It can be challenging to parse the meaning of many non-narrative artworks.

Sometimes the title will offer a clue, or the artist will shed some light in an interview.

Is it a comment on the cultural, socio-economic or political context in which it was created?

Or is the act of creating it the artist’s most salient point?

Are multiple interpretations possible?

Artist Jim Sanborn’s massive sculpture Kryptos may inspire various reactions in its viewers, but there’s definitely a single correct interpretation.

But 78-year-old Sanborn isn’t saying what…

He wants someone else to identify it.

Kryptos’ main mystery — more like “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” to quote Winston Churchill — was hand cut into an S‑shaped copper screen using jigsaws.

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