Interpretation and appreciation of contemporary art

The non-canonized contemporary art appears to challenge previous studies on interpretation and appreciation of art. It is widely known that art viewers are required to have some knowledge background or cultural capital in order to decipher works of art. Further, context of art (physical context or discursive text) becomes another important factor as it can signal value and meaning of the works. However, the situation of contemporary art (as it is diversified in forms, content and deviates from other established canons) raises the question whether the previous studies on interpretation and appreciation of art are still applicable in the present context or not. Therefore, this research master thesis proposes a study on the interpretation and appreciation of contemporary art: a comparative study between art history students and law students. It aims to observe the interpretation process of contemporary art viewers and to search for validated factors (knowledge of art, context of art and artworks) that facilitate the viewers to interpret and appreciate artworks. The interview is specifically designed to test the role of prime factors that affect interpretation and appreciation of contemporary art and to observe the interpretation process of contemporary art viewers. In-depth interviews with 18 respondents (9 art history students and 9 law students) from Dutch universities were conducted. The respondents from both groups were asked to view three contemporary artworks under certain conditions and later to interpret and express their view on the work that they saw. These data were analyzed and compared to each other to observe differences and similarities in the interpretation and appreciation of viewers with and without art background. Results reveal that interpretation processes of both group are quite similar to one another. Cultural capital (knowledge background in art) may help viewers with art background to decipher the artworks. However, it is not as significant as everyday life experience, since the latter is applied the most by the respondents from both groups to interpret and appreciate the works. The results also indicate that the presentation context of art may affect interpretations of the respondent if it matches with the respondents’ background.