TOK Essay Exemplar — Arts & Value
In this essay, you thoughtfully provide a clear answer with relevant examples to the essay title. You bring to light two real-life situations (RLSs) that support this answer — convincingly demonstrating how the value of African-American art and Pop Art can be affected by cultural context and authoritative opinion. You succinctly describe your RLSs in order to provide space for how ways of knowing (WOKs) connect value in the Arts with external factors. Further still, you illustratively consider counterarguments, swiftly reject them, and consider the wider implications of value in other subjects. Indeed, value is something we will also examine in the Ethics unit. Your writing is sophisticated and is evident of higher-order thinking. You really showed your skills in this essay!
To What Extent is What We Value in the Arts Dependent on External Factors?
Contextual Background
Opens with scope and stakes — why value in the Arts is worth examining.
With the rapid development in Arts, new genres and trends seem to appear every few decades at an accelerating rate. From classicism, romanticism, to modernism and pop art, each genre differs from one another from every aspect, including artistic touch, purpose and many more. As a result, the evaluation of artwork is becoming an issue with increasing complexity and necessity. What individuals value in the Arts is important for and relevant to artists, academics and the average person alike, as everyone is exposed to art and makes value judgments throughout life.
What people value in the Arts is a matter with great subjectivity and is subsequently hard to generate an exact and comprehensive definition. For example, some may think highly of a piece’s artistic skills while the hidden meaning behind the piece may be worth more for others. Generally speaking, however, whether a piece of art is being valued, appreciated, and accepted can be reflected by the public’s attitude, inclusion by exhibitions and the work’s market value during the time, and this essay will assess artworks’ value with these criteria.
The debate on extrinsic factors’ impact on the value of the Arts could be generally divided into two parties. On one side of this debate is the argument that what people value in the Arts is highly, if not solely, dependent on external factors — in other words, the evaluation is a product of shared knowledge in society. On the other side is the argument that dependence on extrinsic factors is limited. That is to say, the evaluation is determined by individuals’ thoughts of or connections with the artwork, and is largely a product of personal knowledge and experience.
Thesis
Clear thesis with two-part preview: cultural context and authoritative opinion.
The essay firmly advocates for the first argument — that what we value in the Arts is dependent on external factors to a large extent — and will prove this viewpoint by offering elaborated explanations and real-life situations on how culture and authority intensely affect the value of the Arts. Firstly, the judgment of what is valuable in the Arts is determined by the cultural context of society. This point will be supported by Faith Ringgold’s career and how minority artists alike were evaluated in the 1960s. The second main point will argue that people’s value judgments on the Arts are highly dependent on experts’ authoritative opinions. This point will be supported by Andy Warhol’s series of work Campbell’s Soup Cans and how it was criticized by specialists and the public. Counterclaims to the above arguments will be considered and rebutted during the discussion of the main points.
Main Point 1
Cultural context shapes value. Faith Ringgold introduced as the supporting RLS.
Example 1
Faith Ringgold and the systematic exclusion of minority artists in the 1960s.
To begin with, cultural context plays an unassailable role in people’s judgment on the value of the Arts, which is evident in the case of artists of minorities in the late 20th century. Faith Ringgold is an African-American female artist mainly active during those decades. Many of her masterpieces, with contrasting colors, meaningful details and stunning composition, tackle the issue of racial violence and inequality that engulfed the United States and won her a number of awards and honors in the Arts.[1] Such works with both significant aesthetic and social value, however, were not valued or even noticed by the public nor the academics when created, during the 1960s. This was not an exceptional case. An innumerable group of artists, many of whom received both financial and critical success years later, were excluded from art exhibitions and criticism at the time. The underlying reason was explicit: they were African-Americans or women.[2]
Evaluation
WOKs (sense perception, reason, intuition) explained as shaped by shared cultural knowledge. Counterargument (intuition is personal) considered and rejected.
People make general value judgments based on ways of knowing (WOK), namely sense perception, reason, and intuition in the specific occasion of determining the value of the Arts. Seemingly based on individuals’ personal knowledge and experience, these WOKs are genuinely affected — or even determined — by shared knowledge to a great extent. This is especially obvious when the culture in the late 20th century linked “African-American” and “women” with inferiority, incompetence and insignificance. Some people may argue that intuition is individuals’ instant cognition, meaning that it is not based on and cannot be affected by the prior knowledge and values of society. However, after these society’s values and beliefs against the minorities were rooted in people’s minds in the long arc of human history, it is hard to believe that this cultural context was not controlling people’s reason and intuition — in the way that the moment they realized an artwork was done by an African-American female, they would deduce that the piece is unprofessional, meaningless and worthless. The cultural context of white male dominance and discrimination against minorities led people to value artists’ identity — namely their race and sex — thus overlook and undervalue the works of art by minorities. Further, the negative racial and sexual stereotype widely present in the culture acted as a reference of coherence check for value judgment on the Arts.
Conclusion — Body 1
Connects the RLS back to the thesis: cultural context is a powerful external determinant of value.
