Berger's Essay If We See The Art Of The Past

937 Words4 Pages
Have you ever looked at a painting and thought oh wow that’s nice? But didn’t know that there was a deeper meaning to it or that there was just some kind of barrier stopping you from seeing the actual meaning. In Berger’s essay he states If we ‘saw’ the art of the past, we would situate ourselves in history. When we are prevented from seeing it, we are being deprived of the history which belongs to us (Berger). By this he is meaning how he feels as if the ruling class that is the barrier for us, and they’re taking our history away from us. I do agree with what Berger is saying, but I feel as if there is another barrier besides that one like our interests. There are also ways to overcome those barriers just by doing a little extra work. To…show more content…
When we look at a painting, we usually just think either it’s pretty, ugly, cool, weird, etc. People who are interested in like things such as business, math, or criminal justice they won’t really pay mind. Like I never really analyze a painting or try to see the real meaning behind it, or know anyone that does something like that. Unless you’re extremely interested in art, people don’t invest their time in looking up what a painting means. For example, with the sculpture of David that Michelangelo did, most people just looked at it and thought “oh wow that’s a nice structured statue of David”. But they didn’t know that, that sculpture was the first ever made of David before his battle. In most statues of him they depicted him after his battle against Goliath, but Michelangelo decided to do a statue on him before his battle. David is tense: Michelangelo catches him at the apex of his concentration (Academia Gallery). The sculpture of David was known as the “thinking man” because he just looks so confident and as if he’s thinking about how to defeat Goliath. Most people wouldn’t really bother to look that up, but that’s something that I found out because I was being curious. It’s true that most people don’t really care about art if that’s not their thing, but you should always just try to learn a little
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