Tuesday, June 29, 2010

ways of seeing - art as commodity

Great video - no matter the decade recorded. What are the hidden ideologies in the art of Western civilization? And regarding value: Where, as the narrator asks, does this value come from? "Art offers something sacred." Does photography lend itself to similar line of thinking?

Really enjoyed the children discussing the painting (episode 4) - relating it to their own experiences - and the children recognized the sexual ambivalence of the central figure (having no idea of Caravaggio's homosexuality.)

Quotes to remember:
"We are now so accustomed to being addressed by these images that we scarcely notice their total impact."

"The oil painting showed what its owner was already enjoying among his possessions and his way of life. It consolidated his own sense of his own value. It enhanced his view of himself as he already was. It began with facts, the facts of his life. The paintings embellished the interior in which he actually lived. The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life. Not with the way of life of society, but with his own within it. It suggests that if he buys what it is offering, his life will become better. It offers him an improved alternative to what he is."

"No two dreams are the same. Some are instantaneous, others prolonged, The dream is always personal to the dreamer. Publicity does not manufacture the dream. All that it does is to propose to each one of us that we are not yet enviable - yet could be."

"Reproduction makes art ambiguous - used like words, to connect our art with other experiences" ... "Access to television must be extended beyond it's present narrow limits." Prophetic, what constituted a personal computer in 1972? Two-way dialog now exists beyond his imagining in the digital age.
(John Berger, Ways of Seeing, BBC program)

on the news front
Must add to my news aggregator: newseum.org. I usually catch up on international news thru the bbc link. It was so interesting to see the design of newspapers on a global scale, and see how much we have in common in terms of page layouts, techniques and imagery.

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