Robert Heinlein is one of my favorite authors. In his seminal science fiction novel, “Stranger in a Strange Land,” the main character is a human who has been raised by aliens. Central to their way of looking at the world is the verb, “to grok.”
Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthly assumptions) as color means to a blind man.
The novel was popular and the word grok has come to be part of the English lexicon, to the point where it is included in many dictionaries. I think it is a valuable concept in thinking about representational art. In order to represent something, you need to grok it. I sometimes look at a painting, scanning each passage, thinking about how it feels. Does it feel as if the art grokked the thing represented? The painting can be tight or loose, exact or painterly; that doesn’t matter. Did the painter grok what is being represented? Does it evoke the thing? If the painter did that, then that section works, at least at one level. You have a sense of being there; being able to step in and touch the thing. If the artist grokked it, then when I look at the painting I learn about the artists relationship to that thing. If not, then there’s just some paint there.
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