Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Berger refelction

"Photographs are not a mechanical record" "the photographer's way of seeing is reflected in the choice of subject. the painter's way of seeing is reconstituted by the marks he makes on the canvas or paper...our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing." This is what is so spectacular about art and why it has existed for so many years and why certain works of art have been praised for centuries... art is truly in the eye of the beholder. Art speaks to each person in his or her own, unique language. Art also acts as a translator, telling a story across continents over the span of hundreds or thousands of years. This is why the last article we read stated that you cannot look at a piece of work and think that you understand it and that there is no more to absorb from it. When we look at a piece of art we sometimes see what the artist intended for us to see, sometimes we see only what we want to see, and sometimes we see more than we'd ever imagine we could see from a single canvas. Like Berger writes, "it allows us to share the artist's experience of the visible." However, just as important, if not more important than what we see, is what we feel. An artist ahs a true gift if he can convey feeling and illicit emotion through the use of simple manmade tools.

I thought the statement, "we never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves," was very insightful because I have never considered this theory. I suppose that this is one way in which we view art, we view it in relation to our own likes and dislikes, our own feelings and emotions at the moment, and our own life experiences. Berger even describes this phenomenon writing, "Today we see the art of the past as nobody saw it before. We actually perceive it in a different way."


"to touch something is to situate oneself in relation to it"

"soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen"

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