Sometimes the curtains are blue because the artist likes blue.
Sometimes the curtains are blue because the artist’s childhood bedroom had blue curtains and they subconsciously remind the artist of some aspect of their youth, but they’ve no idea that’s why they wanted to draw blue curtains as they were replaced with blinds when they were pretty young, and they’ve forgotten about having had blue curtains, so if asked, would say they just liked blue.
And sometimes the curtains are blue because the artist wanted a blue background for space curtains, but didn’t have enough time to add the stars, planets, spaceships and aliens.
For instance, in the first example the artist added a skull because it looked rad. But why did it look rad? What influences did the artist have that made skulls rad to them and not scary or beautiful or holy?
Also it doesn’t really matter what the author thinks as long as you can support an interpretation with some evidence. Richard Adams, for example, stated that Watership Down has no meaning and was just some bunny stories for his kids.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author?useskin=vector
So he just wanted to traumatize his kids - for fun!
…but I think that’s a good point. Once the work is out of the artists hands it lives a life of it’s own. It’s a pet peeve of mine when people start bickering and bitching “well no the song/book/movie means this and not that, dumbass, we have the artist on record saying so” like it means anything. I mean sure, it means something, but in the context of personal interpretation it’s pretty much meaningless unless it matters to the interpreter. There are so many layers to it and interpretations and how we experience any kind of works is subjective.
I got in this fight with a friend who had a painting created by another friend. It was skull, lighter, knife.
He asked me what it meant, and I don’t remember what I said… But he jumped up with this victorious expression and went “No! It means nothing, it’s just skull, lighter, knife. Other friend painted it, and”. I got into some death of the artist philosophy and he started to get pissed the more I insisted it doesn’t matter what the artist though, it’s what you get out of it. The artist had a snug smile behind the other guy
I got terrible grades in the essay portion of every AP lit test because my takes were different than the consensus. I just remember one of them where I tried to defend my take… But what I took out meant nothing to the author, but he insisted the critics were definitely way off
Here’s the thing - no one does anything for one reason, or even zero reasons. Artists usually don’t have a hidden message beyond the story structure - all creation is a reflection of the creator. There’s no arbitrary or random - humans aren’t capable of that.
It’s like looking at someone’s bedroom… There’s no version of a bedroom that says nothing about the occupant
Art class was basically just me imaging what pretentious shit my teacher wanted to hear the most.
The fun part is that sometimes it is on purpose and sometimes it isn’t and I like seeing how people interpret both and what they get out of a work intentionally or not.
Exactly, tons of things have been born from, as Bob Ross would say, “happy little accidents”. I always highly encourage everyone to learn to, at least sometimes, embrace the mistakes and accidents that happen. Random accidents and chance are great spearheads for innovation and inspiration and can make something unique.
A review for a story I wrote involved the reader assuming I was making references to popular media that I didn’t intend at all and some were inspired by something else entirely.
I think this type of interpretation often indicates the state of mind of the audience member rather than the artist. It’s perfectly fine, but it might be more accurate to say, “when I see the artist’s blue curtains, it makes me think of…”
One time in kindergarten I colored the sky green because I’d lost my blue crayon.
I’m pretty sure the Hopper story is fake though
I assume everything I read here is fake, still funny though.
No way
[Actual artist, wanting to seem cool for a change] Yes. Totally painted that as a statement about materialism. Yes. That’s what’s up.
Reminds me of a story about Jackson Pollock, don’t know if it really happened though or is just a joke.
At a Jackson Pollock exhibition, there was a group of art connoisseurs discussing one of his paintings where it was all black and gray except for one little streak of red. They were going back and forth saying what they all thought he meant by it. Was it the futility of man staring into the void, was it that even in darkness there is always hope, etcetera.
But then Jackson Pollock showed up and some one asked him and he told them, “Oh that? That happened when I was painting that one over there”
It’s kind of crazy to think that there’s a case to be made that Jackson Pollock is only as well known an artist as he is because he and other abstract expressionist artists were artificially promoted by the CIA worldwide to attempt to counteract the growth of Soviet realism and demonstrate the freedom of expression in the US.
“See? Even the guy who gets splatters of paint from one incomprehensible ‘art’ piece onto another can be successful in America!”
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It was also emphasizing that art like that couldn’t have been successful in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, which probably were true given the nationalized focus on cultivating culture (thanks a lot, Plato…).
I used to work for a company doing advanced screenings of movies. Usually someone who worked on the movie would be there for an interview after it finished screening. The audience questions are usually terrible. I’ll never forget the time Nash Edgerton was there to talk about The Square.
The movie’s plot hinged on one character missing a phone call. Someone in the audience (obvious film student/nerd) asked him if missing the call was “a social commentary on our relationship with technology.”
Nash says, “I don’t know man. Sometimes I just miss phone calls.”
This reminds me of probably my favorite digital art that I made when testing the art program that I now use all the time. It was my oc giger aiming his gun in some mountain range during a thunderstorm and it looks fricken sick to bad I forgot to draw his thumb so now his gun is just floating in his hand because I was forced on figuring what I can do with all the new brushes I had access to and my god I hate how the it all looks cool so long as you don’t focus on the amputated thumb
Why not just add the thumb?
Just change his backstory so he lost his thumb in a rogue shooting accident.
I thought it was because the painting doesn’t show the whole diner? It cuts off on the right side, but it (the exit) would have to be over there (if it were a real place). Does a painting have to show every angle of a thing being painted?
The quote about the reporter appears to be fabricated, which is no great surprise.
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All cigars are dicks, no exceptions.
