"There's a whole field that tries to tease out artistic intentions and it's called art history. And it's pretty useless." haha, I like this. For someone trying to create something very personal and emotive then I guess it becomes "useless" to look at history in art because it doesn't relate to what you are doing. I would however say that it's very important to look at how people have gone about expressing very personal experiences in history. They may not be about a schizophrenic woman that overflows a bath tub but they could give you a glimpse into how other people express intimate experiences.
Artists and art historians have a good natured beef. Some sculptors look down on painters in a half serious half joking way. Many artists look down on photography. It's just shop talk when we congregate to talk smack about other fields. My first sculpture professor had a joke, "Sculptors deal with art in three dimensions, painters in two dimensions. And art historians deal with art in one dimension."