In “Ways of Seeing” John Berger presents many examples that parallel his negative opinion towards oil paintings. He starts of by quoting the anthropologist, Levi-Strauss who writes, “It is this avid and ambitious desire to take possession of the object…to [that] constitute one of the outstandingly original features of the art of Western civilization”. Berger agrees with Strauss and stresses the idea that people buy and display paintings, especially oil paintings, because they have a desire to possess it. Berger argues that oil paintings often depict objects that are “buyable”, thus if we put up a canvas of some object it is “not unlike buying it and putting it in your [our] house”. Berger exemplifies the painting Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his private picture gallery by Teniers, to point out that the painting shows a seventeenth century man who has surrounded himself by buyable paintings that he wishes to possess. The oil paintings are only objects that he wishes to collect and display around his property. Berger thinks oil paintings convey a “vision of total exteriority”. He further emphasizes his point by saying that oil paintings cause everything to be viewed as “objects” and commodities that could be bought and sold at any time.

Initially, I adamantly disagreed with Berger. I have a painting of the Eiffel tower in my room, and although I never thought about possessing the Eiffel tower, I always had a strong desire to go see it. Although most of us think we don’t have any inclination of possessing the objects in paintings; I think Berger’s point could be applied to people’s attitude towards artists. During our August 30^th seminar class, the crucial question, “Do we own our artists?” was raised. We talked about our shock and disappointment at Miley Cryus’s performance at the VMA’s. Initially, I had a strong negative reaction towards her performance, however, when the question “Do we, as a public, own her?” was raised, I started to become doubtful of my attitude towards her. Does Miley Cyrus, as an independent individual, really owe us a responsibility to act a certain way? Many of us value our independence and tend to get annoyed and angry when someone tries to tell us to act a certain way. Yet, we tend to condemn and criticize artists because we think we have claims on them, and as a result the artists owe it to us to behave accordingly. This critical and condemning attitude towards artists almost equates to claims of possession.

Dr. Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University says in his book, How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like that the reason why we like most things is because of the pleasure they give us. In other words, our “likes” make us feel nice and possessing those “likes” even more so. Berger’s ideas may seem far-fetched to many people, but personally I don’t think it’s psychologically impossible that our id should secretly want to possess something that we may think is unconsciously impossible.

Reference:

Bloom, Paul. How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We like What We like. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. Print.

Carmichael, Mary. “How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like.” The Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast, 15 June 2010. Web. 28 Sept. 2013.

Berger, John. Ways of seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1972. Print

Picture: http://uploads1.wikipaintings.org/images/david-teniers-the-younger/the-archduke-leopold-wilhelm-in-his-picture-gallery-in-brussels-1651.jpg