The cat: do you think, from its description, that it really understood the artist’s intent? Did the cat really know what made a painting beautiful and how the mirror enhanced, in the artist’s view, the beauty? Or was the cat only repeating what it had heard and trying to bluster in order to make it seem like it was in the know?

Are there students like the cat in a high school class?

Then there’s the reader’s interpretation vs. the author’s intent. Each animal viewing the mirror is like the reader who reads the words the author writes and sees in them what the reader wants to see, a reflection of the reader’s own biases. But here we see there really was a painting they didn’t even see- the author’s intent. Each animal was so closely looking at elements that they missed what they would otherwise have seen- what the artist actually was doing with the piece.

Some say that art can only be interpreted by how each audience member perceives it. Think about what Twain said about your ears still being there even if you, from your perspective, don’t see them. Does Twain agree that the only measure of a piece of art is the viewer’s reaction to it?