As an artist or viewer of art, do you think that society analyzes art to death?

Question:

As an artist or viewer of art, do you think that society analyzes art to death?

I'm reading Kafka's The Metamorphosis in a Lit class. Everyone's trying to analyze it. In our book, the story of The Metamorphosis is only about 50 pages, while the critical essays about it are nearly 200 pages. I wonder if maybe Kafka just wanted to write a story about a guy that turns into a giant bug. I like thinking of the deeper meaning and the metaphors and all that jazz... but are we ruining it by trying to figure out what it means? Martha Graham says that if she could tell you want her dances meant, what would the point be of dancing it?

All artists have a message, but sometimes they just want to make things. When making dances, people always ask me what my movement means and what it symbolizes. I start out with an idea, and made movement that fits that and feels right. Then, when I am finished, I step back and looked at what it evloved into.

Just looking for some dialog about this, and as an artist, do you start a work knowing exactly what you want to communicate?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

Later you may read his other work, The Castle.
Read more about Semantics and Pragmatics theories as they relate to works of art.
Basically, there is no fixed meaning Kafka hid somewhere in that text for you to excavate. The meaning depends on your own reading and interpretation, a conversation between the reader and the writer using the scribbles of the text. That is why the actual text consists of fewer pages compared to volumes of analytical texts about it. There are as meanings of metamorphosis as there are readers. Start from this idea and plunge headlong into Reader-Response and Deconstruction theories. Get Roland Barthes, the author is dead kind of stuff.

good luck with Kafka