How come people interpret paintings, drawings, poems,… each differently?

Answer

Hi Annelien,

That’s a very good question, and it’s true what you say: art is ‘read’ by everyone differently. Not only art by the way, also all other forms of signals and perceptions. That’s because everyone has a different sounding board in their head. Everyone finds something else important, experiences something from a different point of view. If that is the case on an individual level, it certainly is so over time, or according to your origin. An example could be: we like open space and rural landscapes, because that space is in danger of being lost because everything is being built over. That is typical for us and of this time, so we are now going to protect and appreciate ‘old’ landscapes. In the Middle Ages everything was open and rural, so people didn’t care about that. In the 19th century, old art in Belgium was valued more as a representation of a glorious past, because we were a young country that had yet to find its identity and was looking for it in the time when, for example, Rubens, an internationally renowned painter, in ‘our ‘ Antwerp walked around!
Now we are perhaps more impressed by how Rubens plays with light and dark in his art, in other words, moves us emotionally. And so our thinking itself is also something that you can study, because our thinking is bound to time and space and has a historical component. There is therefore such a thing as the history of ideas, certainly also when it comes to appreciating and ‘reading’ art and certain forms of culture.
Is this roughly an answer to your question?

Best Regards,

Prof Tys of the Department of Art Sciences and Archeology of the VUB