sherri irvin -the artist’s sanction in contemporary art

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63:4 Fall 2005

SHERRI IRVIN

The Artists Sanction in Contemporary Art

Contemporary artworks raise a variety of onto-logical, epistemological, and interpretativequestions that have not yet been adequatelydealt with in aesthetics. Whereas traditionalvisual artworks have typically had a set of privi-leged and (ideally) unchanging properties fixedat a particular moment early in their histories, acontemporary installation artwork may beinstalled differently each time it is taken out ofstorage, or even constituted out of differentobjects at each exhibition site. The resultingvariation in its configuration and visual proper-ties may simply be a function of the changingfeatures of galleries or available materials, or itmay be essential to the works meaning. Orboth: many contemporary works are site specific,essentially responsive to their environments insuch a way that context is incorporated into theworks meaning.

Some contemporary works are made frommaterials that gradually degrade or decay overtime. Sometimes, as with Jana Sterbaks Vani-tas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic(1987), a dress made from raw meat thatdecomposes over the course of the exhibition,such degradation is intended by the artist andseems to contribute to the works meaning. Inother cases, it is the unintended result of experi-mentation with new techniques or substances, inwhich case it often appears regrettable and issubject to conservators attempts to control thedamage.1 The question of whether and how thedegradation is relevant to our interpretation ofthe work can be quite difficult to answer.

In such cases, it may be difficult to get a han-dle on the nature of the artwork. Is the work anessentially decaying entity, such that its decayis an interpretable feature of it? Or is its mate-rial degradation something we should politely

ignore, as we ignore (and, when we have theresources, may attempt to correct) the yellowingof varnish, the flaking of paint, and the breakingoff of noses in traditional Western artworks? Isthe installation work simply a collection ofobjects that may be assembled in whateverway? Well, typically not: usually there are heu-ristics and gestalts that seem to guide acceptableconfigurations so that not just anything goes.But algorithms that will allow us to determinewith exactitude which arrangements are acceptableand which are not are exceedingly rare. Thus thework may seem to have a deeply indeterminatenature. We may wonder, is this indeterminacycentral to the works meaning? Or is it simplypart of the framework, a function of the mediumwithin which the artist is working, and thus tobe ignored in interpretation?

In this paper, I argue for a view that providesreasoned answers to such questions about thenature of the artwork and the considerations rel-evant to interpreting it. Through an extendedexample, I will show that if we wish to be trueto the nature of many contemporary artworks,we must appeal to information related to the art-ists intention at relevant points during theworks production. My view, however, is not anintentionalist one: it does not require that wemake inferences about the artists intentions,whether actual or hypothesized, construed asmental states or as behavioral dispositions.2 Itrequires, instead, that we examine the artistspublicly accessible actions and communica-tions, the contexts in which they were delivered,and the conventions operative in those contextsto determine what the artist has sanctioned. Theartists sanction may serve to fix the boundaries ofhis or her work, to determine whether a particularfeature is relevant to the works interpretation,

316 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

to establish in what genre the work belongs,and, in some cases, to determine whether it, quaartwork, has a particular feature or not.3 Underthe right conditions, the artist has a degree ofspecial authority over these matters: through hisor her actions and communications in particularcontexts, the artist can stipulate certain aspectsof the nature of the work. In short, through hisor her sanction the artist can endow the workwith certain features, just as he or she endows itwith certain features by manipulating the phys-ical materials that will ultimately be displayedto the viewer. As we shall see, however, accept-ing that the artists sanction can fix features ofthe work does not oblige us to accept the ideathat the artist fixes the correct interpretation ofthe work.

I begin, in Section I, by presenting anexample of an artwork involving objects thatare gradually decaying over time. As I show inSection II, only the artists sanction can fixwhich of the objects possible future states arerelevant to our understanding of the artwork. InSection III, I develop the theory of the artistssanction more explicitly and discuss some of itscomplications. In Section IV, I distinguish sanc-tions from intentions and show how my view isrelated to the debate over intentionalism. InSection V, I show that the sanction is relevant toour understanding not only of contemporary butalso of historical art. Finally, in Section VI, Ishow how the sanction constrains our practicesof interpretation.

I will now turn to an extended example of acontemporary artwork by Canadian artist LizMagor to illustrate how sanctions are createdand how they function in our understanding of awork. I will show that we must appeal to the art-ists sanction to determine which physical fea-tures of the objects she created are relevant tointerpretation. This example goes into a level ofdetail that is rarely seen in philosophical discus-sions of artworks, and some of the details mightappear, on the surface, to be trivial. However,my arguments imply that if we take artworksseriously, and wish truly to grasp their natures,we must attend to the specific details that makeeach work what it is. As we shall see, thesedetails sometimes include not only the featuresof the physical objects the artist has presented,but also the features of the surrounding situationin which the artist interacts with curators and

institutions and thereby sanctions features of thework. Only by looking carefully at particular,real works can we develop adequate theories ofcontemporary art and, indeed, of art in general.

I. TIME AND MRS. TIBER

Liz Magors Time and Mrs. Tiber (1976) centrallyinvolves a collection of decaying objects,namely, jars of preserves in the process ofdecomposing. The physical evolution of objectsis an issue of which Magor is highly conscious,and I will argue that this work cannot becorrectly apprehended, and hence adequatelyinterpreted, without consideration of how therelevant objects change over time. Furthermore,I will show that in order to take account of howthe change in Magors objects over time isrelevant to what the artwork is, ontologicallyspeaking, and how it should be interpreted, wemust look to Magors own sanction of thechanges in and future treatment of the object.This sanction, I will argue, is establishedthrough her explicit communications with theinstitution holding control over the work.

