Context can Change Everything

I remember the first time I was blindsided by the idea of reconsideration. I was a senior in high school, and my AP English teacher, Mr. Lambert, gave us an exam that required us to react to a piece of art… Mr. Lambert was the best teacher I’d ever had, so when he presented the idea, most of us in the class bought in immediately…The piece of art in question was Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows, which, if I could, I would include here so you could experience a similar exercise… It’s dotted with the presence of crows, obviously; thus the name.

…Anyway, our midterm was this: write five hundred or so words on what feelings this picture provoked. It seemed simple enough.

I dutifully interpreted away and consulted my emotions in order to provide a high-minded essay about something I wasn’t really that invested in. I know you and I don’t know each other, but I’m not someone who has a ton of emotional or intellectual proximity to crows or wheat fields. After we turned in our pages, Mr. Lambert gave us a new assignment. It was the same request as before (write what emotions and feelings the Wheatfield with Crows piece evoked), but he added context that we hadn’t considered the first time around: the reality that this picture was the last thing Van Gogh painted before committing suicide. I remember absorbing this information and being absolutely electrified, for several reasons.

… Similarly, with Wheatfield with Crows, not knowing about its context in Van Gogh’s life made it just a picture to me, no different from The Starry Night or a comic from The Far Side; it was just a collection of line squiggles and artistic flourishes designed to evoke something untethered from real life. But once Mr. Lambert made me aware that this picture was incredibly tethered to real life, how could that context not suddenly be the most important thing about the picture? Instead of seeing just line squiggles and artistic flourishes, you could make the case that this picture was a cry for help, a suicide note, both, or neither. But regardless of where you land, clearly this contextualization demands a reconsideration of the initial assumption.