More on Berger

This post will attempt to answer, in terms of Berger's essay, what are the effects of reproduction on artworks?

After Berger finishes with his dispute with the Hals art critic, and after he speaks of the mystification of the art object as something turned into a "holy relic," Berger reflects further on the meaning of reproduction. He writes that, in the age of reproduction "the meaning of paintings is no longer attached to them; their meaning becomes transmittable that is to say it becomes information of a sort [. . .] a reproduced image will be used for many different purposes" (153).

First, let us realize that the condition of Berger's criticism is such reproduction. Berger himself is using Hals' artwork in order to make a more general point about the mystified criticism of other art critics, critics that reduce the meaning of artwork to "personal meaning" and "human condition" rather than the specific institutional and economic conditions that structure experience. And this is fact is not lost on Berger: "In this essay each image reproduced has become part of an argument which has little or nothing to do with the paintings original independent meaning" (155).

But Berger also uses the reproduced images to illustrate ways that reproduced images can change meaning. One example is the cropping of a woman's face from Botticelli's Venus and Mars (see pg 153). Berger writes, "an allegorical figure becomes a portrait of a girl" (154). In addition to the cropping mechanism (something which photoshop and even in-browser technologies like facebook now allow us to do), when a painting appears in a film the painting is deployed as "material for the filmmaker's argument" (154).  How many times have we seen scenes in films where the characters are in an art museum, where the character's reveal themselves as they ponder and discuss a piece of artwork?

Berger's main example has to do with the relationship between image and text. If we remember, one of his very first points in the essay regards the Magritte painting "The Key of Dreams" in which the text says something completely different from the picture above it.

Magritte also famously painted this piece:

The text is French and it says "This is not a pipe." As WJT Mitchell in Picture Theory has argued brilliantly, following Foucault's interpretation, this is actually a complex painting. "This" can refer to either the image of the pipe (which, is not a pipe, despite it's realistic detail indicating that we could hardly call it something else) or, indeed, the "this" could be referring to the text itself--the text is not a pipe. Glance back at "The Key of Dreams." Here we have words associated with incongruous pictures. How can a picture of a horse be "The door"? How can a clock be "the wind?"

Perhaps Magritte is playing on a Freudian dreamwork analysis, suggesting that dreams displace their meanings, such that, in someone's dream a horse may signify a "door" to somewhere--some sort of opening. Or perhaps Magritte is just trying to get us to think of the relationship between text and image and "referent" (in the pipe's case, it would be the pipe). We assume that the text is referring to the image because this is what our conventions tell us. But why do we assume such a relationship?

Ok, with the text-image relationship in mind, let's return to the picture on pg 155. This is a picture of "Wheatfield with Crows." Berger then asks us to turn the page, which now has appended the text: "This is the last picture that Van Gogh painted before he killed himself" (156).

All of a sudden, whereas the painting may have first evoked freedom of flight, the picture becomes about the flight of life--or something to that effect. The point is, the meaning changes as soon as text is added.

What has changed with reproduction?


Basically, Berger is saying that reproduction opens up many potential uses of images. The problem, as he sees it, is that

reproductions are still used to bolster the illusion that nothing has changed, that art, with its unique undiminished authority, justifies most other forms of authority, that art makes inequality seem noble and hierarchies seem thrilling. (156) 

That is, even through reproduction should destroy such authority, the "powers that be" are still using reproductions to mystify our relationship to art. Berger describes this beautifully:

For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free. They surround us in the same way as language surrounds us. They have entered the mainstream of life over which they no longer, in themselves, have power. (159, italics mine)

They no longer in themselves have power. What does this mean for us? It means that we need to pay attention how images are deployed and used in order to further certain political or cultural ends, particularly when reproductions are used to try and preserve the old authority art used to hold. If images have now become like a "language" it means that we need to realize that we write with images just as we write with language and that an image serves particular rhetorical purposes.

Kayla noted yesterday that with reproductions, artwork becomes available to the public. But Berger is telling us that there is a problem if we think that "nothing has changed except that the masses, thanks to reproductions, can now begin to appreciate art as the cultured minority once did" (160). Instead, Berger concludes:

If the new language of images were used differently, it would, through its use, confer a new kind of power. (Berger 160)

Notions about power will become very important in the Foucault piece, and, perhaps unintentionally, we must remember that we began our course with "Power"

John Berger and Marxist Criticism

A good definition of Marxist criticism:

"Marxist criticism is a type of criticism in which literary works are viewed as the product of work and whose practitioners emphasize the role of class and ideology as they reflect, propagate, and even challenge the prevailing social order. Rather than viewing texts as repositories for hidden meanings, Marxist critics view texts as material products to be understood in broadly historical terms. In short, literary works are viewed as a product of work (and hence of the realm of production and consumption we call economics)." -- (http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/poetry/critical_define/crit_marx.html). You can find more about Marxist criticism by clicking on the link. 

While this definition speaks of "literary works," the same holds true for visual works/art. As we discussed, Berger's essay speaks of the "mystification" of certain artworks. Mystification happens, according to Berger, when critics obscure the social class roles of those involved in the production of the work. In the case of Hals, there were really only 2 actors: Hals and the people he painted, which represented the institution of the pauper's house, which engaged in public charity. By arguing that Hals was painting the "human condition" rather than actual people who he has a relationship with, Berger claims that the leading author on Hals ignores certain key aspects to understand the painting. 


Berger claims that the reason we can "know the people portrayed" is not, as the one critic argues, that the painter "seduces" us into it, but because:

We accept it in so far as it corresponds to our own observation of people, gestures, faces, institutions. This is possible because we still live in a society of comparable social relations and moral values. And it is precisely this which gives the paintings their psychological and social urgency. (Berger 146)

Berger thus claims that it is not the painter's skill that allows us to somehow understand their relationship, but because we live in a world where the same sorts of relationships between the poor and rich exist. What is this relationship?

It is interesting that Berger does not offer an interpretation of the relationship between Hals and those who commissioned the painting. I would argue, due to Berger's Marxist background, that it is one of indifference and maybe even contempt. Instead of putting it into words himself, Berger says "Study this evidence and judge for yourself" --we are meant now to look at the pictures.

Compare the pictures of the Regents and Regentesses with this self-portrait of Hals:

Hals is not a rich man--his hat is side-cocked and he looks, in general, a bit disheveled. Even the painterly strokes gives him a "rough" look. Maybe he's drunk. . .


Which brings me to another point in Berger's analysis. Compare the above self-portrait with this extracted image of one of the Regents: 

Turn to page 146 to see in detail the expression of the dude with the cocked hat. Berger comments on the critic's opinion that many critics have argued this guy is drunk. The critic with which Berger is arguing with denies this: "He argues that it i was a fashion at that time to wear hates on the side of the head. He cites medical opinion to prove that the Regent's expression coudl well be the result of facial paralysis" (146). 


But Berger thinks this is all protesting too much. Maybe Hals painted the sumbitch drunk because that is how he "saw" the regents. Maybe he was suggesting that the Regent's are "human" too, but not in the context of showing our "common humanity" but in the sense that Hals saw them as ridiculous or pompous or even undeserving of their good fortune? Who knows? But the critic seems to want to explain away any suggestion that Hals could have been poking fun at the Regents or had a hostile attitude toward them. For the critic Berger is criticizing, Hals represented these men in the best of ways--it was a testament to his skill. 


I'm not saying Berger is right, but he is attempting, valiently, to overturn a majority opinion of what these pieces are "about." Berger's arguments are hard to discern sometimes, but this is why these pieces (almost all of them in Ways of Reading) calls for active reading. 


More on the "reproduction" section later. . .