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One of the reasons why people don't understand art is because of our faulty understanding of subjectivity. Most people equate subjectivity to personal opinion, which it is not. Most people believe that subjectivity means that something has no meaning, that its up to each individual person, which is also untrue. Something without meaning cannot exist; to exist is to be defined, and to be defined is to have meaning, and meaning by definition has limits. To say something is subjective is to simply say that an object is experienced by subjects.
For instance, suppose too people are looking at a couch. The person standing in front of the couch sees there are holes in the cushions, and says that it is a bad couch. The person standing behind the couch sees that the couch is very sturdy, and says that it is a good couch. Both interpretations are valid. But it would be insanity for someone to come along and say that the couch is really a car, which is how most people seem to view subjectivity. Hamlet, for instance, can be interpreted in many ways. It can be seen as a critique on political institutions, on dysfunctional families, on irrationality, on the nature of existence, and all these critiques would be valid. But to say it is a slapstick comedy would be ludicrous and patently false. (The example of Hamlet is a paraphrase from the introduction of Robert Darnton's “The Great Cat Massacre”).
Subjectivity simply means that no individual can see the whole. The meaning of a writers work is too vast, the reality too massive, for anyone or even everyone to be able to see. Interpretation is a communal activity. The artist provides a vision, and it is up to a community to interpret that vision. From our own perspectives, purviews, and knowledge we create new knowledge, each of us providing a piece to a much larger picture. Through our collective interpretations we expand our spheres of reality, existence, and knowledge. Reality is not one narrow thing. It is not something that can easily or even possibly articulated. Interpretation recognizes that fact, but the interpretation still must occur within some logical framework or it becomes bullshit.
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