Berger includes the painting but without much discussion, as though he were, in fact, leaving it for you. Or you may choose any other work of art that you think is worthy of your attention. Write an essay that shows others how they might best understand your chosen painting. You should offer this lesson in the spirit of John Berger. Imagine that you are doing this work for him, perhaps as his apprentice.
Original paintings are silent and still in a sense that information never is.
Even a reproduction hung on a wall is not comparable in this respect for the original that silence and stillness permeate the actual material, the paint in which one follows the traces of the painter's immediate gestures. Berger demonstrates one route of approach, for example, in his reading of the Hals paintings, where he asks questions about the people and objects and their relationships to the painter and the viewer. What the painting might be made to say, however, depends on the viewer's expectations, his or her sense of the questions that seem approriate or possible. Berger argues that, because of the way art is currently displayed, discussed, and reproduced, the viewer expects only to be mystified. For this paper, imagine that you are working against the silence abd mystification Berger describes.