Итак, законченное сочинение. Вот:
The Way of Seeing is Individual
читать дальшеIn his essay “Ways of Seeing” John Berger, and English
critic, states that how people see things is affected by their own beliefs
and knowledge (page 134). The author discusses that each person sees a
painting in their own way. Berger states, “Yet, although every image
embodies a way of seeing, our perception or appreciation of an image
depends also upon our own way of seeing” (page 136). Whatever lies within
us will determine how we perceive what is seen by us. My objective is
to analyze idea through my own experience because this is the surest
way to comprehend clearly. I want to try and see if this is really true.
I want to see my way of seeing, and why I see things the way I do.
By visiting the Portland Art Museum I had an opportunity to look at
different works of art. I was looking for a painting that would not only
appeal to me but would raise questions. After a while I entered a room
where I saw a big painting, which covered more than half the wall
vertically and more than that horizontally, and knew that I have found the
one I was searching for to use in my analysis of Berger’s idea about
individual ways of seeing. This work of art caught my attention more than
any other. By reading the plaque, I found out that this painting was
made by Eugene Berman and is called Time and the Monuments. At first, I
decided to go on and look for another painting, but after searching
further, I have found none as appealing to me as this one. I was
fascinated by it. The painting looked as if no words are needed to share an
idea with someone, because I could see everything. There is this feeling
of something beyond words. Even silence can speak. It spoke to me. I
felt a connection. Although this is not a realist painting (I tend to
favor realistic art), I loved it. I was looking at it the longest,
because, firstly, there was so much to see, secondly, it was interesting.
In this particular painting, Berman portrays the effects time has here
on Earth. When I found this work of art in the museum, it amazed me
with its enormous size and the awe the composition presented as the
whole. As the name suggests, the painting portrays monuments, stone
monuments. It’s unusual in the presentation of the passing of time. In
fact, there is a fading effect in the painting. It’s created by
see-through parts of people and stones. There are parts where the object can be
seen clearly but I can also see what is behind it, the lines and a
little of the color too. It is amazing how the artist had done this. I
have never thought it possible.
The first thing that caught my attention in Time and the Monuments was
a person leaning against a stone column. The man was not in the center
of the painting but was closest to the front. He was looking down with
a weary gaze and had ragged clothing. The clothes were of a faraway
time period of around the time of the 1st century or so. When I looked
closer I could see that even though a part of his head was behind the
column, I could still see the shape of it. Then I started to look at
other parts of the painting and noticed that this see-through effect was
used throughout. Berman painted another person, a woman. But she is
hardly visible because he positioned her sitting down with her head
bowed. In that way only her head with flowing red hair is visible and a part
of the dress she is wearing. A little fountain-like structure is
blocking a part of the woman. It is directly in front of her and in the
center of the painting. I feel that she is tired and/or crying. Farther
away from the viewer are two more people. One of them is positioned
behind the woman but higher up. He is visible through an opening in the
arch-like monument behind the redhead lady. The man is standing not
looking at the viewer and looks weary too. The fourth person is a man
partially lying on the floor, positioned between the woman and the man
leaning against the pillar. That last man looks like he is dying. The
viewer can see the floor tiles through his body. He is like a shadow.
And there are also pencil marks visible, like it’s still a sketch, not
a finished painting. That gives an effect of time passing. I feel
like the people were used here to portray that we do not live long and
that time is not merciful to us, because the people in the painting look
weary and distressed at what is happening to them and around them. It’s
destruction around, and everything is falling apart, but at the same
time new life forms. All of those people seem to be from different time
periods but they are in the same picture. An ongoing circle of life is
portrayed here through all of the people.
The enormous stone monuments caught my gaze and I
lingered there for a while. The archway behind the red-headed woman in the
center has a doorway with only one door. That door is closed and
colored a faded red color. It is wooden. The stone itself is chipped at
angles and there is grass growing on top of the structure. There are two
pillars. The one on the right is what the man is leaning on, and the
second one looks almost the same but is on the left of the picture and
turned a little. It has a rounded top, colored faded gold, looking like
a sun with wavy rays sticking out of it. The bottom corners are
adorned by stone fence-like identical structures. All of it gives a feeling
that a long time is passing in this one picture that is still in
itself. It doesn’t move, the composition is presented all at once, but I
know that there is not just one moment that has been captured here, but
many. A painting usually portrays one moment in time, yet this piece of
art is breaking that pattern.
