Interpretace – Kalnická Zdeňka (2020)

Interpreting works of art means searching for and finding their meaning and significance, revealing their connection to our immediate experience, while also contributing to its enrichment, intensification, and deepening. In this sense, interpretation is a creative, or even risky endeavor, for which there is no manual. According to Zdeňka Kalnická, however, it is possible to speak of interpretative strategies, each of which is based on somewhat different ideas about what an artwork is and what function it serves, each emphasizing certain aspects and directing interpretation towards a specific goal. In her book, the author offers interpretations of specific visual, literary, and musical works by well-known artists such as William Shakespeare, Božena Němcová, Karel Čapek, Salvador Dalí, Bedřich Smetana, Claude Debussy, as well as lesser-known figures like Tan Dun, Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, and Roy Nachum. She adopts an approach that can be characterized as a combination of pragmatic, hermeneutic-archetypal, and feminist interpretative strategies. The selected artworks are related to a specific theoretical problem in aesthetics, such as the aesthetic-symbolic aspect of the elements, particularly water; the significance of touch in art; the gender aspect of artistic imagination...