Ways of Seeing
...onious fusion, unforgettable contrast" or "a peak of breadth and strength" serve in Berger's words to "transfer the emotion provoked by the image from the plane of lived experience, to that of disinterested art appreciation (Berger 120)." The picture's meaning is destroyed and made subordinate to its function as a commodity bearing economic value. Despite mainstream art history's obsession with skill, Berger argues, that often times truly quality paintings are often overlooked. He reveals the dirty secret oblivious to many art viewers that museums frequently hang mediocre paintings alongside great ones. Why is this so? Berger asserts that the art establishment generates value on the basis of a painting being an original rather than technical skill. In the age of mechanical reproduction we can infinitely reproduce paintings in books, posters, and t-shirts. Therefore the only valuable thing is the original for the simple reason that not just anyone can possess the "real" painting, so the ruling art establishment instills one-of-a-kind objects with tremendous monetary and therefore cultural value. In this framework, Berger implies that the skill of the artist becomes secondary to the presence of the picture itself. This is an absolutely preposterous practice, why would an artist skill be anything less then the primary source to determine economic value? For example Marcel Duchamp?s piece entitled ?With Hidden Noise,? has a ball of twine between two brass plates held together by 4 metal screws (Duchamp 83). It?s true that he was the first ?artist? to create a particular piece like this but does this work show an ingenuity, creativity, or skill at all. Why should something a little less original, but an example of far superior skill be held in less esteem? Art should be something that puts people in awe, something that the masses can look up to and want to strive to attain the same skill that it takes to produce an image or an object of that quality. It should not be based on the rarity of the art work nor should it be based on the name that is attached to the piece. Berger argues that all power, authority, and meaning that were once held by an original work of art have been lost through the mass reproduction of these works that has occurred in recent years (Berger 129). And in his pious claim he surrounds these art objects with the his imperial truth that the meaning of the original work no longer lies in what the piece uniquely states but in what it uniquely is (Berger 121). He claims that because of reproduction, the art of the past no longer exists as it once did (Berger 129). On the contrary, I believe that works of art have even more meaning than they had when they first created because of the interpretations offered to them by the generations of critics and artists that have examined the piece. Fresh new sources have been given the ability to offer their insight and abilities into art, creating entire new genres of art, music, and theatre. It has allowed for a truer search for knowledge than was ever possible before. And ultimately, the search to find the true meaning of art and the ideas of the artists forms a true sense of impassioned curiosity that gives meaning to the lives of many particular groups that extend far beyond the cultural elite. In Barthes?s essay, ?Death of an Author,? he felt that because we are all different and because we all draw from "[?] what has already been read, seen, done, lived, assuming many different, and possibly contradictory roles [?] (Barthes 103),? that we will interpret all of life?s circumstances differently. Barthes implies that more meaning and information would be gained from any text or work of art, if we were allowed to comprehend and interpret it. In regards to the spreading of a culture to the masses, Berger is clearly unhappy about it. He says that, ?For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free. They surround us in the same way as a language surrounds us. They have entered the mainstream of life over which they no longer, in themselves, have power (Berger 129).? However images do possess power and possibly even more so than in the past because of these new interpretations derived by the future generations. Berger seems to hold somewhat of an elitist view when it comes to art, and he clearly thinks that now that the masses have access to art and culture, that the ?esoteric value? of the works and the authority it held is now gone. To support his argument, he writes that, ?[...] reproduction is used all the time to promote the illusion that nothing ha...