Learn about art interpretation and understand how it works. Explore the context and process when interpreting art and study artistic interpretation examples.
Art Interpretation | Definition, Process & Examples
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good interpretation in art?
A good, or properly conducted, interpretation in art includes considerations about not just what is apparent on the surface (what can be seen or heard in the artwork) but also about how the artwork was completed and in what context. However, this does not mean that there is always only one correct interpretation of a given piece of art.
Why is interpretation of art important?
The interpretation of art helps the viewer/listener/reader of an artwork go beyond simply experiencing an artwork to being able to assign meaning to it. This meaning can deepen appreciation for the work and even illuminate a new way of looking at it.
What are the steps for interpreting artwork?
In general, the art interpreter will look first at what is included in the work of art (objects, people, places, events) and then at the process by which the artwork was created and the style in which it was made (abstract, realistic, etc.). They will then supplement their observations with an understanding of the context in which the artwork was created (like biographical details about the artist).
What is the interpretation of art called?
The interpretation of art is also sometimes called aesthetic interpretation. Regardless of the term used, this is the process of trying to explain the meaning behind a work of art.
Table of Contents
ShowThe interpretation of art occurs when the elements of an artwork (and how they combine) are analyzed by the viewer. Meaning is attributed to the piece of art through the analysis of these elements. Different viewers of the same artwork can debate this meaning. However, there are certain principles that guide the interpretation of art, and, therefore, there are "properly-done" interpretations of art—though there may not be one "correct" interpretation. Art interpretation is not just a process that applies to visual art forms.
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The 1970s–80s punk rock band Blondie's hit song, "One Way or Another" is an oft-played song with a bouncy, quick-paced beat. However, a deeper look into the context around the song's creation reveals a darker story that throws the lyrics into a completely different light. As Debbie Harry, the lead singer of Blondie tells it: "I was actually stalked by a nutjob so it came out of a not-so-friendly personal event. But I tried to inject a little bit of levity into it to make it more lighthearted. I think in a way that's a normal kind of survival mechanism. You know, just shake it off, say one way or another, and get on with your life. Everyone can relate to that and I think that's the beauty of it."
Interpreting Art vs. Experiencing Art
Anyone can experience art. No training or special knowledge is necessary to listen to a song, look at a sculpture, or read a novel. The reaction a person will have to that artwork—which will involve their personal opinions, emotions, and subjective taste — is not the same as an interpretation of the artwork. As in the example mentioned previously, experiencing a song like "One Way or Another" requires no understanding of the biographical context that Ms. Harry provides. Context is the set of circumstances surrounding an event, statement, or idea that give information by which it can be fully understood. Art interpretation relies on both that context as well as the aesthetic considerations of the art form as a whole to assign meaning to the piece of art.
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There are several schools of thought when it comes to art interpretation, which are bookended by the two ends of a long and complex spectrum: isolationism and contextualism. Isolationists believe that all contextual information related to a particular artwork, or to the artist who produced it, is immaterial to the interpretive process. According to this school of thought, context can actually get in the way of a successful analysis because it distracts from the work itself. Contextualists, on the opposite end of this spectrum, believe that an artwork can only be properly interpreted within its context. Many modern interpreters of art combine both of these considerations together and therefore fall somewhere in the middle.
A piece of visual art, for example, can first be analyzed by identifying what is depicted in the scene: objects, people, and places. What details can be observed? Is there an action taking place in the scene? After making these initial observations, the interpreter can begin to put the work in its larger place amongst other works of art using similar processes of creation and artistic styles. Is it part of a specific and identifiable artistic style or created using a special technique? The answers to these questions often do not have a right or wrong answer, and therefore the interpretation of an artwork as a whole can differ between each person interpreting it.
Context to Interpret Artwork
Contextualists add questions to the above by looking at factors that exist outside the artwork itself. These could include knowledge about other works by the same artist and other works in the same genre or style. Technical details about the artistic medium and its conventions are also considered. Biographical information about the artist themselves and the historical time period in which they worked are researched. Again, this is important for all types of art, not just visual art. Context can help people understand the intention behind why a work was created and assign more accurate meaning to the piece. For example, when examining Black poet Maya Angelou's famous 1978 poem, "Still I Rise," knowing biographical information about Angelou's own life may lead to a different interpretation of the poem than examining it in isolation. Angelou's struggles with racial discrimination and childhood trauma are important contextual clues to interpreting the poem.
