When analyzing artwork, there are often social contexts in which can be interpreted in any form. Not always making the history behind the painting needs to understand the artwork's concept fully. Yet, it helps determine if the artwork is truthful in its representation. Although in analyzing artwork, there are likely drawbacks to considering the social context. To illustrate this point, I'm going to use the visual arts as my medium of choice.
             Understanding the social context can be an important tool. An advantage of knowing the history of the painting or sculpture can really enrich our knowledge, being in the 20th (soon to be 21st) century, about some of the social periods from previous times. It can demonstrate how traditions were carried out and how they impacted the different social classes. It's a visual teaching aid of a sort. Even the time period in which the artwork was created can show how life was in different parts of the world. It was also used as a hammer in the realist movement to show the upper classes that life for the poor was horrible.
             The visual arts is the only medium in which the pictorial image creates a universal language in which anyone can interpret anyone, regardless of nationality or social class. The text which is created by this language often creates a context that is left open to interpretation. Contexts are created by the artist, critics, judges, the public, essentially, anyone who views the work and forms an opinion relating to it. The contexts stem from the subject or content of artwork and are usually facts regarding the content. Yet, the contexts almost always have backgrounds themselves, therefore making the original contexts texts. This will be more clearly illustrated later. The chain is seeming to be a never-ending process. There are always more conditions to the previous ones. All context, therefore, is in itself textual. This concept of all context in itself textual is a post-structurali...