Journal Blog # 3

     When we finished discussing John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, I clicked with one of the main ideas that the author was presenting. That main idea was that during the time period 1500 to 1900, the oil painting was a medium through which the ruling class, or the people in power during the time, had influence of what image they wanted to convey to the public of the present and the public of the future, thus having control of the image of the past and how people will remember it.  It reminded of an e-mail that my brother sent me not too long ago. It was called “10 People You Probably Didn’t Know Were Black.” It turns out that Alessandro de Medici, the first Duke of Florence, Italy, was of African descent, being born by a black female servant and Giulio de Medici (or Pope Clement VII) who later appointed him as the ruler of Italy. However, the fact that he was black was rarely talked about and the oil paintings of him during that time portrayed him as olive skinned and gives no hint that he had African blood. What is weird is that since he was ruler of Italy, he was technically part of the ruling class of the time. So did the artists during his years in office portray him to be more Italian in feature to have him relate more to the people he ruled over, or were they painting him lighter-skinned to have him remembered that way? And that is the power of the oil painting. At first I thought that Berger’s idea that oil paintings, as an art form, served the ruling class or those in power as a method of having control of the quintessential image of the times was highly exaggerated. Now I see his idea through a different perspective.