Koh, Dong-Yeon
고동연 高東延

What is Post-Interpretive Criticism?

And why did you become interested in it?

- In Response

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Dong-yeon Koh

​13 Sept 2026

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Your writing on what post-interpretive criticism might be was refreshing. Because your text showed me how you arrived at the idea of post-interpretive criticism, it was, for me, important even though in some ways I had anticipated it. It felt like a kind of manifesto. I was particularly moved by the part where you discussed the gap between artworks and exhibitions that deal with suffering and actual suffering. This has also been one of the important issues for me in my work on the post-memory generation.

 

But, to state my conclusion first, I still believe that we need to continue dealing with violence. Despite the distance from actual suffering, and even when the act may appear hypocritical, or may in fact be hypocritical, irresponsible, or even cruel, I think there are reasons why we must continue. I feel the same way about interpretation. I had agreed with you to some extent, but I have come to think about it differently than I did at first, and perhaps more deeply…

 

My only concern is that my position not diminish the light of your very conscientious, very beautiful, and very idealistic (I can think of no other way to put it) very vivid intention. Of course, I agree one hundred percent that restraint, distance, and forgiveness are attitudes that contemporary critics, or anyone engaged in interpretation, should have as a basic part of their disposition.

 

Dorian, we began talking about post-interpretive criticism from different points of departure. The fact that we each have different ideas about and experiences of art is precisely what makes me particularly curious about where this conversation might lead. Speaking only from my side, what drew me to the term “post-interpretive criticism” was a sense of self-reflection, or, to put it more harshly, atonement. For me, interpreting artworks was, before it was a humanistic activity (whatever its purpose might have been) a source of economic income. I worked very hard throughout my forties, and from the perspective of the international art world and academia, I was particularly diligent in producing a great deal of writing. I am still doing a lot of work, although perhaps not as much as I did before. I use the word “atonement” because I think of myself as one of the people responsible for producing the enormous amount of information that can have harmful effects between an audience’s experience of an artwork and its interpretation. In that sense, I have come to question my own role as someone who has continuously produced explanations, interpretations, and information around artworks. Perhaps this is why the idea of post-interpretive criticism resonates with me, not because I want to abandon interpretation, but because I feel the need to look back at what interpretation has done, including what I myself have contributed to it.

 

I can see the starting point either as the time when I was finishing my master’s degree in the 1990s or 2007, when I returned to Korea after receiving my Ph. D. in 2006. But over the past twenty to thirty years, the writing I have produced within the art world has also been a way of defining my social role and even my position within that world. The information I have produced has taken many forms: from magazine articles that sought, first of all, to understand artists’ intentions and translate them into language, while at times also diagnosing the art world, to the more critical and analytical discourse of catalogue essays introducing artists, and further to monographs and research intended to understand artists and help develop their careers. I also tend to keep notes even on very small matters. When I serve on numerous juries, write comments, or recommend artists for awards, I tend to leave fairly extensive notes. If all of this were to become visible to third parties, I would, within the art world, inevitably become a mediator whose function was one of interpretation. I would have played a role in shaping how particular artists, or more importantly, how artworks themselves, were understood. This is also why I suggested that we give our project the subtitle “Restraint.”

 

So let us examine what happens between the interpretation of an artwork and the experience of encountering it. Of course, our basic starting point is that too much information can actually hinder direct experience. This idea is certainly not unique to us. In linguistics, for example, there have been various hypotheses and theories suggesting that as we begin to learn language, our sensitivity or responsiveness to direct experience decreases. Many philosophers, psychologists, and linguists have already expressed negative views about language. In the end, language has worked by condensing various thoughts and experiences into a few concepts. Naturally, fragments of thought that fall outside a given argument or logic are inevitably discarded. Therefore, many philosophers have argued that language not only condenses experience but, more importantly, interferes with and limits direct experience.

 

From the idea that children, before learning language, are exposed to direct experience in a more genuine and unprejudiced way, to the argument that the very habit of giving a name to an experience ultimately weakens the experience itself, these ideas are all valid, but they have consistently been skeptical of language, that is, the linguistic means of communication that form the basis of interpretation. Since language is their very weapon, however, one might also say that they harbor a kind of fantasy about what language cannot condense or capture. There seems to be a love-hate relationship with words running through these arguments. Perhaps we are no different.