Time and Mrs. Tiber includes a number ofjars of preserves positioned on a wooden shelvingunit along with a number of handwritten recipes,which Magor has annotated and pasted onto theshelving unit. Magor found the recipes andabout half the preserves in an abandoned BritishColumbia house that had once belonged to Mrs.Tiber and her husband. Magor supplementedMrs. Tibers preserves by making a few jars ofher own, adding such items as mangoes andzucchini to the mix.

Soon after the National Gallery of Canadaacquired Time and Mrs. Tiber in 1977, some ofthe jars started to develop mold around the out-side. The liquid levels of some jars dropped andthe contents gradually started to resemble brownmush. The metal lids started to develop whisk-ers, or chains of crystals that form as metal oxi-dizes. Finally, a microbiologist discovered thatseven of the jars (all of which had been createdby Magor) had developed botulism, a deadlytoxin that posed a serious health hazard toemployees handling the work. It became clearthat these jars had to be discarded.4

From the beginning, Magor said that thiswork is about decay and about our attempts,

Irvin The Artists Sanction in Contemporary Art 317

always doomed, to preserve ourselves and otherthings against the injurious effects of time. Forthis reason, she saw the deterioration as part ofthe work and opposed aggressive or invasiveconservation efforts. At one point, she report-edly told conservators that when the work wasno longer in exhibitable condition, it should bethrown in the garbage. This sparked a flurryof concern, accompanied by rhetoric about thefirst ever de-accessioning of a contemporarywork of art in the National Gallerys collec-tion.5 As these institutional concerns wereexpressed, and as the deterioration began toaccelerate, Magor acknowledged that she hadexpected the work to last about as long as sheherself expected to last, on the order of fiftyyears rather than five or ten. She visited the gal-lery to inspect the work and agreed to the addi-tion of preservatives to the jars and to efforts toseal them more thoroughly against evaporationand penetration by bacteria. She also agreed tomake replacements for the jars that were dis-carded. She found an expert in canning andspent a day slaving in the kitchen to producenew jars for the work.6

Along the way, an interesting change inattitude about the ultimate disposition of thework occurred. Although Magor had initiallyfelt that the objects making up Time and Mrs.Tiber should be tossed out when no longer inexhibitable condition, in the end she decidedthat transfer to the gallerys Study Collectionwould be more appropriate. This way theobjects would be preserved within the institu-tion, though no longer put on display, andscholars (though not the general public) couldcontinue to view and gain knowledge fromphysical encounter with them. This outcomewas also in line with institutional proceduresand desires about the treatment of a deteriorat-ing work.

My consideration of Time and Mrs. Tiberwill center on changes over time in the workand in Magors attitude toward it. After thework was acquired by the National Gallery ofCanada, Magor twice changed her view abouthow the work was to be treated: once when sheagreed to the aggressive conservation measuresshe had initially rejected, and once when shedecided that the work should be archived in thegallerys Study Collection rather than dis-carded, as she had initially wanted. Magors

actions and communications in these cases, Iwill argue, constitute her sanctioning of certainfeatures of the work, and they must be takeninto account for purposes of interpretation. Withregard to the decision that the work should notbe discarded but transferred, I take the view thatthe artwork was altered in a way that alters, inturn, the range of appropriate interpretations ofthe work.

II. THE ARTISTS SANCTION AND RELEVANT PHYSICAL STATES

Time and Mrs. Tiber violates one of the primarytraditional conventions relating object to art-work, namely, the convention that there is aprivileged physical state of the object accordingto which interpretation should proceed. Appre-hending a traditional painting or sculptureinvolves focusing on a privileged physical stateof the object. With regard to traditional worksin painting and sculpture, a privileged state (ornarrow range of states) is usually easy to iden-tify, though not always to reconstruct: it is justthe state of the object at or shortly after the timeof its completion.7 Our recognition of thisstates importance is demonstrated by our prac-tices of conservation and restoration, which arededicated to maintaining the object in such astate.8 Successful restoration efforts sometimesreveal that we have misapprehended the work,as when Michelangelos Sistine Chapel ceilingwas restored to its unexpectedly gaudy array oforiginal colors. If we are unable to carry outphysical restoration of the object to its privi-leged state, we do imaginative restorationinstead, ignoring damage or color change andtrying to see the work as it was when the artistfirst made it. Change in the object over time issomething to be ignored as we interpret thework, not something to be acknowledged andfigured into our interpretations.

With Magors work Time and Mrs. Tiber, thereis no privileged physical state or time slice of theobject to which we can appeal in our interpreta-tive efforts. The importance of physical change inthe object over time means we must consider aseries or progression of physical states. Rightnow, as the object sits in storage awaiting its turnto be exhibited, some of the relevant states lie inthe future. These future states might even be


thought the most important: the progression ofdecay and degradation of materials will providethe clearest expression of the phenomenon ofmortality explored within the work.

The relevance of future states to our currentapprehension of the work poses some problems.How will we figure out which future states toconsider? We could try predicting the worksfuture. We could study the National Gallery ofCanadas storage and conservation policy, andeven the adequacy of security and storage facil-ities, to infer how the work will be treatedwithin the institution over time. We could runexperiments with jars of preserves to see howthey change over time (though, of course, itmight be difficult to learn anything that will behelpful, since our new jars of preserves wouldnot catch up to Magors jars in age). Both thesemethods will give us more or less usefulinformation about the works probable future.

