John Berger wrote an article entitled Ways of Seeing. In this article he imposes his opinion on works of art, on what constitutes a work of art. He also talks about art reproductions. His perception of reproductions is that they pervert the original piece, and that through reproduction the beauty and value of the piece is taken away, that the piece is not the same because it no longer represents what the artist originally intended. I disagree with Berger. I don't consider art reproductions to be perversions of the original and I don't even agree with its schema of a work of art. Reproduction allows people to see something that perhaps they never would have, it allows the artist to gain more visibility, whereas if there had been no reproduction, only a handful of people would have seen it. As for what is a work of art, it's something that I believe is totally up to the observer. What one may perceive as beautiful, an opinion perhaps dictated by personal experiences, another may not see in the same way. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay One work of art that I really like and respect is Salvador Dali's Landscape Table. The joy of the painting for me comes from the complexities that Dali weaves into the painting. The painting has many layers, if the painting is studied long enough a succession of realizations occur. When I first saw this painting, I saw a cup on a table, with many landscapes in the background. I don't consider myself someone who appreciates art in any particular form, so at first all I saw was a bland table with a cup on it. However, when I looked closer, I started to see a lot more in the image. The neck of the cup seemed to be part of a face, the mouth and nose of the face lying on the table. The scenario that I had previously considered unimportant turned out to be much more. At the top of the painting was a mountain landscape, and below it, mixed in with the scenery, standing behind the cup on the table, was a dog! A dog? I said. Why on earth would Dali put a dog in his painting and, furthermore, why would we make it such a hidden part of the painting? At first I didn't understand Dali's reasoning for this strange painting, but as soon as I let go of my confusions, the painting started to make sense to me. I no longer cared what the painting meant to Dali as he painted it, but rather I was interested in what the painting meant to me. Maybe I was wrong to totally ignore the initial reason why the painter created the painting, but what worried me most was the idea of ​​the painting that was taking shape in my mind. I saw the painting as a part of my mind, seemingly a huge mass of thoughts and ideas strung together without any sense. But when I looked closer, I could distinguish individual parts of the painting. The parts may have been unrelated, but they were nevertheless separate. I found my mind to be the same way. It was a huge mass of ideas thrown together, but if I took the time to think, I could separate out all the different things I was thinking and, individually, they all made sense. This is something I would do when I'm confused, if there are too many things in my head that all seem to be one big mess, I take the time to separate the ideas and slowly start to understand my situation better. When I talk to people about this painting and what it means to me, they often have no idea what I might mean, but the fact that they don't understand me is irrelevant, because the painting is special to me for my own reasons, and that's what it's important to me. Before this essay, II referred to Dali's painting as a work of art. What is a work of art? Who decides what is or is not a work of art? Berger talks about works of art, especially when referring to common paintings in which most people recognize their names. Does this imply that a work of art must be well known to be considered a work of art? And before these works of art became famous? They were simply canvases full of paint, the same as today, but at the time they were produced they were not immediately considered revolutionary and inspiring for the time. It took people who had the means to see these paintings to give them such distinction. Again, I repeat, people who had the means. Poor people of the time could not afford such luxuries to see works of art, so a painter got his praise exclusively from the upper class, and only once the painting was famous enough to gain visibility could the lower class see it and create one's own. judgments, obviously too late since the work had already been defined as a work of art and was revered. The fact that the work was considered a work of art by one group may mean nothing to another person. This is because what one person may see as an example of beauty in a painting, another person may have a different opinion. This is why I say that a work of art is completely in the eye of the beholder, that is, art is a personal thing and we cannot expect a person to see exactly what we see, and appreciate it in the same way. way we can.Berger is strongly against the reproduction of art. He says it perverts the original piece and takes away its meaning. I can't entirely disagree with Berger that the idea of ​​art can change based on the perceptions of others, but I can't agree with him that it's necessarily a bad thing. With reproduction comes the emptiness of what the painting means. The artist is no longer always there to tell you what they felt when painting that specific piece. But for me this is the beautiful part of art. Being able to interpret the painting for your own reasons is a freedom that allows us to be creative. Berger argues that this sense of understanding the painting is called mystification (Berger, 108). It is nothing other than the painting that works on us (Berger, 109). He casts the artist as a seducer, to make us believe he understands the painting. So what can we say, do we understand the painting or not? It is true that we cannot understand the painter's perspective by looking at the painting itself, but we can understand the painting for our own reasons, based on our experiences. In the painting I described above, there are many possibilities as to what someone's first interpretation might be, or what the first thing they would see in the painting would be. I myself initially saw a cup on a table, but someone else might first see the face in the cup, or the dog in the background. All these reasons are due to the fact that the painting means something different to each person. Also, other people would see all aspects of the painting like I did, or they would just see one thing surrounded by a huge amount of random elements in the painting that seem to have no connection. The fact is, it doesn't matter. The way I interpret the painting will most likely be different from someone else's interpretation, because we are looking for different things in the painting. Our minds are stimulated in different ways. If we were not allowed to see the painting in our own light, if we were forced to see what the painter had originally intended, then our creative forces would be paralyzed and our ideas would mean nothing. In fact, our ideas mean everything to.