Seeing John Berger

Donny Halim

Jeff Cravello

Bridge

October 28, 2010

Seeing Comes First

One of the most important senses that we human have is the ability to see things. We see the image of the object first before the image is send to our brain and processes it. The essay “Ways of Seeing”, written by John Berger took art as an example, to show the way how modern people view art and the influences that traditional oil painting has had on society and modern day society. The way people now a day perceives an art image is different than the way it was seen before. People nowadays have the idea that a painting is an image that the painter painted and whatever it is there is always a reason for it. And most of us going to art museum have the assumption
We examine art as if those traits and characteristic must be presented, in order for us to enjoy viewing it. However, we all may know or not know that the only person who can give us the answer we are looking for is the artist himself. This brings up the word “mystification”, which is when we people look at an art painting; we always first give our own assumption about the image, these assumption that are generated by the viewer would only lead the viewer with more myth around them instead of clarifying them. Let’s take the painting “Violin and Candlestick” painted by Georges Braque as an example, when I first look at this painting I was quickly mesmerized by the way complication of it, the next thing I continued doing right away was to look for a pattern in the image. Before searching for an explanation online, I was convinced that this is probably what people in nineteenth century find beautiful. However, once I found out that this kind of art is called cubism, and it’s suppose to show all visible angle of certain image, my assumption changed. Now whenever I see a painting with this similar pattern, I would try to look for what is the object that this artist is trying to
These machines focus only on one accurate precise view of the image, which allows the photographer to choose which angle is the best in his perspective. These allow massive reproduction of a painting, which allows more people to get access to what they think it’s the same thing. What they don’t know is that a camera can dissect a picture making it into different pieces, which eventually gives it another meaning. I found an image of “The Doctor” which is painted by Luke Fildes online, on first sight of the image, I quickly noticed that there was a child sleeping in front of an adult, the first thing that came to my mind, was that this man was probably trying to tell a bed time story to a sleeping child, however, when I went on and research on this particular painting, I found and explanation, saying that the painter is trying to portrait a concerned physician watching a dying child, which is based on death of the painters son. Furthermore I also found the original painting of this image which shows that there is actually 3 adult present in this painting. The picture I initially saw was just a small section of the real one, and with just an old man and a little girl sleeping, I thought I have seen the whole painting and quickly gave that assumption. The way that the camera took a painting and dissect it into a new image, will only continue