Predictive efficacy aside, though, these meth-ods are wrongheaded when it comes to estab-lishing future states of the work in a way that isrelevant to interpretation. Prediction is just thewrong project here. There are all sorts of factorsthat may influence the art objects future stateswhile remaining irrelevant to what the artworkis or how it should be viewed. The work mightbe damaged or destroyed in a fire started bysome other strange contemporary art object.The National Gallery might experience finan-cial difficulties and sell part of its collection,resulting in a dramatic change in the works cir-cumstances and hence its physical evolution. Aclumsy custodian might knock one of Magorsjars with a mop handle and break it. Or an over-zealous conservator might commission a newset of preserves with the misguided intention ofrestoring the work to its initial privileged phys-ical state. None of these possibilities, even if wecould predict one with a high degree of likeli-hood, is such as to affect what the work is. Evenafter such an event, the nature of the workwould not be altered (though the object associ-ated with it might come to look different). Wewould not begin interpreting the work differ-ently because of the resulting change, and wewould not replace images of the object in ourhistory books with images from after the trans-formative event.

A related proposal would be to regard theobjects actual future states (rather than the

future states we currently predict for it) as thoserelevant to the work. Under this proposal, thework remains partly epistemically inaccessibleto us until those states come to an end. But thesame problems of irrelevant factors arise foractual future states as for predicted future states:there might actually be a fire that damages theart object next year, but this would not changehow we should interpret the work. Moreover,seeing the objects actual future states as privi-leged would pin the work down too strictly. Ifthe objects actual future states are important, itis also important that we cannot predict themwith any degree of certainty. The relevant futurestates belong not to one possible future but to arange of possible futures. But as we have seen,some of the objects possible futures are not rele-vant: our interpretation of the work would notbe affected by some calamity, like fire damage,any more than would our interpretation of amore traditional work. What we have, then, is atricky situation in which the possible futuresbelonging to a particular range, but not all pos-sible futures, are relevant to the works interpre-tation. How, then, are we to establish whichrange of futures is privileged?

If we want to establish a range of possiblefutures while barring the influence of things likefire damage, one option is appeal to a set ofdefaults: standard conditions that allow us tomake a normative prediction about the develop-ment of the object. We could regard the rangeof probable futures of the object under thesedefault conditions as the range relevant to inter-preting the work. One sort of default conditionwould be institutional practice: for instance,what conservation and restoration policies arecurrently in place, or were in place when thework was created or acquired? What instruc-tions for the objects treatment have been givenby the curators or other authorities? Forexample, if the institutions policy were to takeaggressive measures to halt the deterioration ofobjects, which in this case would mean addingpreservatives and sealing the jars, we wouldinterpret the work according to a normative pre-diction on which it would deteriorate moreslowly than if it had been left in its originalstate. If the policy were, instead, one of nonin-terference, then the work would be interpretedaccording to a normative prediction such that itwould deteriorate rapidly and exhibit marked


signs of decay, including the growth of micro-organisms in the jars and so forth. Our interpre-tations of the two works whose features wouldbe fixed by the application of these differentinstitutional policies would differ in accordancewith the difference in the two works rates ofdeterioration.

But in the case of Time and Mrs. Tiber, toregard the works features as being fixed byinstitutional policies will result in a serious mis-apprehension. Those policies will not settlewhich rate of deterioration is relevant to theinterpretation of the work. In fact, they will getit exactly wrong. An important feature of thework, especially before Magor changed herview, is its violation of institutional defaults.Magors work is in specific tension with theinstitutional will to immortalize (or at leastmummify) the art object, and so simply toapprehend the work in accordance with theinstitutions default practices, without consider-ing the artists sanction in relation to those prac-tices, would be a mistake. It is the artistssanction, not the default policy or practice, thatfixes the features of the work that must beapprehended and then considered for purposesof interpretation.

Just as we cannot look to general institutionalpolicies for the treatment of art objects for gui-dance about how to interpret the work, neithercan we look to specific policies for the treat-ment of the particular object associated with thework. The mere existence of a policy for treat-ment of the object is not sufficient to fix the fea-tures of the work, or to determine the range offutures that are relevant for interpretative pur-poses. It is not only the content of such policiesbut also their sources that matter. If Magor gaveinstructions to discard the object when it couldno longer be exhibited, and a curator (ratherthan Magor herself) later ordered it transferredto the Study Collection instead, thereby puttinginto effect a specific policy for treatment of theobject, this would not alter the range of appro-priate interpretations of the work, though itwould change the objects future. The curatorsdecision would not change the work; it wouldonly jeopardize our access to the work by pre-venting the object from developing in accord-ance with the artists sanction. In much thesame way, poor restoration of a painting mightjeopardize our access to the artwork by obscur-

ing the features the artist sanctioned for itthrough his or her acts of painting. Poor restora-tion changes the object, but it does not changethe artwork, which is the proper target of inter-pretation. The range of appropriate interpreta-tions of the work would not change because theobject has been badly restored, though shoddyrestoration would complicate our task of appre-hending the work, possibly causing us to makemistakes that would diminish the adequacy ofour interpretations. Similarly, we should notchange how we interpret Magors work if thecurator makes a unilateral decision that altershow the object will develop over time, thoughthe curators decision might make apprehendingthe work more difficult.

