The adventures of Harshitha and tok

Background checks for artworks In my previous post, I talked about pianist and composer Brahms and the meanings behind his works. One question that popped up in my mind was this “How does knowing more about the social, cultural or historical context of a work of art have an impact on our knowledge of art itself?” I believe that knowing more about an artwork’s background is important in understanding the message that the artist is trying to convey. For example, let’s take the painting “Christina’s world”. At a first glance, the painting looks very simple and non symbolic. It’s just a painting of a girl in a dress lying on a grass field, starring at a house. But if you look up the background of the image, we learn that the girl is the painter Andrew Wyeth’s neighbour, Anna Christina Olson. Olson developed a muscle degenerative disorder that left her unable to walk. Due to her refusal to use a wheelchair, Olson usually dragged herself everywhere she went and longed to walk. Here

How do we ascribe meaning to a particular work of art? Art is all about interpretation, a TOK concept. It’s a sort of communication between the artist and the audience where the artist shares a message, often cryptic, and the audience analyses it to find the meaning hidden in it. This question is quite a paradox, artists initially do ascribe some sort of a meaning into the work of art but so does the audience. When open to interpretation, the audience are free to come up with their own versions of the what the art means. Let’s talk about the pianist and composer Brahms. Brahms and his compositions are often viewed as a symbol of “unrequited love”. But why? Anyone that’s listening to Brahms, unknown of the story attached to it would think his songs are sad but pleasing to listen to. They can come up with theories for what happened, but only those that know the story behind it would understand the meaning. Brahms was in love with his best friend’s wife, he didn’t act on it directly b