ARTIST
Confusion and ambiguity surrounding artist's intent and the intentional fallacy represent a lack of clarity
about the role of the artist in the artwork. If the essential nature of an artwork's existence were better
explained and understood, the role of the artist would not be so vague and debatable. Very few writers
have made broadly constructive contributions to solving the problems presented by this issue.
Artists from the past are enshrined in our cultural memory. We often refer to individual artworks by the
artist's name: Did you see the Picasso? I preferred the Czanne. Somehow we see a personality,
however ambiguous, behind every work of art. Andrew Wyeth's paintings of Helga speak to us about
him and his relationship to her as much as they do about her, the manifest subject. We do not mean to
speak anthropomorphically when we say an artwork expresses tenderness or anger or melancholia. We
might as well call them artist's works to show how closely we identify these types of creations with
their creators. The role of the artist in the artwork emanates more strongly than other factors that
contribute to the essential nature of works of art.
Published discussions of artist's intentions frequently address the nature of creativity and artists'
interaction with media. The bearing of history on the interpretation of artworks is also an occasional
consideration in discussions of artist's intent, but the role of media and the role of historical contexts are
seldom collated with it. This disjunction occurs, in part, because the language we use does not lend itself
to discussing these things together. It seems awkward or obscure to speak of the media's intentions or
the intentions of the social and historical context in a work of art. Even in the light of Kuhns's analysis,
the word intention, as we are sometimes tempted to use it, often fails us.
It is possible, however, to define a meaning and apply the idea of artist's intent to art conservation work
in a way that correlates methodologies in history, science, and connoisseurship. A deep and deliberate
understanding of the role of the artist in the artwork is necessary. In the past two decades, philosophers
working in contemporary hermeneutics provided new explanations and refreshed perspectives on
efforts in this direction.
6.1 AUTONOMY OF THE WORK OF ART: THE PROCESS AND
PHENOMENON OF DISTANCIATION
Paul Ricoeur's philosophy of criticism and the text and Hans-Georg Gadamer's aesthetics elevate an
older proposition that the effects and interpretations arising from a work of art are autonomous,
separate from the artist. Ricoeur claims in The Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation (1981) that
human discourse is transformed when it becomes fixed or objectified in a literary work or a work of art.
When discourse takes the form of a work, it escapes from the here-and-now situation of talking
together face to face. It occurs in an alternative mode and receives a new statusthe status of a text.
Ricoeur calls this transformation distanciation to indicate that texts transcend their native
circumstances, moving beyond them into territories where they are circumscribed by new horizons.
As works of discourse, the artwork and the literary work experience distanciation in four ways. First,
when a piece of art or literature comes out as a work, it meets with readers or beholders and it is
emancipated from the immediate references and shared reality of live communication. Second, works of
fine art and literature become decontextualized in time and space. They can be, and often are, removed
from the places and the social and historical conditions of their creation. Third, decontextualization
allows them to appear in foreign circumstances, where they are subject to new, perhaps unanticipated
perspectives. As a result, they are opened to series of unrestricted readings or beholdings in which new
and different meanings can be found. Fourth and finally, when a work of art leaves its creator's hand,
the actual act of writing or painting or sculpting it becomes eclipsed by its own self-evidence.
Distanciation explains both the phenomenon and the process by which a work of art becomes
autonomous from its creator, the author or artist.
The effects of distanciation suggest that when we perceive the artist in a work of art, it is the artwork
itself that is communicating with us about the artist; the discourse happens between the artwork and the
beholder. The artist's meaning is covered by what the artwork can convey about the circumstance and
disposition of its own creation. For the conservator, the importance of distanciation is the suggestion
that the aesthetic effects of an artwork can function independently from the artist's intent while at the
same time locating the ground of reference for artist's intent in the artwork at hand. The perspective
afforded by the concept of distanciation, where the artwork has a reflexive relationship with the artist's
intent, is an improvement over the anti-intentionalism of the 1950s and 1960s, which would admit only
intentions proved by their effective results. We are free to find the sources of our speculation about the
artist's intent in the artwork and elsewhere without being obligated to endorse their authority over
aesthetic effects.
