TOK

I definately hope TOK (theory of knowledge) gets a little more exciting through the course of the year...

It's a wednesday afternoon and all you can think is "I'm half way though the week, thank goodness! I can't wait to get home and sleep!" as you take your seat at your desk faceing the inviting face of your over-friendly TOK teacher.

This is when I was asked a question that made my brain hurt: "What is art?"

Simply I think "art? well, of course I know what art is. I've grown up knowing what art is. It's .... it's.... it's.... wait.... how do you explain that?"

We had an hour and a half of attempting to answer that question. She sent us to the library to find a piece of art in a book and explain why it was considered art.

All of us students did the sensible thing. We found a simple picasso/van gough/ leonardo da vinci and explained that it was the product of someone expressing themselves by creation and imagination.

... The teacher (of course trying to make things difficult) gave us the image I've shown at the top of this post.

Apparently Marcel Duchamp's "fountain" is also classed as art! Although all he did was get a manky old urinal and turned it the wrong way!

This threw us all.

Neverthe less, after an hour and a half of discussion, we decided that there was no right answer to the wuestion "what is art?". How depressing. Apparently this is what TOK is about. And I have this lesson every Wednesday afternoon. Joy.

Let me know what your answer to the question "what is art?" would be :)