Reading Response #7 In Ways of Seeing, chapter 5, Berger focuses on the concept of reinforcing the importance of objects and materialism through oil painting. In this period of time, artists are moving away form religious art. The term “oil painting” refers to more than a technique (84). The technique is that the artist has to mix the different pigments of paint to create a desired color. Oil painting was first used during the fifteenth century in Northern Europe. These paintings were depicting new form of art, art that shows various medieval arts. Oil painting was introduced because artists wanted to create a connection between the way of seeing and possessing. A family during this period can own a painting if that family has money. However, there is no purpose of having a painting if there is no connection between the buyer and the painting. Anthropologist Levi-Strauss saw a purpose of oil painting and the connection but at the time, only to Western Art. …show more content…
Photography eventually replaced this. Oil painting was the superior medium in which to create visual images due to the vivid and highly realistic textures. Berger argues that oil painting has, because of its realism, a powerful link to ownership and the buying power of money, and so often celebrates the power of money. People who own oil paintings back then were known as the royal class, who has money to afford the realistic art. Oil paintings are works of art that shows emotions and generally cynically made to attract buyers. Some genres of oil paintings are portraits, animals, buildings, historical, and landscape. Each has a different meaning and purpose. For portraits, it is a contrast of distance and individualized presence. The artist would make the people in the portraits as stiff and hard. For landscape paintings, they are used to show off the owner’s