Ways of Seeing

I thought it was interesting how John Berger pointed out that before the camera was invented, you could only see pieces of art in one place and one time. People travelled all over the world to see famous art works, such as the Mona Lisa. Now with the invention of the camera, anyone could look up the image and see it in seconds. They can see it on their phone, iPad, and laptop while being in their home environment. They don’t have to travel to the place where the actual artwork is currently displayed. It makes me think of how we take for granted this opportunity to see any piece of artwork within seconds, where as in later times people travelled to the photo.

Berger also stated that everything in the environment around the image plays a huge role in its meaning. He used the example of the icon to describe this. Before cameras, the icon was only located in a church. Behind its image is God and people didn’t need to look at it to understand its meaning. Now, the icon image travels to people in their homes, which change the meaning of the icon. It is no longer just in a church where people go and pray, but in homes by walls and windows. This makes me think if our perception of images are different since we lose meaning from seeing images in our home and not in the place where they are actually displayed.

Making these insights about artwork, I believe that people probably had a greater appreciation for the piece of art because of the journey they had to take to get there and the true meaning of the image that is supported by the environment around it. I think the fact that we can look up pieces of work anytime and anywhere and see it within our own environment takes away the true purpose or intent of the painting. If we still had to travel to see images and be in the exact room where it is displayed and see the original size and frame that the picture is in, I believe that we would have different opinions about it than we do now. These are aspects that I will take into consideration when looking at pieces of artwork.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Whole Ball of Wax

In my opinion, I believe that art can change some factors that ultimately end up changing the world. For example, art can inspire people to be a better person or change their attitude about something, which in the long term changes the world for the better. However, I don’t believe that art has the power to directly change the world, like changing global warming or halting the spread of AIDS like the article said. Despite this point of view, I do believe that art is like an experience in which helps us understand its meaning. When artist create a piece of work, there is some type of purpose behind it and it is up to the viewers of art to look deeply into the work and figure out what it is. As we look deeply into the work and recognize the color, pigment, canvas and other aspects related to art, we are then able to really experience it through our minds and come to a conclusion on its meaning. Additionally, I do believe that art can create new thought struc
Read more

Postmodernism Finish Project

Quote: " The great person is ahead of their time, the smart make something out of it, and the blockhead, sets themselves against it." When looking at my finished Postmodernism project, the denotative aspect of this piece is a picture of different size clocks building off of each other in an outward movement. The times on the clocks are all different. On top of the clocks are images of men either reading, running, changing the time of the clocks or standing around looking confused. Albert Einstein is even on top of one of the clocks. After printing the photoshop image, gluing it on the Bristol pad and expanding on the photo, I continued creating the clocks that were cut off the image and also added circles or bubbles around the clocks. These circles/bubbles look the same as the clocks in that they are different sizes and in the color black; however, they do not have ant numbers or time on them, they are just plain. The background is a faded/streak pink col
Read more