Ways of Seeing

John Berger's video Ways of Seeing offered a lot of fresh insight for me regarding how paintings are viewed. He opened with a brief explanation of European painting style which was born about 1400 and died about 1900. All paintings of this tradition used the convention of perspective, which Berger says is unique to European art. Because perspective centers everything for the beholder, the process of viewing paintings is far less spontaneous than we believe. Our eyes are guided to what the painter wants us to see. I had never considered this as a limitation, but rather a comprehension of what the artist wished to accomplish; once it was phrased in this manner, though, I was willing to entertain that this can be a handicap of sorts. But Berger goes on to say that there is one invention that can free us from what he calls "human immobility:" the camera.

The camera offers a fresh perspective on art and it's even capable of changing paintings created long before its invention. I found the concept of this really captivating. The painting itself can only be seen in one place at one time, but the image of the painting can be made available "in any size, anywhere, for any purpose." By doing this, you alter multiple aspects of the painting; for instance, the camera allows you to see the painting in the context of your own life, surrounded by all the things that are familiar to you. When viewing a painting in this manner, it's going to drastically change the way you perceive its meaning. Originally, a painting was intended to be viewed in the context of its surroundings; everything around it is intended to be an integral part of confirming and consolidating its meaning. With the camera and printed images, however, this is no longer the case. Furthermore, once paintings have been removed from their original setting, they can be manipulated by not just their new surroundings, but also by motion and sound. The video gives examples of how you can be subtly guided towards forming certain feelings about a painting based on the instrumental accompaniment. The other form of manipulation, motion, was actually pretty disheartening when it was explained in Berger's logic. The idea of motion discussed in the video really boiled down to zooming in on one aspect of a painting, thus removing it from the overall context of the painting. As Berger examines, in a painting zoomed in to show only a single character's face, an allegorical figure becomes just a pretty girl anywhere. He also shows a painting which he describes as a "strange, poetical world of metamorphosis," but it's capable of reducing one of the subjects, a dog, to a mere pet when it is removed from its setting. As a whole, the video really expanded my understanding of how a painting can be perceived.