The Importance of Audience

It is always important, when viewing a work, to understand that when it was created it was made to satisfy a particular audience, and was meant to serve a particular purpose. Whether or not you like the painting, or what you personally take away from the painting, is irrelevant if you want to learn more about its historical context. To know and to understand a work for its intended and original meanings, is to appreciate it on a whole new level. I brought up Krieghoff last week, so I'll use him as example here.

Cornelius Krieghoff, The Toll Gate
Oil on Canvas, 1859

A number of Krieghoff's works were strictly intended for an English audience. The lucky Englishman living in Canada could purchase a piece, such as the one shown here, hang it in his home, and along with his family and friends laugh at the hilariously immoral hi-jinx of the backwards and uncivilised French habitant. (In the image we see some habitants breaking through a toll gate; obviously not stopping to pay.) The English family need not bother with the fact that the image is imaginary, for it plays right into how they wish to perceive their French neighbours: bumbling simpletons. Today, knowing this turns the seemingly whimsical aspects of the piece into something a little more sinister. It's no longer a work depicting the everyday life of the friendly and mischievous habitant, it's a work depicting the supposed superiority of one section or class of the community over another.