Chapter 5. Berger compares and contrast two self-portraits by Rembrandt in order to demonstrate the difference between creating an average (typical) artwork and an exceptional one. Which self-portrait is average. Which is exceptional, and why? (p.110-112)

To separate oneself from this tradition, then, requires an enormous degree of effort. Berger offers Rembrandt as one example of an artist who successfully divorced himself from the norms of the oil painting tradition—a shift that was fundamental to his reputation for mastery. He compares two self-portraits. The first, painted according to the conventions of this tradition, depicts nominally happy subjects, but conveys a sense of existential emptiness, richly advertising the subjects' good fortune and yet giving a sense of formality and rigidity beneath its veneer of happiness. In the second portrait, painted three decades later, the luscious, tangible details that characterized typical oil painting are absent. Only the painter remains, and his face is the most detailed area of the painting. All that's left in this painting, says Berger, is "the question of existence"—Rembrandt has successfully reappropriated the medium, refocusing it on deeper questions that the superficial glorification of material property.

I'm thinking: B. Do you earlier work is average (typical) because it follows tradition does later work is exceptional because your brakes from tradition