The painting also has pieces of rotten wood and rags lying and
hanging here and there. There is one spectacular branch of a thorny shrub.
It is located near the woman, in the center. The thorn defines the
sorrow of the lady. The floor is made of tile and it’s all chipping away
and pieces are lying around. And the sky is enormous. It shows the
passing of time by the shape and color of the clouds. The colors are
purplish-bluish on the clouds that are shaped like long stretched-out
feathers. It looks like a sunset. But on the top of the sky there are
some rounded, small white clouds. They contradict the theme of the sunset
and show that even though it might be the end of a day, there will be
another. In the distance, there seem to be mountains and plains, but
they are very blurry and hard to distinguish. They show the distance and
that time is stretching just like the earth. We can look through time
just like we look into the distance. The colors of the composition as
a whole look faded. Even though the painting has reds in it, they are
faded and not vibrant. All of the other colors just add to the effect
of dying and time passing, just like the moods of the people and the
falling apart of the stones and wood and clothes. All things pass away.
Only time is always here.
After looking at the whole composition and trying to get the meaning, I
started interrogating it, talking to stones, people, debris, colors,
and sky. “We were here the longest time and still are standing even
though we are chipped, we will stand for a long time. We are the
strongest”, told me the monuments. Stones told me about people too. “The people
have been telling us their sorrows, how they are dying and can’t help
it. Stones have a tendency to store the information, people’s secrets,
and keep them. We are silent, but at the same time can speak volumes
of history. You just have to ask in the right way, look deep into each
crevice made by time, study the shape and you’ll find out a lot.” I
talked to the monuments on the painting and asked them, “Tell me about
time. How do you see it? What is it?” They said, “Time is passing us
by. We have seen different times. At first we were new, clean stones
made into beautiful monuments, but with the passing of the time, with the
coming and going of different eras, different people and civilizations,
the time had an effect on us. We are fading now. Time is stronger
than stone. Now time is putting weeds on us - stones, destroying the
fresh look.” But the stones become even more appealing with this
mysterious aging look. They look ancient and wise. They know time and history.
There is a lot to learn from them.
When I finished questioning the monuments, I went on to talk to the
people in the painting. They were so melancholy, with sadness penetrating
their images. I asked them, “Why are you looking so sad and tired?
What has brought you to this state?” They each told me their stories.
Each life – a tragedy mixed with everything else that happens in life.
One man said, “The time is passing us by, wearing us down. Time is
stronger than we are.” “What they you doing?” was another question from
me. The reply was, “Each of us is mourning and contemplating on the
passing of time. We come to the stones to find protection, and find none.
There is no power in the stones to save people from time. Time flies
away, taking our lives with it into the unknown of the future.” The
woman told me, “Look at the horizon.” I looked. Then she asked, “What do
you see?” I replied, “I see an endless stretch of land and mountains in
the distance.” Then I heard her crying. She said, “I had seen it too
and the mountains are the breakers of life. My end is approaching.
There is still a valley before all of us, but there is a breaker, an end.”
So, that is why they are all sad and thoughtful. They are thinking
about time and their lives.
Coming back to the essay Berger wrote, “Ways of Seeing”, I ask myself
how my own beliefs and knowledge affected my way of seeing Time and the
Monuments. My own understanding of time made me see at this painting
the way I did. Now, I agree with Berger that we all see things
differently, according to our own way of standards. As he says, mystification
doesn’t help to understand an image. Berger stated that, “Mystification
is the process of explaining away what might be otherwise evident”
(page 140). To mystify a painting would be to focus on the texture and the
brushstrokes and the artistry of the painter, and all the technical
things. To find meaning, we must look with ourselves. There is no one
correct way of interpreting a work of art. As Berger continues to
explain his thoughts, he writes, “Yet, when an image is presented as a work
of art, the way people look at it is affected by a whole series of
learnt assumptions about art” (page 136). The assumptions he talks about
are those of how we understand and view beauty, truth, genius,
civilization, form, status, taste, etc (page 136). All people are different, and
each of us is going to see differently. The interpretation depends on
the connection with the sight, what we think of it, what we feel, and
what are our beliefs towards what is depicted in the image. Through
reading Berger’s essay and the experience at the museum, now I know that
who a person is will determine the way he/she will see a certain image.