But the very same change in policy, madewith Magors authorization, did, in fact, changethe work itself.9 Through effective communica-tions with the institution, Magor altered thecourse of conservation and restoration efforts.She rejected the existing defaults and therebysanctioned a new set of privileged states of theobject for interpretative purposes. This changein sanction (unlike a mere change in policymade unilaterally by the curator) constituted achange in the work: initially, the work had thefeature that its associated object would one daydeteriorate and be discarded; now, it has thefeature that the object will be preserved indefi-nitely. We can account for the change in thework only by appealing to the artists sanction.

III. WHAT SANCTIONS ARE AND HOW THEY WORK

What exactly is a sanction, and how is oneestablished? The most common way for an art-ist to sanction particular features of his or herwork is by presenting an object within a particu-lar context: by presenting a painted canvas witha particular set of visible features, for instance,the artist typically sanctions a corresponding setof visible features for the artwork. In addition,some features of the artwork are fixed byactions and communications of the artist otherthan the creation or presentation of the artobject. Through these actions and communica-tions, such as giving the work a title, offering anartist statement to accompany the work, orinstructing curators about conservation or theconditions of display, the artist establishes a


sanction of certain features of the work. Thesefeatures must be ascertained and taken intoaccount during any interpretative endeavor: justas the configuration of colors in a traditionalpainting must be attended to by any viewer whoclaims readiness to interpret the work, the fea-tures the artist has sanctioned through his or heractions and communications must be attendedto by any viewer who aims to interpret a con-temporary work. The artists sanction, evenwhen it is established through means other thanpresenting an object with particular features,plays an ontological role in fixing features ofthe artwork. For this reason, information aboutthe sanction is often critical to the apprehensionof a contemporary work. Looking at formal art-ist statements and other evidence of an artistsactions and communications is not just an activ-ity for fastidious critics and historians; it issomething every viewer may need to do just tobe able to see the work at all.

I should dispel three potential confusionsabout what I am claiming. First, I do not claimthat the artist has stipulative authority regardinghow the work should be interpreted. Indeed,this is a view I explicitly reject. The range of theartists special authority, on my view, isrestricted to certain aspects of the nature of hisor her work; that is, it pertains to features thework possesses. Insofar as interpretation mustbe responsive to the works nature, the artistssanction will place some indirect constraints oninterpretation, just as an artist places constraintson interpretation by applying paint to canvas ina particular arrangement: we are not free toignore the works features as we interpret. Theonly role the artists sanction plays in constrain-ing interpretation, on my view, is an indirectone, mediated by its role in determining certainof the works features. The sanction does notestablish the ultimate meaning of those featuresor of the work itself.

Second, I do not claim that the artist endowshis or her work with features simply by intend-ing that it have those features.10 Neither the art-ists conscious or unconscious thoughts or ideasabout the work, nor the artists behavioral dis-positions, have any effect on the works featuresexcept insofar as they lead him or her to takecertain kinds of action in appropriate contexts.Moreover, the work may, on my view, have fea-tures that expressly conflict with those the artist

intended. The intention that a surface have ametallic texture, or that a human figure appearelderly, does nothing on its own to make it thecase that the work possesses the correspondingfeatures. This is true even where we have unim-peachable evidence of the artists intention, sayin a series of journal entries and records of pri-vate conversations over an extended period oftime. Even if the work itself supplies ampleevidence of the artists unsuccessful attempts tocreate a metallic surface texture, the failure ofthese attempts means that no sanction of ametallic surface texture was established. Thesame is true for the sorts of features that mightbe fixed through negotiations with curators: ifthe artist intends that a work be displayed in acertain way, but never communicates that inten-tion effectively, he or she has failed to sanctionthe relevant display conditions.

Third, I do not claim that the artist can, sim-ply by fiat, cause the work to have (or not tohave) any property whatever. The artists pri-mary sanction-creating activity is to present anobject with certain features within a particularcontext. Normally, the features of the objectwill go a long way in determining the nature ofthe work: if, and only if, a painted canvas has apatch of crimson in the lower right corner, itshaving a patch of crimson in the lower right cor-ner is an interpretable feature of the artwork.11The artist cannot, through private entries in hisor her journal or public declarations, makepatches of crimson appear or disappear. Nor,given the strength of the convention that theappearance of the painted surface matters, canhe or she enjoin us to ignore the patch of crim-son, to regard it as lying outside the boundary ofthe work, as we might so regard an oil stain onthe reverse of the canvas. The possibility of cre-ating sanctions through actions other thanmanipulation of materials does not relieve theartist of responsibility for what he or she hasdone, or failed to do, with those materials.

IV. SANCTIONS AND INTENTIONS

To see the artists presentation of a work withina particular context as an act of sanctioning cer-tain artwork features, as I suggest, is to givesubstance to the popular intuition that artworksare of interest because they are the products of


intentional human activity. The sanction bearsan important relation to the artists intention:the actions and communications that serve toestablish a sanction are, generally speaking,expressions of the artists intention (and are cer-tainly outgrowths of the artists intentionalaction), just as painted marks or other physicalmanipulations within a medium are, generallyspeaking, expressions of the artists intention.The underlying intentions, however, are notwhat brings the sanction into existence: theactions and communications themselves arewhat determine whether a sanction is in place.Thus if an artist intended that the artwork have aparticular feature but failed to act effectively onthat intention either through the presentation ofthe object or through other actions or communi-cations, then a sanction has not been estab-lished, and the artists intention is irrelevant tothe nature of the work.

