A work of art can be an answer to a question its viewer never learns.

Work often begins as an answer to a private question, and the question does not travel with it. The viewer receives a shape without knowing what problem it was solving, which means their experience is genuinely their own rather than an incomplete version of the maker’s. Nothing has been lost; something different has been made.

This frees you in both directions. When you make something, you do not owe an explanation of the question, and explaining it may narrow what the thing can be. When you encounter something and feel you are missing the point, consider that the point may have been the maker’s business. What it does to you is the part that is yours.