Process to Interpret Artwork
Using an artist's process to interpret an artwork falls more on the "isolationist" end of the spectrum of art interpretation. For example, artists like the French painter Georges Seurat used a technique called "pointillism," which involved applying hundreds and hundreds of dots or short strokes of color to create a painting that, from a distance, visually blends into a coherent single image. This technique, created by Seurat and colleague Paul Signac in the mid-1880s, was a rebellion against the Impressionist art movement.
Unlike the subjectivity of the Impressionists, pointillist pieces took a scientific approach to art creation: one that leaned heavily on the work of French chemist Michel Chevreul and his Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours. This science guided the creation of an optical illusion of a single image through hundreds of minute dots. The restraint behind working in this way (in contrast to the spontaneous fluidity of the Impressionists) gives works like Seurat's famous A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte meaning that can only be gleaned from examining the process of how the art was created.
Most often, the art interpreter actually falls somewhere between these two extreme points of contextualism and isolationism and therefore uses elements from both to guide their interpretation of a work of art. Often, the elements blend together seamlessly within the process of analysis. For example, the viewer may start with the more obvious surface elements of an artwork: what is it made from? Is it a 2-D or 3-D piece? Does it have a title? Who is the artist? Starting with these neutral questions can also help diffuse any immediate emotional or subjective reactions on the part of the viewer. Next, the interpreter can move on to aesthetic examinations of the piece: what is the color palette used? Are symbols or motifs used? Finally, research into the context of the piece can begin: was the artist going through a personal struggle when creating the work? What time period was it created during? Asking and answering questions such as these can provide the basis for a properly-done interpretation of the artwork.
Artistic Interpretation Examples
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A perfect example of this combination of contextualist and isolationist points of view is the interpretation of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso's work. Picasso was a well-known pacifist who expressed his feelings over the horrors of war in a number of his paintings: most famously in his 1937 large-scale piece, Guernica. The visual fragmenting of the living beings in paintings like Guernica or the 1951 Massacre in Korea speak to Picasso's belief that the increase in violence and militarization of society has fractured the human soul. Assigning meaning to these pieces is most effectively done by incorporating contextual information. An interpreter of Picasso's work would use what is known regarding Picasso's own political beliefs and the historical events of the time period in which these pieces were created. They would also combine this contextual information with aesthetic analysis of the piece itself. For example, the color palette in Guernica—a monochromatic mix of black, white, and gray—immediately evokes a depressive mood, even without knowing this contextual information.
The interpretation of art is the process of assigning meaning to a work of art. The information about context (the circumstances surrounding the creation of a work of art) that an interpreter of an artwork can gather can help them understand and assign meaning. For all types of art, this context can give important clues to the artist's intention behind creating the piece(s). For example, in many of Picasso's paintings, the fragmenting of the subjects is a response to his own emotions and expressed beliefs surrounding a modern world which he felt to be growing in violence, war, and dehumanization.
In holistic art interpretation, this contextual knowledge is combined with an analysis of process to create a holistic analysis of an artwork. For example, Georges Seurat's pioneering "pointillism" painting technique, wherein only small dots or strokes of paint are used, was a deliberate rebellion against the Impressionists' work. Additionally, any painting utilizing this technique must be interpreted with just as much attention paid to this process-based detail as to any contextual information surrounding the work. Understanding and applying the principles of art interpretation can deepen the viewer's appreciation for a piece of art. Whereas experiencing can be done by just looking at or listening to a piece, interpreting requires the understanding of a work's context and process. A properly-done art interpretation makes the act of experiencing that artwork infinitely richer.
Video Transcript
Experiencing vs. Interpreting
It's fairly likely that you don't listen to a lot of the same music you did four or five years ago. In fact, if you think about it, you might even feel a bit embarrassed by your old music preferences. It's only natural that our tastes change over the years, and this might be simply because you've heard different types of music or other styles have become popular.
But this might also have something to do with the fact that you've realized that some art, whether it's music or sculpture or painting, requires more skill and understanding than others. While there is nothing wrong with liking a book or a song or a painting simply because you happen to enjoy it, bringing the proper knowledge to a work of art can really help you appreciate it in and out of school.
In this lesson, we'll consider the ways that understanding the context and process behind a work is critical for offering a good interpretation of art.
Context
One of the great things about art is that it can respond to and explain the events and experiences of the time in which it is created. In fact, many historians and academics look to art as one of the main forces behind changes in society. However, if you're not familiar with the context of a piece of art, it's fairly easy to miss out on its significance. In fact, understanding the events that were occurring when an artist was working can make us think radically different about a painting, song, sculpture or any piece of art.