The artists sanction, as I have suggested, isrelated to, though not identical with, the artistsintention. How, then, does my view relate toother views about the role of the artists inten-tion? The intentionalist holds that the artistsactual intentions fix the correct interpretation ofthe work.12 This view differs greatly from myown, insofar as I am concerned not with thecontent of interpretation but with the worksfeatures, which are the object (not the outcome)of interpretation. But we can imagine a versionof intentionalism that suggests that the artistsactual intentions determine the works features,rather than only the correct interpretation ofthose features. Such a view differs markedlyfrom my own, since, as we have seen, intentionis not sufficient to establish a sanction. Theoperative notion, on my view, is not intentionper se but effective intention, or intention thathas been put into action in a specific way; this isone way of describing the artists sanction.Intentions that have never been acted on haveno effect on the works features, on my view,nor do intentions that have been acted uponineffectively. Though we may have very goodevidence, from within the work or without, thatthe artist intended to depict a cylindrical form,the form will in fact be cylindrical only if theartist has successfully executed his or her inten-tion. The same goes for other sorts of featuresestablished by the artists sanction: the work infact has those features only if the sanction was

successfully established. Our ability to inferwhat the artist meant to do does not make it thecase that the work in fact has the feature he orshe meant to give it, just as our ability to inferthat the high jumper meant to surmount the bardoes not make the jump successful.

In a way, a sanction is like a contract: bothare established by making certain statementsand/or performing certain acts under appropri-ate conditions. When we want to know whethersomeone has entered into a contract, we lookfor behavioral evidence. There is a fact of thematter about whether a contract has beenentered into, and we will look to particularkinds of evidence to determine whether a con-tract exists (though, of course, the availabilityof the relevant evidence may sometimes be lim-ited, in which case our ability to make a deter-mination will be limited as well). The makingof a contract depends on the prevailing commu-nicative conventions: in one context, an utter-ance may not count as entering into a contract,while in another context it will. Suppose that,while standing on a used car lot with your friendand a car salesperson who has just been givingyou a pitch, you say, Okay, Im going to buythat car! If the utterance is spoken directly tothe salesperson, in a legal context where verbalutterances are considered binding, you willthrough your statement have entered into a con-tract to purchase the car at the terms the sales-person has been offering. If the statement ismade in a context in which verbal utterances arenot legally binding, or if the statement is madeto your friend while the salesperson is talkingon the phone, you will not have entered into acontract.

Whether a person has entered into a contractwill ultimately depend on what the person hassaid and done in particular circumstances. Theartists sanction, similarly, is establishedthrough the artists observable actions and com-munications, though it may in some or evenmost cases be implicit, as I described above. Toreiterate, a sanction is an outgrowth of the art-ists intentional activity, but it is not identical tohis or her particular intentions. An intentionnever clearly and effectively conveyed does notgive rise to a sanction, and therefore does notfix the features the artist intended for the work.

Learning about the artists sanction, then,depends not on retrieving the artists intentions


but on studying his or her overt actions andcommunications, including the act of presentingan object within a particular context. It bearssome resemblance to the enterprise of the hypo-thetical intentionalist, who formulates hypothe-ses about the artists intentions on the basis ofthe features of the work and relevant informa-tion about the artist, such as historical contextand biographical details.13 These hypothesizedintentions are then used as the basis for interpre-tation.

Hypothetical intentionalism with respect tointerpretation strikes me as a plausible view: tomake sense of a work, it may well be necessaryto make inferences about the likely intentions ofthe artist (or of an idealized author bearingsome resemblance to the actual artist). In somecases, these may include intentions that havenot been successfully executed. A failed inten-tion may at times be the best explanation for, orthe most reasonable inference from, a set ofobject features. But my view relates to identifi-cation of the features of artworks, rather than tointerpretation of those features. Failed or unexe-cuted intentions do nothing to determine thefeatures of the artwork (though they may affecthow those features should be interpreted). Aswe try to grasp the nature of the work, weshould consider the artists sanction rather thanhis or her intention (hypothesized or actual),and there is no such thing as a failed sanction:sanctions are either successfully established ornonexistent. And again, the point of relying onthe artists sanction, on my view, is not to iden-tify the proper interpretation of the work but toapprehend features of the work, prior to inter-pretation.14 The artists sanction can determinethat the paint flaking from a painting is properlyregarded as a feature of the work that must beconsidered when we interpret, rather than aproblem with the object that must be fixed so itdoes not interfere with our understanding of thework. The artists sanction does not, however,determine how that feature is to be interpreted.

My view, then, differs in two critical waysfrom both varieties of intentionalist view. First,my view is not intentionalist because sanctions,although related to intentions, are not identicalto them. My view does not, therefore, requirelearning about, inferring, or reconstructingmental states or behavioral dispositions, eitheractual or hypothesized. A second important

difference is that my inquiry does not primarilyconcern how we should go about interpretingartworks, whereas this is the central question forthe actual and hypothetical intentionalist. I amconcerned with identifying the proper target ofinterpretation, which is what I mean by artwork.My view has implications for interpretation, ofcourse, insofar as the artwork poses powerfulconstraints on interpretation. Essential features ofthe work cannot, for instance, simply be ignored;the interpreter is constrained to be faithful tosuch features. We will see more about how suchconstraints operate in Section VI.

