Response to Ways of Seeing

I had actually read one of Berger’s essays of the same title, dealing with art and the problem with reproduction of art. I enjoyed it and was glad to have my knowledge revamped once again on the subject. The television series was definitely more interesting than the text version, and I can say I retained more information from it. Back when there was no reproduction of art, many paintings had way more significant value since there was only one original version. This led to art only being owned by the wealthiest people. Reproduction allowed the middle class to finally own art, but some say this reproduction ruined the value of artistic pieces. I can agree with that, but owning the original of a piece is even more valuable now that there are ‘fakes’, because its almost like a competition for the most authentic version. Another point he mentions is that when there was no reproduction, certain pieces of art could only be viewed in certain places. So, he establishes that now many pieces are all over the world, does their meaning change because at first they were intended to be viewed at a certain location? I think this makes sense because say I created a work of art for a specific museum or location, and then all of a sudden it gets recreated, and stored in random places across the country. After that happens I would feel that people would not understand the real motives for the creation of this work of art because they are not viewing it in the right circumstances that I intended.