Yamaç Örsoğlu Mehmet Zeki Giritli ACWR101 30 October 2017 John Berger is a well known author and art critic. In his article “ Ways of Seeing” (1972) he claims that when people encounter an art piece that get affected by a series of learnt assumptions. His concept, “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled” grows from his ideas about how people’s minds and perspectives get affected by whatever they are surrounded by in the world. In his article, at the beginning, he tries to explain the difference between seeing and looking by telling that looking is an act of choice. Later on, Berger introduces another concept called “mystification”. He is concerned about how art gets mystified by a so called “upper class” in order to get their own means of satisfaction. What happens when art gets mystified ? It creates confusion in minds about the past, due to the world, surrounding them and all the misassumptions that have been thought to individuals by society. However, even mystification has some ways that makes art more attractable without aiming for it. Throughout his article, Berger (1972, p.7) keeps talking about the relationship between the past and present and how this affects art. Well, in order to understand or criticize and art piece properly you need to have the knowledge on art history as well as modern art. With this ideology, Berger is claiming how important understanding and experiencing today clearly is so that we can act in order to question and understand the past. Another point made by Berger about the relation of the past and the present is that “history” always constitutes a relation between a past and its present. First of all, the concept of history is not a thing that always peaks in minds of modern people when they are talking about art. Traditional art , the so called high art, which is being practiced for much longer than modern art, covers most of art history of all time. However in 21st century modern art is very popular and its entire purpose is being independent, original, free from any time period and open to any kind of perspective. There have been many different ideologies and art movements throughout time but art is about creating an image or a object that will represent an idea or emotion. And also in the present world originality is what makes art valuable most of the time which means that you do not have to understand today or yesterday or tomorrow in order to create some artistic work. Berger was also concerned about how mystification changes the meaning of an art piece which damages the entire process of experiencing art. But art does not have to always represent a specific meaning. Art can be done without any meaning or purpose which could even mean lots of different ideas and views from lots of different individuals. From a complete different perspective, mystification could be seen from its positive effects. Most important one being, “attracting” more people. For example by creating a fancy composition or explaining an art work in a very complex way may give a different opinion than what the artist intended however it absolutely gets more people looking at it. Attention is like water for an artist. Most of them crave attention because art needs to be appreciated so it can get the value it deserves. Real art should take a life time to master if such a thing is possible. Being and artist where art is not loved or respected is very difficult for any artist. This situation is very discouraging which is a feeling artists should stay away from. “ Mystification is the process of explaining away what would otherwise be evident” says Berger (1972, p.10). He also claims that mystification has little to do with words. What is described in the article is manipulation. Berger has a very strong argument there but it does not make sense how words have little to do with mystification if its purpose is manipulation. Creating a deep composition about an art piece is a very strong way if improving it. Berger’s ideas might show difference when they are though again considering all the factors of todays facts about art. However even though mystification might create attraction which is good ; it might also have terrible consequences, mixing art history and consequently mixing the ways people think and create even more confusion. So such attempts should be avoided.