John Berger - Ways of Seeing

Ways of Seeing by John Berger brings up interesting points about how art can be affected so much by modern life. Every piece of art has its original, but many pieces of art have duplicates of them in many different forms. Even as I was watching the video, Berger says that this piece of art work is the original, then he says it is the original for him, not for us, the viewers. We are seeing the piece of art through he video camera, so we are not actually seeing the real piece. Art can be duplicated through a camera, a videocamera, other paintings of people trying to duplicate it, and many more ways. When looking at art, many people do not realize how important it is to look at every detail the piece of art has. 

Berger talks about the art works themselves and says that "this religiosity, usually linked with cash value, but always invoked in the name of culture and civilization is in fact a substitute for what paintings lost when the camera made them reproducible."  
Berger says that the camera destroys the meaning and value of a piece of art. He talks about how a camera does not have the ability to capture every little detail a painting has. Paintings and works of art are famous for every little stroke they make. Every stroke is thoughtfully put onto a painting, and a camera will not and cannot capture this detail. The meaning of a piece of art can be changed dramatically through the use of a camera or video. Berger talks about how a camera can zoom in to a smaller piece of the painting and change the meaning of the work as a whole. Music changes the way the viewer looks at a painting or any piece of art. The reproduction of paintings in different colors changes the meanings of them. 

This video made me realize how important it is to pay attention to how many different things affect how we see art. If we are simply looking at art through a camera, through pictures of paintings, then we are never going to truly see the real meaning of the work. We have to try to know and understand the meanings of paintings and we have to realize how everything affects how we see it; from how our daily life affects it, to the sounds in the background as we look at a piece of art, to the pipes of art around it. We have to be aware of how art affects us.