John Berger’s Ways of Seeing and Sylva Barnet’s A Short Guide to Writing About Art both teach valuable concepts about the nature of art, its purpose, and its significance relative to the context it was created in. I will apply their concepts of what art is and what it can be when I visit the Modern Art exhibition at MOMA to better gain an understanding of what an artwork truly represents, and what qualities make something seen or valued as art.
Berger views art as beholden to the spectator. Ways of Seeing argues that everything a person knows in this world is created by whatever their senses can discern of the world around them. To him, art does not and cannot exist in a vacuum, for the spectator’s view of the artwork is constantly influenced by the other information he has. If the information the spectator has does not make sense or is not enough to make an opinion, the art begins to take on a sort of mystical quality. When Berger states that some justifications of art of the past “can no longer make sense in modern times”, that “inevitably, it mystifies” (Berger 11), he means that the spectator is unable to fully understand the circumstances around which the art was created, so the artwork gains unknown or mysterious attributes which it would not normally have.
I can apply Berger’s concept of art to my MOMA viewing by acting as an informed spectator, gaining information about the context of the art as well as the artist. As each person views art differently because they have a different set of information to draw from, I also aim to try to discern what the artist themselves saw when they created the art, and what information they used to create it with.
Barnet views art as a universal concept, but also one that has little boundaries. She views art as a more abstract concept than simply a painting or object. Instead, Barnet views traditional artwork with the same mindset as one would see in a famous, oft-contested book or movie. Barnet advocates viewing art through careful analysis and having an understanding not just of the artwork itself, but what its purpose is and why it was created.
Barnet’s concepts of art are also applicable to my MOMA viewing, especially given the abstract nature of some aspects of modern art. Through her concepts, I understand that even things such as the room or gallery that the artwork is hung in or the medium it is shown through are important to understanding the artwork as a whole. By combining these two authors’ schools of critical thinking and observation, I feel much more prepared to view the MOMA exhibitions with an eye towards what the art is truly expressing.
