A comment on expert from “Steps Toward a Small Theory of the Visible,” in The Shape of a Pocket by John Berger:

A comment on expert from “Steps Toward a Small Theory of the Visible,” in The Shape of a Pocket by John Berger:

At the begging of the excerpt author criticizes on how humans lost “necessity” in their life which sharpens their spirit and forms some kind of comedy and tragedy. He basically thinks that lack of “necessity” blocks humans from sharing their experiences and leaving the others single-handed when it is time for them to deal with pains. After this he mentions that he finds a secret in his dream, which is an ability to have a close look to everything. In his dream, he realizes that everything makes more sense with a closer look. Basically he means that the “details” are a “necessity” in life and in a painting. He believes that the lack of “necessity” in life destroys the uniqueness of life and creates a stereotyped and a devastating life and a painting of this life. He tells us that making small changes gives pleasures to others. This is actually pretty close to what David Goodman told us at the first class of architecture. He told us that he can change the mood of the room just by closing the curtains. This basically means that by changing small details, we can force people to have many different feelings or thoughts about a place. After this the author supports the idea that a painting is an affirmation of the visible by giving examples of paintings through the life of mankind. The author criticizes the painters by not getting close enough with their paintings. He thinks that you should get close in order to maintain life and emotion in your paintings. He claims that, the first painters were caveman and they used to draw their prey and getting too close to their prey might cause their death. He thinks that this instinct caused painters to not get too close with their paintings causes them to have a copying distance. Also he thinks you might get lost in details by getting too close to your painting. He basically claims that “likeness is something left behind invisibly” (19, Berger John).

                The claims of the author are correct about realistic drawings. However getting too much involved with the details might cause lack of creativity in your paintings. If you are a realist you have to represent what is there in the best way that you can. Furthermore being too concerned about details would block styles like post-impressionism like Van Gogh used in his paintings. He used yellow in odd parts in his paintings. However this yellow formed an incredible contrast in the painting and made the whole thing more emotional but not realistic. None can actually represent a “Starry Night” like Van Gogh. I believe that, many realistic painters can actually represent a starry night in a beautiful way. However, Van Gogh’s style destroys the whole order and details in the painting and makes a chaos but a chaos of emotions which triggers many more thoughts and emotions on human’s heads.

                Last but not least, going to deep on details in field such as architecture might cause you to have different mediums and incredible results. However as I mentioned above details are not the only things that causes emotions in paintings but it is the style and the brush strokes that causes the different emotions that you get when you look at a painting. In the end from this excerpt, I understood that you shouldn’t be afraid to get close with your object but too many details might cause lack of creativity and plenty of reality.

Mavi Deniz Koçak