 

From a somewhat different angle, there is also a tradition of privileging the thoughts of the artist as the producer or creator of the artwork. Many events, including artist talks, seek to hear the “original” voice that has been obscured by interpretation. Culturally speaking, this tendency can become particularly pronounced in East Asian cultures, where there has often been an excessive idealization of writers and intellectuals. Combined with the traditionally elevated status of the “critic,” and the critic’s role as an authorized mediator, this can lead to a tendency to privilege the “original” artist’s voice and experience.

 

An even more serious problem arises when interpretation itself carries the power of a particular discourse or institution. Moreover, much of the interpretation and information produced within the art world, as in other fields of the humanities, criticizes the power embedded in interpretation and discourse, while gradually becoming a form of power itself. Such things happen very frequently around the world, and they are by no means uncommon in the East Asian art world, which can sometimes seem particularly eager to import theories from abroad.

 

I wonder, however, whether linguistic interpretation and direct experience can really be separated. The binary distinction is certainly useful, but it is rare for the process of looking at an artwork to unfold in two clearly separate stages, first information and then experience. I also wonder what the nature or quality of that information might be, how each viewer actually receives and processes it, and what kind of relationship exists between information and experience. Information itself operates in many different ways. It can have a positive effect by drawing attention to women artists whose work and lives have been overlooked, and by making us more aware of them. At the same time, however, the media often devote particular attention to the personal information surrounding women, LGBTQ+ artists, or artists of particular racial backgrounds. Social conventions and assumptions continue to operate in these cases. Artists themselves, moreover, sometimes make use of those conventions. There are therefore moments when it becomes difficult to say that interpretation or information is simply negative, and there are also many cases in which the very starting point of an artwork has already been shaped, or even contaminated, by these assumptions.

 

Above all, although there may be considerable variation from one artwork to another, I doubt that we can ever simply look at an artwork in a completely pure or unmediated state. Interpretation and experience are, after all, intimately connected. The moment we look at an artwork, we are already recognizing, connecting, remembering, comparing, and constructing meaning. To put it somewhat radically, interpretation can allow us to see again what we did not initially recognize clearly, and what we come to understand through that process can then return to our experience. In Ricoeur’s terms, we might say that we need “to explain more in order to understand better.” Interpretation, then, creates a distance from experience while also providing a distance necessary for returning to it.

 

Therefore, ideally speaking, the role of interpretation may not be to seal an artwork within a single meaning, but to allow us to see again how we have been seeing, and in doing so to renew the experience itself. At times, even choosing not to look at or pursue certain information can make information function more productively. We should not simply reject an interpretation because it contains prejudice, nor should we remain silent because interpretation itself can be dangerous. For the same reason, it seems equally difficult to assume that information automatically creates distance from experience. Information can intervene in an encounter, but how it does so depend on what the information is, when it appears, how it is presented, and what the viewer does with it.

 

Recently, when I went to the Gwangju Biennale, I took photographs for my students, but I hardly read any of the explanations in the exhibition. Interestingly, I began taking photographs and asking AI about the works instead. At least for me, this became an interesting way of creating some distance from both the works themselves and the particular contexts in which they had been placed within the exhibition.

 

AI sometimes provided incorrect information about an artist or an artwork, and at other times it came up with information that seemed completely out of place. Naturally, this made me curious about information itself. In the case of video works, AI was sometimes able to identify the artist correctly in certain scenes but failed to do so in others. What was interesting, however, was that when I asked it to find similar images, it would sometimes organize and present the type of work—for example, images of buildings or themes appearing in the video. It felt as though I was viewing the exhibition together with a new gaze, one that was completely different from the way I myself would look at the artworks.

 

So, rather than eliminating interpretation or information itself, it seems necessary to practice maintaining a certain distance from interpretation and information. An intimate relationship and experience with an artwork are very precious, but that intimacy itself is never given in exactly the same way each time. We can look at the same work again and feel something different, discover something different, and sometimes fail to feel close to it at all. Therefore, simply placing interpretation on the opposite side of experience and saying that interpretation interferes with experience is not sufficient. Instead, interpretation is also part of the process through which we experience an artwork, and what seems important is how far interpretation can lead that experience. Being conscious of the distance between interpretation and experience, and not rushing to fill that distance, may be the point where the mercy and ethics of criticism that Post-Interpretive Criticism speaks of meet.

 

Let us continue our conversation and discuss more specific issues as we go along. My second question is anonymity. It may seem like a slightly unrelated question, but ultimately, excessive interpretation may not apply only to artworks. I think it may also apply to the person speaking through criticism. Dorian, tell me about anonymity.

 

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Dongyeon Koh