V. THE SANCTION IN CONTEMPORARY AND HISTORICAL ART

I have suggested that many contemporary art-works have special features that oblige us toconsider the artists sanction if we are to appre-hend them adequately. An obvious question,then, is whether I am advocating the idea thatthere has been a radical break between the art ofthe last several decades and its historical precur-sors. Am I a proponent of a view that suggeststhat what we now call art is a phenomenonutterly separate from what people a century ortwo ago called by that name? The answer is no.

The notion of the artists sanction is applic-able to traditional Western art forms, just as it isto contemporary artworks. The artists primarysanction-creating activity, now as before, is topresent an object within a particular context.When an artist puts forward an object with cer-tain features, he or she is sanctioning the set ofartwork features that, given the context and theconventions connecting the object and the art-work, the suitably informed audience will takethe artwork to have. Simply by giving his frescoa certain appearance, Piero della Francescasanctioned a substantial array of artwork fea-tures, including both the configuration of colorson the surface and the fact that the work depictsJohn performing the baptism of Jesus. This isbecause he was, and knew he was, producinghis painting in a context where certain conven-tions for the representation of John and Jesuswere operative, so that audience membersapplying these conventions would take certainconfigurations of colors and forms as depictingJohn and Jesus. The artists sanction, then,


functions in concert with a set of conventionsthat connect object features to artwork features.

The strength of the conventions with respectto traditional artworks, and the ease with whichwe tend to apply many of them, has obscuredthe degree to which the artists sanction plays arole in making the artwork what it is. But cer-tainly there have been past periods of art historyin which the then-current conventions wereundermined by new artworks. The developmentof perspectival representation during the Ren-aissance may have been a case in which theconventions for depicting three-dimensionalspace in a two-dimensional artwork were revo-lutionized. In some historical cases where con-ventions were overturned or modified, it mayhave been necessary, as it is for many innova-tive works now, to appeal directly to the artistssanction to determine how the works in ques-tion were to be understood. Many such workswere eventually subsumed under a new set ofconventions, so that specific appeal to the art-ists sanction ceased to be necessary, though theartists sanction remains responsible for theapplicability of the new conventions. The samemight be true for many contemporary works:looking to the sanctions of individual artistswith respect to particular works may lead to thedevelopment of new conventions that apply tothose works as a class. But for some contempo-rary works, such as Magors, explicit appeal tothe artists sanction is ineliminable: to establishparticular aspects of the works material form,we must look to the artists sanction withrespect to the specific work. But even in worksfor which such explicit appeal to the artistssanction is not necessary, it remains the casethat the sanction is essential to making the art-work what it is.

The sanction established through the artistscommunications with curators is the extensionof a much more basic sort of sanction: the pres-entation of the art object under a particular setof conditions is itself an action that establishes asanction. The content of such a sanction, whichmay be thought of as an implicit sanction, willdepend on certain facts about the conditions ofpresentation. If an artist presents a painting in avenue where the standard is to hang it flat on thewall so that only one side is visible, then he orshe has implicitly sanctioned this presentationof the object, as long as the artist does nothing

either to indicate that this standard is inappropri-ate or to prevent its application. The sanctioningof this mode of presentation also serves to sanc-tion a connection between the object and thework, namely, that the visible appearance of thereverse of the painting is not a feature of theworkunless, of course, the artist does some-thing to sanction the consideration of this feature.

Many features of both contemporary and his-torical works are determined by the artistsimplicit sanction. The creation of every artworkis informed, if tacitly, by the artists understand-ing that the work will be received in certainways by art audiences and institutions. Giventhe conventions that are operative within thecontext in which he or she creates a work, theartist can often assume that if he or she createsan object with particular features, the audiencewill understand the artwork to have a set of cor-responding characteristics. In such a situation, itis appropriate to say that the artist has sanc-tioned those characteristics through his or heraction of presenting an object with certain fea-tures within that context, given that he or shehas done nothing to undermine the usual con-ventions relating object to work.

VI. SANCTION, EVALUATION, AND INTERPRETATION

It is obvious that many of the perceptuallyavailable features of an artwork place con-straints on interpretation: if an interpretationconflicts with such features in any substantialway, that will be reason for seeking a new inter-pretation that better accommodates the worksappearance. What I have proposed here is anadditional set of constraints: features of thework established by the artists sanction. Theseconstraints, while they make additionaldemands on the adequacy of particular readings,play no special restrictive role: they functionjust the same as relevant features of the objectsappearance do. The fact that the objects ofMagors Time and Mrs. Tiber are subject to par-ticular kinds of treatment and will decay overtime constrains how it is appropriate to interpretthis work, just as the appearance of the paintedsurface of a canvas places constraints on inter-pretation. Recognition of the role the artistssanction plays in fixing certain features of his orher work does not, however, mean that we must


accept the interpretation the artist would haveproposed, or did propose, for that work. Buthow, exactly, do the features sanctioned by theartist affect the process of interpreting thework?

