# Meanings, and Who Decides Them

Painting I · Analysis, Project and Presentation · https://tryals.app/learn/painting-i/meanings-and-who-decides-them

## Where Meaning Is Actually Produced

Meaning arises between a maker, an object, a viewer, and an institution. The twentieth century debated where authority lies:

| Position | Claim | Where it goes wrong alone |
|---|---|---|
| Wimsatt and Beardsley, **1946** | Author intention cannot judge a work | Ignores evidence that is present |
| Duchamp, Houston, **1957** | The spectator completes the work | Strips the artist of responsibility |
| Barthes, **1967** | The reader is born when the Author dies | Licences any arbitrary reading |
| Foucault, **1969** | "Author" is a framing function | Avoids answering the core problem |
| Eco, **1990** | Interpretation has clear limits | Hardens into searching for one reading |

Duchamp offers the clearest view for the studio. He defines an "art coefficient" as the gap between unexpressed intention and unintended expression. The artist cannot control that second term.

### Devices That Fix Meaning Early

Several elements frame an artwork before a viewer even inspects it:

- **The title.** Magritte's pipe in **1929** depends on the written text.
- **The wall label.** Dates and mediums route the viewer's interpretation.
- **The catalogue text.** This third-party account is often the only statement of intent.
- **Where it hangs.** Surrounding works create an active dialogue.

### Practical Consequences

You cannot dictate what your work means. You merely control what is **available** to be read. Viewers will always find unintended ideas.

> **Common pitfall:** responding to an unexpected critique with "that is not what I meant". The reading came from something real in the work. Find the trigger and choose whether to alter it.

## Practice questions

9 of this lesson's 15 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. A student's abstract canvas is read by three visitors as a landscape, which she did not intend. Why is "that is not what I meant" an unsatisfactory response, even if it is true?

A. Viewers' readings override intent, permanently making the piece a landscape anyway
B. Abstract art forbids representation, so the artist must state such views are invalid
C. The work prompted the reading, so the artist must identify the cause and decide
D. Artists lack privileged insight into intent, making verbal explanations inaccurate

**Answer:** C. The work prompted the reading, so the artist must identify the cause and decide

**Why:** Three people converging means something in the picture is doing it — a horizon-like division, a warm-over-cool arrangement — and the statement of intention does not remove it. Locating the cause turns the situation into a decision. The artist does know her intentions; they simply are not the only thing at work.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/meanings-and-who-decides-them/a-students-abstract-canvas-is-read-by-three-visitors-as-a-landscape

### 2. Barthes's "death of the author" means that a work can be made to mean anything a reader chooses.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False.** Removing the author's authority does not remove the object's. Eco's point in 1990 is that a work can rule readings out even when it cannot fix a single one, so the field of legitimate readings is bounded, wide, and bounded. Barthes was displacing an authority, not abolishing constraint.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/meanings-and-who-decides-them/barthess-death-of-the-author-means-that-a-work-can-be-made-to-mean

### 3. Complete the account of interpretation.

**Answer:** Wimsatt and Beardsley named the intentional fallacy in **1946**. Barthes wrote that the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the **author**, in 1967. Duchamp called the gap between the intended and the expressed the art **coefficient**. Magritte's La trahison des images, of 1929, works entirely through the **sentence** painted inside it.

**Why:** The last blank is the cheapest demonstration in the subject. Remove the words and the painting is an illustration of a pipe; add them and it is a claim about representation itself. Nothing in the paint changed, which is exactly the point being made.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/meanings-and-who-decides-them/complete-the-account-of-interpretation

### 4. Duchamp identifies the 'art coefficient' as the gap between unexpressed intention and unintended expression. What follows from this distinction for a practitioner facing an unexpected critique?

A. They ought to dismiss the feedback as an invalid misreading
B. They must rewrite their intended statement to match the critique
C. They should locate the material triggers prompting that reading
D. They need to accept that the viewer alone determines all value

**Answer:** C. They should locate the material triggers prompting that reading

**Why:** Dismissing unexpected readings ignores how the work functions, while yielding entirely to the audience strips the maker of agency. Identifying the trigger lets the artist decide whether to keep or alter it.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/meanings-and-who-decides-them/duchamp-identifies-the-art-coefficient-as-the-gap-between

### 5. Which of these are fair statements of Duchamp's position in the 1957 Houston lecture?

A. The artist's stated intention determines the work's value
B. The spectator completes the work by interpreting it
C. The art coefficient relates what was intended but unexpressed to what was expressed but unintended
D. The artist has no access to the second of those terms

**Answer:** B. The spectator completes the work by interpreting it; C. The art coefficient relates what was intended but unexpressed to what was expressed but unintended; D. The artist has no access to the second of those terms

**Why:** The fourth is the view the lecture displaces. If intention settled value there would be no coefficient at all, since the two terms would coincide. Duchamp's claim is that they never do, and that the difference is where the interesting part of the work happens.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/meanings-and-who-decides-them/which-of-these-are-fair-statements-of-duchamps-position-in-the-1957

### 6. Wimsatt and Beardsley published on the intentional fallacy in 1946 and Barthes published The Death of the Author in 1967. How many years separate them?

**Answer:** 21

**Why:** **21 years.** The two arguments arrive from opposite directions and land near each other: an American formalist case about evidence in criticism, and a French structuralist case about where a text comes from. Both remove the author as the guarantor, and neither says the work means nothing.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/meanings-and-who-decides-them/wimsatt-and-beardsley-published-on-the-intentional-fallacy-in-1946

### 7. Match each figure to the claim they are associated with.

**Answer:**

- Wimsatt and Beardsley → The author's intention is not the standard for judging a work
- Roland Barthes → The reader's birth is bought at the cost of the author's death
- Michel Foucault → The author is a function that organises discourse rather than a person
- Umberto Eco → A text can rule readings out even where it cannot fix one

**Why:** Eco is the brake, and he is the one a student project needs. Without limits the removal of the author leaves nothing to argue about; with them, a reading can still be shown to be unsupported by the work, which is what makes a crit a discussion rather than a series of unfalsifiable reports.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/meanings-and-who-decides-them/match-each-figure-to-the-claim-they-are-associated-with

### 8. Arrange the stages by which a work's meaning gets fixed in practice, in the order a viewer meets them.

**Answer:**

1. The context the work is encountered in, before anything is looked at
2. The title and the wall label
3. The work itself, looked at
4. What the viewer already knows and brings to it
5. The account given afterwards in a text or a conversation

**Why:** The ordering is uncomfortable because the painting is third. By the time a viewer looks, the room and the label have already narrowed the field, which is why artists who ignore titles and installation are handing away two of the five stages to whoever installs the show.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/meanings-and-who-decides-them/arrange-the-stages-by-which-a-works-meaning-gets-fixed-in-practice

### 9. Duchamp argued that the spectator completes the work, and called the gap between what was intended and what was expressed the art coefficient.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** **True**, and it is a description rather than a complaint. The artist supplies one term and cannot see the other, so the work is finished by people who were not in the studio. That is the condition of showing anything at all rather than a defect to be engineered away.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/painting-i/meanings-and-who-decides-them/duchamp-argued-that-the-spectator-completes-the-work-and-called-the