In the first chapter of “Ways of Seeing” the author, John Berger, mentions many points about how the reproduction of art has changed the way we see art as a whole. Specifically, in the last paragraph he makes a strong statement about how art of the past has now become a political issue. In the first sentence of the paragraph he starts off by saying that “The art of the past no longer exists as it once did”, which means that art no longer exists as it did. Since it was once isolated, part of a hierarchy, but now images of art are available and insubstantial. Now that images are being viewed and consumed by the masses that allows it to be altered in many different ways, and as a result the art piece may not represent what it once was. With the
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This shows the comparison of how art was viewed in the past to now, and how their was a shift of the importance of art and its history to its price tag. Earlier in the essay, Berger discusses the act of mystification and what it does to art. He mentions how the privileged minority does this in order to strip us of the past and make certain concepts more complicated than it actually is in order for the regular population to not understand it—thus making it seem unimportant. Yet it is still presented to people in a mystified way and so alienates them, cutting them off from their history and making art a political issue. Berger argues that a proper interpretation of any text should, first, involve a clear understanding one’s social political climate that they are in since the individual perspective is shaped by their social, political and historical conditions. Berger tends to pay a lot of attention to the relationship between art and history. He even ends his Ways of Seeing by stating, “A people or a class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or class than one that has been able to situate itself in history.” This is relevant because this distinction is shown clearly when you see how different classes of people
This shows the comparison of how art was viewed in the past to now, and how their was a shift of the importance of art and its history to its price tag. Earlier in the essay, Berger discusses the act of mystification and what it does to art. He mentions how the privileged minority does this in order to strip us of the past and make certain concepts more complicated than it actually is in order for the regular population to not understand it—thus making it seem unimportant. Yet it is still presented to people in a mystified way and so alienates them, cutting them off from their history and making art a political issue. Berger argues that a proper interpretation of any text should, first, involve a clear understanding one’s social political climate that they are in since the individual perspective is shaped by their social, political and historical conditions. Berger tends to pay a lot of attention to the relationship between art and history. He even ends his Ways of Seeing by stating, “A people or a class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or class than one that has been able to situate itself in history.” This is relevant because this distinction is shown clearly when you see how different classes of people