Author Archives: Saikou Sounounou Bah

Discussion 2- ways of seeing Episode 1

In the “ways of seeing Episode 1” by John Berger, the author argues that what we see is conditioned by habits and conventions. As many people believe that seeing arts or something else is innate and impulsive; in the video Berger think that before or when seeing something, we arrange in our mind how we want this thing to be. That mean we don’t see art how it is, but we see it how we want it to be in in our reflection. When we see many arts or have some experiences in the artistic world, it can let us to arrange our imagination of seeing arts. Berger’s observation is very significant because we realize that for the same art, viewers can have different opinions or interpretations to the art. It depends what every viewer have arranged in his mind for that art.

According to Berger, camera has changed the way we see arts. Before the 1900 the event of camera, art can only see in one place at one time, they can be only in one room or in the museum or in a specific place. After the invention of the camera, we can use it to duplicate arts images or record any situation. The camera has also changed our engagement with works of art, some people think why spending hours to draw something if we can do it by simple click with the camera. Furthermore, we see that with the camera we can duplicate thousands of images as we want and we can be anywhere to see arts, it can be in our room, in our car etc. and at any time. But there is something unique that we can not find with the camera. Many people travel from their home to the museum to see the original art, they believe that camera cannot replace the authentic art (stillness and silence). In the screen, we see what it was arranged. That arrangement could be excessive or miss some important details of the art. To illustrate this fact, at the end of the video, Berger said that he hopes we will consider what he has arranged.

Reproduction of painting is a form of information because we can change or manipulate the meaning of the art. For example, in the video with the painting by Caravaggio; if we use Italian opera or religious choral, the meaning of the painting change. He said in the episode 1 that pictures can be uses as words and we can talk with them.

Discussion question 1 (how art can help us analyze?)

For the question “how art can help us analyze?”, we see how presenters describes the importance of the art to improve the way we can see images and how to analyze them. Artists give information through their arts and people should be able to have deep looking to interpret the meaning of the art.

In some cases, it is difficult to interpret the signification of a painting or some artistic objects. If we do not pay attention to every detail of the art, we can miss some important points that the artist wants to provide. It is not only going to the museum to see arts or looking arts on the streets or parks etc. we should have the ability to analyze what we are seeing in the art. That mean we should not have some presuppositions; we should look every detail to understand the meaning of the art. Therefore, by doing this analyze, art can help us to improve the way we see things and how we can improve our intellectual standard of the quality. In the video, presenters use clear example to connect art to our capability of thinking. For example, one the speaker uses images communication, that mean by analyzing arts we can learn something from them, and every art is telling us something that only our analyze can decipher. The other speaker makes a connection between art and our environment, that mean we can develop our knowledge by analyzing art and use that experience to better see the real world.

In conclusion, art is very important to develop our capacity of thinking and analyzing, it can be useful in our daily life and environment.

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In the video “why art matters (why look at art?)” by Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris we can choose clarity, fairness and significant from the textbook English composition to describe the intellectual standards for quality. In the video, we see how people think about art.

 

By looking the video and analyzing the different opinions of the speakers we can understand that the video describes clearly about the art. Also, it is fair and significant because it gives details to every aspect relative to art and different views. The presenters use people who have experiences about thinking when they look at the art and are able to analyze the meaning of the images they see. The first speaker describes arts as images that communicate whit people and also say it is another way, we can see the world. The second person qualifies art as high vision and affirm that we can pay attention to our environment through the art and to emphasis her observation she gave example to the birds, newspapers and museums. The third speaker say that artists are everywhere, that mean it is not only in the museum we can find arts, they can be found also in the street, parks or our architectures, I think this opinion is fair for artists who do not have chance to present their creation in the museum, and the last speaker talks about how we can find details in the art if we do not have predetermination. That mean we should be patient and look carefully the art in order to analyze what information the artist want to give to people. That require to pay more attention to every detail of the art.

 

In the video, we find clarity, fairness and significance to describe the perception of the art by using some of the intellectual standards for quality.