Therefore, even though many of the minority artists who were neglected during the 1960s were rediscovered by museums and exhibitions and highly appreciated by critics years later when racial and sex inequalities gained more awareness and began to alleviate,[2] the fact that they and their works were greatly undervalued is a powerful proof for how cultural context can place a significant influence on what people value in the Arts.
Main Point 2
Authoritative opinion shapes value. Andy Warhol and Campbell’s Soup Cans introduced.
Example 2
Warhol’s work rejected by critics and the public; later revalued as a defining Pop Art work.
In addition, opinions and criticism from authoritative sources place a strong impact on what people value in the Arts. Numerous masterpieces were once rejected by art critics when initially published, including those of Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, and Andy Warhol, all of whom were exceptional innovators of their time. Among them, Andy Warhol would be one of the most criticized. Among his most renowned work, Campbell’s Soup Cans is often regarded by both academics and the public as one of the defining creations of the Pop Art Movement. Yet, at the time, authorities criticized his work as “aesthetic frauds” and condemned him for reducing art to a “hands-off business.” Further, the Museum of Modern Art in New York rejected his donation of his piece.[3] Influenced by professional criticisms, the general public disliked Warhol’s works. A direct demonstration of the sense of distaste would be people selling actual soup cans nearby where the piece exhibited and advertising them as cheaper than Warhol’s.[4]
Evaluation
WOKs explained in context of expert opinion. Counterargument (sense perception is objective) rejected: shared expert knowledge shapes how individuals perceive and reason.
As mentioned before, emotion, sense perception, reason and intuition are the WOKs on which individuals’ value judgments on the Arts are based. Experts’ opinions are shared knowledge in the art world and society as a whole that provide authoritative viewpoints and judgments, in which people tend to put their trust and belief. Despite the viewpoint that sense perception — what people see, touch, smell, taste and hear — is objective and not related to the subjective views of others, the shared knowledge from the experts actually plays an essential part in people’s sense perception and reason. When watching the same piece of art, people may see the same black outlines, bright colors and flat imagery, but they perceive the work differently: while, nowadays, we value Campbell’s Soup Cans and Warhol’s other Pop Art pieces as ironic representations of popular culture and the mundane lives of the time, Warhol’s contemporaries, with the negative opinions of the experts in mind, initially criticized his works as deception and disrespect for the Arts. Opinions of the professionals also provide a reference of correspondence check for individuals’ personal judgments on the Arts. When people are confused by an emergent branch of fine arts like Pop Art, their confusion is soon reinforced by experts’ devaluation of the works.
Conclusion — Body 2
Connects the RLS back to the thesis: how the work was undervalued when first created proves the dependence on authority.
Therefore, despite the fact that the market value of Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans multiplied from $100 to millions soon after the Pop Art Movement developed and gained more popularity,[5] how the work was undervalued when first created sufficiently proves the argument that what we value in the Arts is strongly dependent on authority.
Conclusion
Synthesis: restates thesis and summarizes how WOKs are shaped by culture and authority.
In conclusion, this essay firmly proves that what we value in the Arts is highly dependent on external factors, namely the authoritative opinions and the cultural context. With the real-life situations of the once-devalued artists Faith Ringgold and Andy Warhol and their works, together with the careful consideration and rebuttal of counterclaims that intuition and sense perception are personal ways of knowing unaffected by opinions and culture, the essay affirms its stand with the two main points: that cultural values rooted in people’s minds determine what people intuit and reason, and that experts’ opinions change how people perceive with senses and reason.
Wider Implications
Extends the argument: extrinsic factors shape not only art value but general judgment and decision-making.
Considering wider implications, the relationship between what people value in the Arts and external factors can be applied to general value judgments. While some believe in the subjectivity of value judgments, as proved above, extrinsic factors genuinely play significant but often unnoticed roles. Whether because of people’s tendency to conform with the general public or because values of society are rooted in individuals’ subconscious and affect every decision-making process, it is undeniable that external opinions, values and culture strongly influence — if not determine — almost every judgment and decision of every individual.
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References
[1] “Awards and Honors.” Faith Ringgold, Faith Ringgold, https://www.faithringgold.com/awards-and-honors/.
[2] 2018–2019 Art Resource Guide: An Introduction to the Art of the 1960s. Section IV, United States Academic Decathlon, 2018.
[3] Singh, Tanya. “7 Masterpieces Rejected By Art Critics.” Agora Gallery, 23 Feb. 2017, https://www.agora-gallery.com/advice/blog/2017/02/23/art-criticism-masterpieces/.
[4] Dean, Martin. “The Story of Andy Warhol’s ‘Campbell’s Soup Cans’.” Sotheby’s, 13 Mar. 2018, https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/the-story-of-andy-warhols-campbells-soup-cans.
[5] Butta, Philip. “Andy Warhol’s Iconic Prints Are Worth Millions, But At Least You Can Still Afford A Can Of Campbell’s.” Fast Company, 1 June 2012, https://www.fastcompany.com/1839177/andy-warhols-iconic-prints-are-worth-millions-least-you-can-still-afford-can-campbells.