6.2 THE DESIGNATION OF ARTISTIC INDIVIDUALITY
From a hermeneutical perspective, the apparent agency in a work of art refers not to the artist but to the
artwork's own singular pattern of identity. A work is given a unique configuration which likens it to an
individual and which may be called its style (Ricoeur 1981, 136). An artwork's individuality is what
draws anthropomorphic remarks about emotions, moods, or desires that it seems to possess and
convey.
Ricoeur observes that artistic style is the active principle of individuation. Employment of artistic style
produces the individual artwork, and in so doing, it retroactively designates the artist. Artist says more
than maker or producer; he or she becomes an artist by producing a work of art. The artist and the
artwork are realized contemporaneously.
The singular configuration of the work and the singular configuration of the artist are strictly
correlative. Man individuates himself in producing individual works. The signature is the
mark of this relation (Ricoeur 1981, 138).
Here is the symbol of the meaning in art that is attributable to the artist. The signature represents the
stamp of artistic style, the accomplishment of individuality in a work of artboth the individuality of the
artist and the individuality of the work itself. The role of the artist is to enfranchise the artwork with an
individual identity. While it is the artwork that bears all meanings to the beholder, it is the artist who
shared with it the process of identification and delivered into it the individual means to speak for itself.
The artist's creative work endows the art materials with its evidence, making them into the venue for
individuality and meaning that we call a work of art.
The correlated individuality of artists and their artworks allows the process of attribution. The artistic
expression of individuality also permits the identification and characterization of otherwise unrecognized
or unknown artists like the Master of Flemalle and other nameless but influential Old Masters, some of
whom are distinguished by one work alone (Davies 1972). In addition, the integrity of this distinguishing
individuality is essential to the concept of art forgery. Any imitation or copy, no matter how perfectly
modeled in the manner of another's hand, never properly bears a borrowed signature or claims an
accurate attribution to the maker of the copied model.
6.3 LIMITATIONS OF APPEAL TO ARTIST'S INTENT
The personality, focus, and individuality of the artist have strong and mutual correlations with what is
expressed in any work of fine art, but for clear consideration of the artist's investment in the artwork,
what is expressed and how it is expressed should not be confused. Matters of affect and iconography
and the moods and meanings of works of art are what is expressed, and they are unwittingly credited to
the artist alone. More accurately, moods and meanings, cues and symbols, the significance of the
composition and the like are ascribed to the artwork as a whole. The artwork in its entirety carries the
correlation between what is expressed and how it is expressed in the material result of the artist's
creative work. Although the autonomy of artworks from their makers is by no means proven or taken
for granted in all quarters, explanations of it are clear and tend to be persuasive. Nevertheless, there is a
strong impulse to assign great weight to artist's ideas and explanations about their work, whether those
ideas are clearly and specifically expressed or only dimly inferred.
In art conservation contexts, when artist's intentions come into consideration the challenge is to judge
their importance and applicability in each case. The ideas of distanciation and autonomy suggest that the
authority of the artist's role is inexorably relative to concurrent roles played by media, by art historical
contexts, and by beholders' apprehensions. Interpretations of emotional, psychological, and intellectual
meanings and purposes in art have only conditional associations with the artist's intent in these respects.
Any apparent communication along these lines happens between the artwork and the beholder.
Conservators can find the significance of artist's intent in the ability of an artwork to communicate about
the individuality of its artist and the circumstances of its own creation. In the work of art conservation,
the least provisional and most secure associations can be made between the artist's intent and his or her
individual skills and techniques, strategy, facility, and mastery of media in producing the work of art.