When the artists sanction changes theworks features, as was the case with Time andMrs. Tiber, this changes the range of interpreta-tions that are appropriate to the work. Some-thing the interpreter might wish to consider iswhether the work that existed prior to thechange is better or worse than the work thatexists after the change. This is just as, for anykind of artwork, one appropriate task for aninterpreter (especially one interested in evaluat-ing the work) may be to consider what the workwould have been like if the artist had made dif-ferent choices. Would the work have been a bet-ter one if that blue had been cobalt rather thanultramarine? Would the work have been a betterone if the artist had correctly sealed her jars toavoid the rapid deterioration of the contents andthe development of botulism? To settle suchquestions, we may need to produce hypotheticalinterpretations based on the work that wouldexist if the object had had the features, or theartist had established the sanctions, we areimagining.15 We can then compare our interpre-tations of the actual work with the interpreta-tions that arise from the hypothetical work. Ifthe hypothetical work gives rise to richer ormore interesting interpretations, that might be abasis for concluding that the artist should havemade a work somewhat different from the onehe or she in fact produced.

The process of interpreting and evaluatingthe work in light of the features sanctioned bythe artist may be illustrated by Time and Mrs.Tiber, a case in which the artists decision aboutthe objects eventual disposition clearlychanged the work. As discussed above, the dis-integration of the physical objects presented is aprominent feature of the work, and this featuremust be accounted for within a fully specifiedinterpretation. It is likely, then, that any ade-quate reading of the work must identify decayas one of its central themes. It is interesting toconsider Magors decisions about the work inlight of such a reading. Her initial view was thatthe work should be allowed to decay at its ownnatural pace, with minimal intervention by con-servators: no addition of preservatives, reseal-

ing of the jars, and so forth. An adjunct to thisattitude was that the work would eventuallydie, at which point it should leave the realmof art (signified by the museum itself) just ashumans leave the realm of life. Later, though,she accepted much more drastic intervention:the destruction and replacement of several ofthe original jars and the addition of preserva-tives and sealant to the remaining jars. Finally,she accepted the idea of archiving rather thanthrowing away the objects once their publicexhibition days are over.

The significance of this final change can bebrought out by examining the task of interpreta-tion before and after the change. Consider aninterpretation of the work as dealing with decayand mortality, which would accord withMagors explicit statements and with theobjects material features. The title suggests aninterpretation closely linking the objects pre-sented to the figure of the deceased Mrs. Tiber:they serve both as a trace of her attempts to pre-serve other living things and as her stand-in,showing the ultimate and necessary failure ofher attempts at self-preservation. Her body hasalready broken down, and her material legacy,though surviving her temporarily, is fadingbefore our eyes. Thus far, the interpretation isconsistent with the work both before and afterMagors change in view.

But now lets finish the story. First, we willconsider the work under the initial sanction,such that it was to be permitted to decay andthen thrown out, contrary to established insti-tutional practices. Under this scenario, wemight say allowing the work to die is agraceful way to bring its development tocompletion, suggesting understanding andacceptance of the life cycles inevitable end.An alternate interpretation, focusing on theworks violation of established conservationpractices, might see an obstinate, fatalisticviewpoint, like that of a religious sect thatrefuses established medical procedures andthus suffers avoidable illness and death. Thework might even be seen as hopeless, implyingthat since we are all to die anyway, efforts toslow the process are futile.

On the sanction subsequently established,under which aggressive conservation measuresare to be undertaken and the object is to beretained indefinitely for study, we must read


the work differently. We might say, based onthis new sanction, that the work underminesthe message it purports to deliver, showinginstead that both artist and institution are indenial about their ultimate relationships totime. Or we might read a clever irony, inwhich the work itself becomes something likea jar of preserves. On this view, Magor hasenlisted the unwitting museum in a projectmuch like Mrs. Tibersthat of ensuring herlegacy by preserving her material remains.Since Magors material remains coincide withMrs. Tibers, she has thereby secured Mrs.Tibers legacy as well.

Clearly, a wide range of interpretations isavailable to us both before and after thechange in Magors attitude.16 The features ofthe work fixed by her sanction do not force aparticular reading or evaluative stance. Theydo, however, make certain demands on thecontent of the interpretation, constraining itjust as any other feature would. Readings thatignore or conflict with such substantial fea-tures of the work, while perhaps interesting,are not genuinely readings of the work. Ifbeing true to the work is something that mat-ters to us, we are bound to take the artistssanction into consideration.

The artists sanction, as I have been sug-gesting, is an outgrowth of the artists inten-tional activity, though not equivalent to his orher intention, just as the configuration ofcolors on a painted canvas is an outgrowthof the artists intentional activity. Like thecolors of a painting, and unlike mere intention,the sanction is publicly accessible because ithas been established through particular actionsand communications by the artist. Althoughthe artists sanction plays a crucial role in fix-ing certain features of the work, the artistsintention, effectively expressed or not, doesnot fix the proper interpretation of the work.My view, then, can account for the fact thatthe artist sometimes has special authority indetermining the nature of the work, withoutincurring the liabilities of the view that theartists intention determines the correct inter-pretation. Artists make works, and makingworks, especially these days, means more thancreating objects and titling those objects. Butit is still up to us to figure out how thoseworks are to be interpreted.17

SHERRI IRVINDepartment of PhilosophyUniversity of OklahomaNorman, OK 730192006

INTERNET: [email protected]

1. For example, a set of murals by Mark Rothko wereremoved from their setting at Harvard University because offading that Rothko did not intend. See Marjorie B. Cohnet al., Mark Rothkos Harvard Murals (Harvard UniversityArt Museums, 1988), and John T. Bethell, DamagedGoods, Harvard Magazine, JulyAugust (1988): 2431.

