Berger speak about oil painting becoming something of possession but what if it all educated people about how people lived? what am i missing?
. In this tradition, the emphasis is often on objects that are buyable, suggesting a relationship between oil painting and the desire to possess. Although the literal act of oil painting has existed for centuries--pigments have been mixed with oil to create paint since the ancient world—the tradition that Berger refers to here is characterized by its emergence at around the time that capitalism began to take hold in Europe. This tradition set the norms that continue to define pictorial representation, privileging a certain sort of formal verisimilitude that continues to inform our understanding of "artistic genius." Berger begins the chapter by posing the question: "What is a love of art?" Within this tradition of oil painting, "love of art" comes to stand in for "desire to possess." This is illustrated with a painting of an art collector, depicted amongst his vast collection of paintings. In the logic of this picture—which represents the logic of oil painting in whole—paintings are, before all else, objects to be owned. The contents that these paintings depict, then, exist as images of that which the collector may possess.