7 CONCLUSIONS: THE APPLICATION OF ARTIST'S INTENTIONS IN
CONSERVATION WORK
The technologically defined idea of following the artist's intentions did not survive as an authoritative
principle of art conservation; it was scientifically doctrinaire and lacked scope and rigor. Its narrow
definition placed it at odds with conventions of connoisseurship, the mortality of materials, and historical
explanation. Critical debate surrounding the intentional fallacy illustrates significant obstacles to defining
and judging artist's intent, and philosophical explanation of the autonomy of artworks contradicts its
authority over the artwork as a whole. In art conservation, following the artist's intentions remains
attractive only in its reference to evaluating and considering the characteristic individuality of artists
exhibited in their work.
A specific branch of the literature of analytical research in art conservation is devoted to describing and
measuring particular artist's distinctive methods and materials. Measurable, material things such as the
choice and preparation of media, size, and shape and order of brush strokes, even idiosyncrasies of
drawing, modeling, and lineall represent artistic intent in a limited and specific sense. In the narrowed
focus on the distinctive use of materials in a particular work, psychological insights, social and
intellectual purposes, and aesthetic effects are not addressed. The artist's intent, in this individual and
characteristic sense, can be interpreted systematically in the individual stylistic aspects of an artwork,
specifically in technical matters of distinctive artistic style.
Appeals to artists' intentions through this type of characteristic individuality can find a useful role in art
conservation only if the artist's specific investment in the work of art is not equated with broader,
nonindividual connotations of aesthetic style, historical period, genre, and oeuvre or equated with the
remains of the artist's original materials. The artist's investment is expressed in the choice, preparation,
and application of the media, not in the nature of the media itself. This is the explicit reference that
conservators can maintain with professional expertise to save discussions of artists' intentions from
falling into ambiguity. However, its application to conservation work requires more than the scientific
delineation of an artist's style.
The history of debate among conservators, critics, and art historians over artist's intent illustrates the
necessity of an interdisciplinary approach. Historical knowledge and interpretation can inform the
relationship between conservation treatment needs and perspectives on the disposition of the artist's
work. Connoisseurship can suggest the desirability, quality, and extent of treatment necessary for
maintaining the individuality of the artist and the individuality of the work and placing them together in a
meaningful context. Scientific analysis of the physical structure and chemical nature of the artwork can
indicate how the artist's use of materials and their present condition pertain to the selection of
conservation treatment goals and technologies.
The interdisciplinary task of applying artists' intentions to conservation work requires exacting
contributions from historians, critics, and connoisseurs, philosophers of art, scientists, and conservators
alike. Purposeful discussion of the role of the artist in the artwork requires careful language and
deliberate understanding of the essential nature of art. Precise language, commonly understood, is the
first step in this direction. The importance of unambiguous language is paramount. Clear language among
the disciplines will be necessary to describe how the artist's individuality and the individuality of his or
her work can be fulfilled and maintained in conjunction with three other factorsthe historical contexts
in which the artwork is documented and perceived; the traditions of connoisseurship that give it
reference; and the physical and temporal characteristics of the media employed. Artists' intentions can
be investigated and applied to art conservation issues in terms of the distinctive characteristics that
determine the individuality of artists and their work. The productive application of this specific
conception of artist's intent will account for and acknowledge that the artist's investment functions in
concert with these other factors to give an artwork a meaningful and lasting life.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author gratefully acknowledges the editors of this journal and the anonymous reviewers who
provided extensive comments and constructive criticism on several successive drafts of this article. Their
careful readings and thoughtful advice encouraged necessary improvements in its style, content, and
organization.
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
STEVEN W. DYKSTRA received a B.A. in liberal arts from Bucknell University in 1973. He was
privately trained in paintings conservation at the Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Art and
Olin Conservation. In 198485 he was a national Museum Act master apprentice intern in the
conservation department of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 1988 he received an M.A. in
individualized studies from the George Washington University for research in the history, philosophy,
and anthropology of art resulting in a master's paper entitled, Understanding Controversy in Fine Arts
Conservation. He works as a museum specialist/registrar in the Art in Embassies Program, U.S.
Department of State, and maintains a private practice in paintings conservation in Washington, D.C.
Address: 1524 Kingman Place, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005-3709.
Section Index
Copyright 1996 American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works