There are a number of consequences associated with taking pictures of art. The top picture is of Leonardo de Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The bottom picture is the original Mona Lisa in a museum. By looking at the top picture one can’t tell the scope or the size of the actual painting which in my opinion can take away a lot from the experience of appreciating a particular artwork. John Berger, in his book “Ways of Seeing,” argues that all the reproductions of images more or less distort and therefore the original painting is very much unique. One could also argue that with so many different reproductions of a painting that mystification occurred in which the original no longer is unique in what it says, but in what it is. This is the case with Mona Lisa, which is perhaps one of the most famous painting out there. Even though Mona Lisa is quite a beautiful painting, what has made it to be priceless is the fact that there is only one Mona Lisa that has been painted by Leonardo de Vinci. John Berger goes on to say that the “bogus religiosity” which now surrounds the original works of art has become the substitute for what they lost since the cameras made the paintings accessible to just about anyone. If the originals were no longer unique and exclusive as they used to be then the astonishing price tags on them must make them mysteriously so.
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