You've almost certainly seen a painting by Pablo Picasso before. While you may hate it, love it or simply be confused by it, knowing the historical context behind Picasso's work will have a large influence on how you understand his work. Picasso was generally painting in the early 1900s, a time when war and philosophy were challenging people's basic assumptions about truth and reality. His fractured painting style was an attempt to represent how reality was not as straightforward as we might imagine. Obviously, knowing this sort of information will greatly change how you understand and experience paintings like this:
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And, in addition to understanding one artist or one work of art, knowing the context of one artist can help you better understand and enjoy other sculptors or painters or musicians. For example, you may have heard of Woody Guthrie before. Even if you pause to listen to his lyrics, when you hear his music, you might assume he was an old, conservative and patriotic songwriter. In fact, Guthrie was actually politically radical. In a time when America was growing more powerful and nationalistic, Guthrie was challenging many ideas that were extremely popular throughout the U.S. And it was this quality of his music that helped him have a huge impact on other musicians, like Bob Dylan and John Lennon.
With this in mind, more than simply speaking to or about society, artists inspire and influence other artists, meaning that many musicians, such as Dylan or Lennon, would sound very different if it weren't for others like Guthrie. While knowing this fact may make you like Guthrie's music a little more or make it sound a little more exciting to you, understanding this context can also help you begin to appreciate his and others' work.
And this doesn't go only for the past. Many people fail to correctly interpret art that is being made right now. There are all sorts of films, dances and styles of music that are frequently dismissed because people don't understand the culture it is coming from or what it is responding to. And those in the future who really want to understand the music we listen to today are going to consider the events that were happening in our own lifetimes.
Process
How was it made? Another aspect of art that is easy to overlook is the process behind the piece. One great way to see how tempting it is to overlook process is to look at painting, an art form that often requires extensive time and energy.
Consider this work by Georges Seurat, which is created in a style called 'pointillism':
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Pointillism is the practice of painting using only very small colorful dots in patterns. While a quick glance at this work might reveal that Seurat didn't use traditional brush strokes, the painting might still seem fairly standard. However, this labor-intensive painting took more than two years to complete. While the amount of work is obviously impressive, the process behind the work is more than simply dedication or an attempt to do something new - it was a result of his philosophy of art and color.
Seurat was trying to illustrate how people's experiences are different from how much previous art had treated them. Breaking down brush strokes and including individual dots of bright color allowed him to show how complicated and difficult an individual's experience of the world is. With this in mind, knowing the process an artist is engaged in changes not only your appreciation of a work of art but your understanding of what the work means. In the case of the paintings we looked at, for example, the artist wasn't merely painting interesting images; he was attempting to challenge the viewer to think about this type of scene by using a new process.
Interpretation
So, what does it mean? At this point in the lesson, we've seen it's important to realize that experiencing art as enjoyable or not is totally worthwhile, but a real understanding requires bringing some knowledge to art.
Now that you know that the context and process behind creating a piece of art are key to understanding its meaning, the next step is to put them together to correctly interpret the work. You might try asking yourself the five 'W' questions: who, what, when, where, and why. More often than not, knowing context is merely a matter of looking at the time and place in which an artist worked and considering what was happening at the time.
Once you've considered the context, you can move on to the process, asking 'How was it created?' As we saw before, exploring the process behind a piece can certainly help you appreciate it more, and it can help you understand exactly what it means.
Considering the process and context behind a work is a great place to really understand a work of art. Keep in mind that looking at the details is a great way to make sure you don't overlook potentially important elements of an artist's work. Ultimately, understanding the context and process behind a work of art will not only help you better interpret it but will also help your experience be more enjoyable and fascinating. And, as we saw, understanding one artist will in turn help you understand the work of others.
Lesson Summary
In this lesson, we considered the ways that understanding what's behind a piece of art can help us better experience and interpret it. While there is nothing wrong with experiencing and enjoying a piece simply because it looks, sounds or seems interesting to us, we saw it's easy to miss out on the meaning of art if we don't understand its context. Additionally, we looked at the creative process behind a piece of art and realized that we can also develop appreciation and respect for art by looking at the process behind it. Finally, we considered that combining our understanding of context and process will help us interpret and enjoy a work of art.
Learning Outcomes
After you've completed this lesson, you should be able to:
- Describe the difference in experiencing art versus interpreting it
- Explain how to interpret art by asking questions about context and process
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