Publicity is act of creating the mundane into expressive and at times extravagant portrayals of the “real world”. Berger purports and I agree that most modern advertising is either reminiscent or directly representative of old oil paintings have created a new type of art called publicity. As a last though Berger begins to explain the corollary between past classics and modern advertising. Near the end of his book, Berger really began to speak to me clearly and concisely in a way that has spoken true even after thirty years of publication. Over time the painting has continued to baffle experts and commoners alike. I think actually the Mona Lisa could serve as an exception to the loss of mysticism rule. They have reportedly felt ambivalent to the original, because of the actual size or hype and mystery surrounding it. Did this act detract or add to the mystery of the original painting? I have never seen the Mona Lisa in person, but friends have seen it and been confounded by its presence. This act caused the world to look again at DaVinci as well as many other renaissance artists for clues to secrecy. This may have been true at the 1972 publication, but is it true today? Dan Brown in a sense re-mystified the painting and artist with his DaVinci Code book.
In the book he used DaVinci’s Mona Lisa as an example of a painting that has lost the intended mystery, due to over reproduction. “Original paintings are silent and still in a sense that information never is” wrote Berger. If memory serves me correctly, I already had a vague grasp of the concept Berger explored involving mysticism and its involvement in the “deterioration” of the original work after it has been copied repeatedly. Mysticism was an early takeaway lesson I garnered from the book. The first four chapters are nicely balanced to illustrate the key points around the topics (perspective, tone, and mysticism were all covered in the early chapters). The thinking in question can be subconscious or blatantly apparent in their individual approach to the use of design properties such as contrast (tonal or sizes), perspective, sex appeal, and sometimes-fanciful escapism. This book was a fantastic way to introduce deeply common and yet important factors that relate to how a designer “thinks” about his/her design. Ways of Seeing by John Berger was written in the early 1970’s as a companion to the BBC television series (available on YouTube) of the same name.
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