Ways of Seeing - the idea

The first episode of “Ways of Seeing” is explaining how the way of how people see and understand paintings was changed after photography invention. Starting from the second part of the 20^th century an ability to see art in the way, nobody could before, was gained.

Originally paintings had their own place, they were created to be in. Sometimes artworks were pats of building, or of the interior. The man should have been gone to a concrete place with a concrete atmosphere (noises, smell, interior and people around) to see the piece of art. Of course, the surrounding has an influence on how do people understand art. As it is said in “Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin – “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be”. Actually, this statement raises some questions, such as “Does an artwork loses its uniqueness over years because it is not located in the time it was made in?”, but today's topic is different.

Today people have an ability to see a reproduction of anything anywhere since photo basically is a reproduction of an art piece it shows. Environment, that could also be considered as a part of the painting has been lost. But photos have not only taken but also given humanity something by their reproduction. “…in photography, process reproduction can bring out those aspects of the original that are unattainable to the naked eye yet accessible to the lens”. It is also interesting to know we could cut parts of paintings and the sense of details might be different from the sense of the whole artwork.

Since images of any masterpiece could be easily put anywhere – they might be manipulated to create something new. Besides collages and other, there is a new unique way to manipulate it – insert movement and sound, since originally paintings are silent and still. A camera might multiply possible meanings because of its reproductive ability but it also has destroyed the original sense of works, since reproductions are lack of original sense.

Making replicas always was a part of art – students were making it to develop their own art, masters were using it to spread their own arts, and of course there were people making replicas of others works to gain money. And still, it was hard to make a copy of an art piece, so it was not much distributed.

Of course, some mechanical reproductions of art pieces also existed before. In ancient Greek it was founding and stamping, but it was related to coins, and despite money has some images on it, it is not considered much as art. After centuries the printing and lithography appeared, and made it possible to illustrate everyday life of people. And still it was different of the situation we have now.

Nowadays you do not go to art – the art goes to you. The ways we absorb art are different. But it seems losing something is not that unpleasant, if it is possible to gain something instead.