There is a reciprocity in the process of seeing. Between McLuhn and Guy Debord, there is this sense that vision is key to the way we relate to one another and the world around us. But Berger probably says it best when he describes the scenario of a person seeing a hill and knowing that because he can see the hill, whoever is on the hill can also see him. When Berger says that this reciprocity is more fundamental than spoken dialogue, he is addressing the general theme from the course readings we've covered so far, namely that there is this very complicated thing going on in the way we relate to images and the way they are being fed to us.
Berger's essay reminds us that there is an intrinsic perspective within images. They are records of the way in which the painter or photographer was relating to the person place or thing before them. He explains that the usefulness of these 'records' is dependent on the present days relation to the past, and this is how his thoughts mirror the social and existential themes made by McLuhn and Debord: We're prone to all kinds of delusion if we're not more aware of what is going on when we look at something. In this case, Beger claims that while interpretations of art are affected by current idiosyncrasies, these interpretations can also can also gauge the ways we are feeling about the present day, because if we're not feeling so great about the world in which we live, chances are, the meaning gleaned from old paintings will be 'mystified.' For Berger, like history, paintings offer vital clues to why we are the way we are, little microcosms of history that our as prone to politically motivated reinterpretations as past wars.
The bulk of Berger's essay describes the machinations of an elite minority controlling the value of art, and that because the elites are best served by the idea of a justified ruling class, they mystify the the more straightforward interpretations of paintings. Berger's key example of this 'mystification' is shown in the popular interpretations of Frans Hals' painting of 'Governors and Governesses of an Alms House.' Commissioned by the people who spared Hals' from total destitution, the innate awkwardness between the painter and the painted is downplayed in most art history interpretations. Rather, scholars focus more on superficial details, like the technique rather than the social implications.
Berger explains that the sensation of experiencing the characters in Hals' painting as people we might know is not just because of Hal's masterful skill, but rather, it is because our present day society shares similar values to the world in the painting, awkward exchanges and all.
It is this straightforward, and probably useful, interpretation of Hals' painting that is deliberately muddled by "a few specialized experts who are the clerks of the nostalgia of a ruling class in decline." In this remark and the discussion on mass producibility of old paintings, Berger describes a scenario where the influx of information and accessibility of art, not unlike our conversations on internet technology and the media, has been hijacked by a class of people who wish to perpetuate power dynamics advantageous to them. Or, as Berger puts it, "people who thrive off the 'continuing values of an oligarchic, undemocratic culture."
In his apt description of a new technology that alters the worlds sense of space and time, Berger describes how the camera fuels these old undemocratic dynamics by leaching off the perceived authority of old paintings--an authority derived from the simultaneous perception of all its elements. (This quality has been mentioned in my intro to design course) This is a simultaneity that film and photography lacks, because the weight of its visual statements is an easily manipulated sequence. Bogus spirituality and mystification also bolster a paintings authority and discourages the viewer from reading paintings like Hals' as staunch social commentary.
It seems that Berger believes that despite the mass producibility of old art pieces and the personalized uses they're appropriated for in albums, bedroom walls, or video projects, Berger believes that these paintings are still kept in the realm of the elite who, having had to compensate for a painting's loss of uniqueness and singularity (something to be experienced at a certain place in time by a few people at a time) began to promote the value of 'authenticity.' Berger shares the example of the Virgin on the Rocks housed in the National Gallery in London and its catalogued history that does not "deal with the meaning of the image" but describes, instead, in great detail, the person who "commissioned the painting, legal squabbles, who owned it, its likely date, the families of its owner." All of this is catalogued precisely to make it crystal clear that the paintings status as the 'original,' its art sanctioned indicator of value, is never in question.
It is little surprise then, that Berger ends his essay with an admonishment: Don't be ignorant about what's happening to you when you see an old painting, mass produced or the original. The way you experience it is probably the exact way someone is hoping you will, and that someone probably wants you to remain ignorant of the social and economic inequalities that give the painting its monetary value. Echoing our previous conversations on the social consequences of new information technology, Berger concludes that the pervasive presence of art in our lives offers us an opportunity to abandon set interpretations. He encourages us to get back to art's direct value as a window into a moment in the past. Because a clear cut glimpse at a moment between a bunch of creepy dutch people with cash and a destitute painter can enlighten us to our own shady and questionable interactions.
No comments:
Post a Comment