Walk into any gallery opening and you'll hear it eventually: Well, art is subjective, isn't it? The statement lands with the confidence of settled wisdom, shutting down debate before it begins. But this comfortable relativism obscures something crucial about how we actually engage with art.

When someone argues that Picasso's Guernica celebrates war, we don't shrug and say that's just your interpretation. We recognize something has gone wrong. The painting's fragmented bodies, the screaming horse, the stark monochrome—these elements resist that reading with something like force. Our instinct to object isn't mere preference; it's recognition that interpretations bear responsibilities to their objects.

The question isn't whether interpretation involves subjectivity—of course it does—but whether subjectivity means all readings stand equal. Between rigid objectivism and anything-goes relativism lies a more sophisticated understanding: interpretations can be plural without being arbitrary, personal without being merely private. This distinction transforms how we engage with art and with each other's readings of it.

Interpretive claims aren't free-floating opinions; they're arguments that succeed or fail based on evidence, coherence, and contextual understanding. When a critic argues that Caravaggio's religious paintings contain homoerotic undertones, this isn't mere assertion. It's a claim supported by the artist's documented biography, the consistent casting of youthful male models, the sensuous treatment of flesh, and period conventions the paintings deliberately transgress.

Three pillars support robust interpretation. Textual evidence demands close attention to what's actually present in the work—formal elements, symbols, structural patterns, and deliberate absences. Contextual knowledge situates the work within its historical moment, artistic tradition, and the creator's broader practice. Logical coherence requires that interpretive claims fit together without contradiction and account for the work's significant features.

Consider competing readings of Vermeer's domestic scenes. One interpretation emphasizes their celebration of bourgeois virtue and domestic tranquility. Another detects melancholy, confinement, and women trapped in beautiful prisons. Both draw on genuine textual evidence—the luminous interiors versus the barriers of walls and windows, the calm faces versus their turned-away gazes. Neither is arbitrary, but each must account for elements that seem to support its rival.

This evidentiary standard doesn't eliminate disagreement—it structures it productively. Critics can dispute which features deserve emphasis, how context should inform reading, or what coherence requires. But they dispute within shared norms that make genuine dialogue possible. The interpretation that ignores contrary evidence, contradicts known context, or generates incoherence doesn't simply represent another perspective—it fails by standards internal to interpretive practice itself.

Takeaway

Before defending any interpretation, ask: What specific evidence in the work supports this reading? What contextual knowledge grounds it? And does it cohere with other claims I'm making? An interpretation that can't answer these questions isn't just different—it's weak.

Here's where careful thinking matters most: acknowledging that multiple interpretations can be valid is entirely different from claiming all interpretations are equally valuable. Pluralism isn't relativism wearing academic dress. It's the recognition that complex artworks genuinely support multiple illuminating readings without thereby supporting every possible reading.

Arthur Danto's insight proves essential here: artworks are aboutness all the way down—they embody meanings that interpretations articulate rather than impose. A great painting doesn't contain one secret meaning awaiting discovery; it's dense with significance that different interpretive approaches reveal. Feminist readings of Madame Bovary illuminate aspects invisible to formalist analysis. Neither exhausts the novel; both can be genuinely insightful.

The metaphor of illumination captures this precisely. Different lights reveal different features of the same object. Ultraviolet light shows what daylight cannot; neither falsifies the other. Similarly, psychoanalytic, historicist, and formalist readings can each illuminate genuine aspects of a work. But this metaphor has limits—some lights are broken, pointed in wrong directions, or too dim to reveal anything. Not every apparatus illuminates equally.

What distinguishes valid plurality from lazy relativism is accountability to the work. Valid interpretations illuminate; they help us see something we hadn't noticed, understand connections we'd missed, experience dimensions that had remained mute. Invalid interpretations obscure, distort, or substitute the critic's preoccupations for genuine encounter with the art. The difference isn't subjective preference—it's perceptible to anyone willing to return to the work and check.

Takeaway

When someone dismisses a critical disagreement with 'art is subjective,' recognize the move for what it is: an evasion. The more honest response is to compare illuminating power—which reading helps us see and feel more in the actual work before us?

Evaluating competing interpretations requires criteria beyond personal resonance. When readings conflict, four questions help distinguish the more adequate from the less: Comprehensiveness—does the interpretation account for the work's significant features, or does it cherry-pick convenient details while ignoring inconvenient ones? Depth—does it reveal non-obvious connections and meanings, or merely redescribe what's immediately apparent? Coherence—do its claims form a unified picture, or does it require contradictory assumptions? Fruitfulness—does engaging through this interpretation enrich ongoing experience of the work?

These criteria aren't algorithms—applying them requires judgment, and reasonable critics may weigh them differently. But they transform vague disputes of taste into substantive conversations about interpretation. When a reading fails comprehensiveness by ignoring half the painting, or fails fruitfulness by making subsequent viewings duller rather than richer, we have grounds for reasoned critique rather than mere disagreement.

Strengthening your own critical practice means cultivating discomfort with your interpretations. The best critics actively seek evidence that challenges their readings. They ask: What would disprove this interpretation? What am I not seeing because this reading directs my attention elsewhere? This self-interrogation isn't weakness but intellectual honesty—the recognition that even good interpretations are partial illuminations, not final truths.

The goal isn't interpretive certainty but interpretive responsibility. We remain accountable to the work, to relevant contexts, to logical standards, and to other interpreters whose perspectives might reveal our blind spots. This responsibility doesn't guarantee we're right—it ensures we're doing something more rigorous than projecting preferences onto art and calling it criticism.

Takeaway

Test your interpretations by actively seeking their limits. Ask what features you might be ignoring, what contrary evidence exists, and whether your reading makes the work richer or merely confirms what you already believed. Discomfort with your conclusions is often a sign of serious critical engagement.

The space between there's one right answer and anything goes is where genuine criticism lives. Interpretation involves subjectivity without being merely subjective, requires evidence without becoming scientistic, permits plurality without collapsing into relativism.

This matters beyond gallery walls. The habits of mind that make good critics—attention to evidence, awareness of context, tolerance for complexity, humility before difficult objects—are habits that serve understanding wherever we encounter it. Art teaches us to hold multiple perspectives simultaneously while still recognizing that some hold more light than others.

Next time you hear well, that's just your interpretation deployed as conversation-ender, you'll have grounds for a different response: Yes, it is. Here's the evidence. What's yours?