2. My views relationship to actual and hypotheticalintentionalism is discussed in Section IV.

3. Kendall Walton and Jerrold Levinson, among others,hold that the artists intention about in which category awork belongs is relevant to how it must be considered. SeeKendall Walton, Categories of Art, Philosophical Review79 (1970): 334367, and Jerrold Levinson, Intention andInterpretation in Literature, in The Pleasures of Aesthetics(Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 175213. I suggestthat we need consult only the artists sanction, and not his orher intention, for this purpose.

4. Marion Barclay and Richard Gagnier, Is Time Upfor Time and Mrs. Tiber? Journal of the InternationalInstitute for ConservationCanadian Group 13 (1988):37.

5. From a 1986 memo by conservator Marion Barclay.6. Factual information about the work and its history is

taken from memos and conservation reports found in theNational Gallery of Canadas curatorial file on Time andMrs. Tiber. The expression slaving in the kitchen is takenfrom correspondence in which Magor describes the processof producing new jars.

7. There are notable exceptions, including the develop-ment of patina, in which the privileged state takes longer todevelop and may be somewhat more difficult to identify.Even in such cases, though, it is clearly true that there is aprivileged state or range of states on which interpretationmust focus.

8. For discussion, see Anthony Savile, The Rationaleof Restoration, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism51 (1993): 463474. Richard Wollheim suggests thatasked about the colour of Bacchus cloak in Titians Bac-chus and Ariadne we should answer Crimson, and thiswould be the correct answer to give alike when the paintingwas freshly painted, when discoloured varnish and dirt hadturned the relevant part of the canvas brown, and now that ithas been cleaned. See A Note on the Physical ObjectHypothesis, in Art and Its Objects, 2nd ed. (CambridgeUniversity Press, 1980), p. 182.

9. One might wonder whether we are dealing with asingle work whose features have been altered, or with twodistinct works, one of which ceased to exist and the other ofwhich came into being upon Magors change in view. Butvery little hangs on this: the crucial point is that the changealters the works nature, and the range of interpretations thatare appropriate to it is correspondingly altered.

10. The relationship between sanctions and intentions isdiscussed further in Section IV.


11. The artists sanction might, however, serve to deter-mine the correct orientation of the work, and thus which isthe lower right-hand corner. For discussion of issues relatedto orientation, see John Dilworth, Pictorial OrientationMatters, The British Journal of Aesthetics 43 (2003):3956.

12. Well-known examples include E. D. Hirsch, Jr., andSteven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels. See HirschsValidity in Interpretation (Yale University Press, 1967) andThe Aims of Interpretation (The University of ChicagoPress, 1976), as well as Knapp and Benn Michaelss TheImpossibility of Intentionless Meaning in Intention andInterpretation, ed. Gary Iseminger (Temple UniversityPress 1992), pp. 5164. For a recent defense of Hirschsearly, strongly intentionalist view, see William Irwin, Inten-tionalist Interpretation: A Philosophical Explanation andDefense (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999). Intention-alists are sometimes referred to as actual intentionalists,since they are concerned with the artists actual intentions.Such views are to be contrasted with hypothetical intention-alism, discussed below.

13. See especially Levinson, Intention and Interpreta-tion in Literature, as well as Alexander Nehamas, ThePostulated Author: Critical Monism as a Regulative Ideal,Critical Inquiry 8 (1981): 133149 and Writer, Text,Work, Author, in Literature and the Question of Philoso-phy, ed. Anthony J. Cascardi (Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1989), pp. 267291. For useful discussions of therelationship between hypothetical and actual intentionalism,see Nol Carroll, Interpretation and Intention: The DebateBetween Hypothetical and Actual Intentionalism, Metaph-ilosophy 31 (2000): 7595; Gary Iseminger, Actual Inten-tionalism vs. Hypothetical Intentionalism, The Journal of

Aesthetics and Art Criticism 54 (1996): 319326; and Rob-ert Stecker, Apparent, Implied and Postulated Authors,Philosophy and Literature 11 (1987): 258271.

14. For arguments that apprehension and interpretationmust be separated, see my Apprehension and Interpreta-tion (unpublished manuscript) and Interprtation etdescription dune uvre dart, Philosophiques 32 (2005):135148.

15. Not to be confused, of course, with hypotheticalintentionalist interpretations.

16. Critical monists who hold that only one correct inter-pretation of an artwork is ever available would deny thisclaim. The view I defend in this paper is in fact compatiblewith either monism or pluralism. The point here is that myview does not force us into monism: although it establishesthat the artwork has a particular set of features, it does notforce us to adopt a particular interpretation of the work(unless one holds, with the monist, that any particular set ofartwork features forces us to adopt a particular interpreta-tion). For the debate between critical monism and criticalpluralism, see Is There a Single Right Interpretation?, ed.Michael Krausz (The Pennsylvania State University Press,2002).

17. I am grateful to David Davies, William Irwin,Andrew Sneddon, Bob Stecker, Tiffany Sutton, Julie vanCamp, Bas van Fraassen, and, especially, Martin Montminyand Alexander Nehamas for comments on earlier versions.I have profited from the opportunity to present parts ofthis work to audiences at the University of Ottawa, CarletonUniversity, and meetings of the American Society forAesthetics and the Canadian Philosophical Association.Thanks are due to the National Gallery of Canada for accessto curatorial files.

sherri irvin -the artist’s sanction in contemporary art

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