Culture is a complex concept, but, in very broad terms, the result of its deployment has been that social scientists are now very often interested in the ways in which social life is constructed through the ideas that people have about it and the practices that flow from those ideas.
Vision is what the human eye is physiologically capable of seeing, although it must be noted that ideas about that capability have changed historically and will most likely continue to change: see Gray, 1992).
Visuality, on the other hand, refers to the way in which vision is constructed in various ways:’how we see, how we are able, allowed, or made to see, and how we see this seeing and the using therein’ (Foster, 1988a: ix). Another phrase with very similar connotations to visuality is the scopic regime. Both terms refer to the ways in which both what is seen and how it is seen are culturally constructed.
This chapter reminded me of the book “Way of seeing”; even the camera can reproduce the painting, all these different sorts of technologies and images offer views of the world; they render the world in visual terms. But this rendering, even by photographs, is never innocent.
We are, of course, surrounded by different sorts of visual technologies photography, video, digital graphics, television, acrylics, for example and the images they show us tv programmes, advertisements, snap- shots, public sculpture, movies, surveillance video footage, newspaper pictures, paintings. All these different sorts of technologies and images offer views of the world; they render the world in visual terms. But this rendering, even by photographs, is never innocent. These images are never transparent windows on to the world. They interpret the world; they display it in very particular ways. Thus a distinction is sometimes made between vision and visuality. For example, claim that `depiction, picturing and seeing are ubiquitous features of the process by which most human beings come to know the world as it really is for them’, and John Berger (1972: 7) suggests that this is because `seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak’.
Watching Episode 1 by John Berger, he mostly mentions the perspective of the painting and it has changed after the camera was invented. In the painting on the wall, like a human eye, can only be in one place. It can not easily recognize the detail of the painting at one time. But the camera can reproduce painting which can possible to see in the room, making it available in any size, anywhere, for any purpose. It can reproduce the detail of the painting.
The faces of paintings become messages. Pieces of information to be used, even used to persuade us to help purchase more originals which these very reproductions have in many ways replaced. But you may say, original paintings are still unique. They look different from how they look on the television screen or on postcards. Only what you are seeing is still not the original. Jogger said that many artworks surround us with reproduction by photography, but it can not replace what we see the original work giving you.
I read a book, “Ways of Seeing,” and was surprised that it was published a decade ago because I agree with John Berger’s thinking that some paintings may already be distorted before analyzing them. After all, we are not viewing the original piece. Indeed, the information from the silence of a painting is only truly experienced when looking at the original work rather than its reproduction.
In the first part of this book, Berger discusses how one must see things before describing what one has seen using words. As such, Berger says that we see things as affected by what we know or believe. In Ways of Seeing, Berger does introduce “seeing” as a fundamental mechanism in interpreting our world. He gave us examples of how it is different from what the Middle Ages men believe the sight of fire to mean today. We can explain the fire, and the meaning of fire may change according to the person who lives in the past and now. This chapter challenges me to think that we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constitution what is present to us as we are. It means everyone has their way of seeing things.
By taking the paintings out of their surface, replaces how the artist viewed the world. Paintings preserve things as they once were, just as the painter once viewed, thus understanding the world. Engaging in conversations with each work of art allowed me to dig deeper into the actual meaning, or what could be the actual meaning, of each work. Having a “conversation” with the painting can allow us to think of things we would not have thought of otherwise.
Fans Hals’ last two great Paintings portray the Governors, and the Governess of an Alms Howse for old paupers in the Dutch is a good example. Hals was the first portrait to paint the new characters and expressions created by capitalism. This difference can be illustrated in terms of what was thought of as perspective. “Hals’s unwavering commitment to his vision, which enriches our consciousness of our fellow men and heightens our awe for the ever-increasing power of the mighty impulses that enabled him to give us a close view of life’s vital forces.
Berger has an unfamiliar perspective on photography, and he refutes the argument that photography is a mechanical process. Instead, he posits that the audience sees the image presented in the form of a photograph from the photographer’s perspective, which is influenced by an individual’s knowledge and beliefs. Also, he mentions reproduction isolates a detail of a painting from the whole. Original paintings are silent and still in a sense that information never is. He believes that paintings should not be recreated and moved so that they cannot be seen in multiple places simultaneously. Also, he thinks that moving the image changes the meaning of the original. So, by reproducing and moving the art, he states that this availably ruins the quality and uniqueness of art. However, I have a different opinion than Burger in some respects. When I went to the Louvre in France and saw the Mona Lisa, I was disappointed. The original was too
small, and there were so many people that I couldn’t see it properly, but I didn’t feel the sanctity of the Mona Lisa I was expecting. Just because they’re original artwork, I don’t think they all have more power than replicas. Today’s photography technology is different from the Burger days, and I think the photo resolution and printing technology have advanced as much as the original artwork.
In chapter 3, Berger depicts that means been overcome, the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man. The social presence of women has developed because of their ingenuity in living under such tutelage within such a limited split space. Beger also explains the difference between naked and nude in this chapter. Even in universities, students often paint nudes. In some paintings, drew the main parts of male and female, and seeing such drawings brings frowns. It is sometimes difficult for us to determine by what criteria we should evaluate the picture. Berger explains what is difference between nakedness and nudity that to be naked is simply to be without clothes, whereas the nude is a form of art. According to him, a nude is not the starting pint of a painting, but a way of seeing which the painting achieves.
In the fifth chapter of this book, Berger makes a reference to oil painting. The term oil painting refers to more than a technique. It defines an art form. Yet the basis of its traditional way of seeing way of seeing was undermined by Impressionism and overthrown by Cubism At about the same time the photographer took the place of the oil painting as the principal source of visual imagery. Chapter 5 focuses on a specific tradition of oil painting, which reached its fullest embodiment roughly between 1500 and 1900. In this tradition, the emphasis is often on objects that are buyable, suggesting a relationship between oil painting and the desire to possess. Although the literal act of oil painting has existed for centuries–pigments have been mixed with oil to create paint since the ancient world—the tradition that Berger refers to here is characterized by its emergence at around the time that capitalism began to take hold in Europe. This tradition set the norms that continue to define pictorial representation, privileging a certain sort of formal verisimilitude that continues to inform our understanding of “artistic genius.”
Berger begins the chapter by posing the question: “What is a love of art?” Within this tradition of oil painting, “love of art” comes to stand in for “desire to possess.” This is illustrated with a painting of an art collector, depicted amongst his vast collection of paintings. In the logic of this picture—which represents the logic of oil painting in whole—paintings are, before all else, objects to be owned. The contents that these paintings depict, then, exist as images of that which the collector may possess. This logic is related to the elaboration of capitalism in Europe around the time that the oil painting tradition came into fashion: the implicit possibility of owning objects depicted in oil painting upholds the ruling classes’ desire to entrench the emerging power of capital.
After reading all the chapters you suggested, I got a new interest in perspective. I am looking forward to what kind of perspective I can express the world of the canvas I am creating, and also what kind of eyes the viewers looking at my paintings will see.
ART & DESiGN JOURNAL 