Christopher Siters

ENGL 15
Dr Champagne
Magicians are masters of deception; watch what the right hand is doing so that what the

left hand is doing goes unnoticed. But magicians are not the only ones who are good at this.

“Governing” bodies, in positions of power and authority in one capacity or another, such as the

clergy, royalty, aristocracy, et cetera, all these entities are able to capitalize on the deceiving of

the lower classes, and they have gotten quite good at it over hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

In his essay Ways of Seeing, John Berger, (1972) says that “Seeing comes before words. The

child looks and recognizes before it can speak,”; he goes on to say that we only see what we look

at, and thus that looking is a conscious decision we make. Turning one’s head/body or directing

one’s attention is an act of choice.

Often, pictures are a better source of information than words; “images are more precise

and richer than literature,” (Berger 108), and they say that a picture is worth 1,000 words, so we

are actively choosing information to process, whether it is a conscious decision or not. Berger

argues that, while not to detract from the actual artistry, art is a historical record. Artists paint

what they see and how they feel, in the hopes that we will be able to see and feel the same. Some

words from certain languages are untranslatable, but non-verbal communication has been seen to

be fairly universal; a smile is the same in every language. Art is just that, it is a silent dialogue

between the artist and their audience, and much like language, the meaning of works of art can

be mistranslated from what the “author” meant, or the meaning can be entirely fabricated with no

basis in respect to the artist and their vision, especially if the artist is dead; obviously they cannot

speak for themselves.

Mystification is just that, the process of fabricating history, altering the meaning and

purpose of certain aspects of the past in order to instill an ideology; “b: an obscuring especially

of capitalist or social dynamics (as by making them equivalent to natural laws) that is seen in
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Marxist thought as an impediment to critical consciousness,” (Merriam-Webster). This is

demonstrated in the notion that history is written by the winners. Colonists “mystified” peoples

of other cultures, dehumanizing these foreigners to the colonists’ countrymen in an attempt to

justify their actions against those peoples and receive support.

History, including things like great works of art, is held by gatekeepers (not to mention

many other resources); the majority does not belong to the public. When art is kept from being

viewed, it is being mystified in the sense that a “privileged minority is striving to invent a

history,” (Berger 108) to justify a “ruling” class which no longer makes sense in modern society.

Seeing the present clearly leads to people asking the right questions about the past, which could

ultimately lead to the downfall of the bourgeoisie; in Marxist context, the bourgeoisie are the

capitalist class who own most of society’s wealth and means of production. “History always

constitutes a relation between a present and its past. Consequently, fear of the present leads to

mystification of the past. The past is not for living in; it is a well of conclusions from which we

draw in order to act,” (Berger 108). If society only see what one person/group wants them to see,

and that one person/group tells society how they should feel about it, all the critical thinking

skills go out the window, and what is left are sheep who do not know their own history, who

cannot think for themselves, and are incapable of realizing that they have been mystified into

submission and how to escape and rectify this oppressive societal construct.

If one considers Berger’s Marxist ideologies, the concept of mystification makes sense.

Karl Marx proposed the idea of progressing from interpretive philosophy towards transformative

philosophy, i.e., philosophy must be made reality, “transforming both the world itself and human

consciousness of it,” (McLellan, D., Marxism, Encyclopedia Britannica). McLellan goes on to

say that
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‘All that is called history is nothing else than the process of

creating man through human labour, the becoming of nature for

man. Man has thus evident and irrefutable proof of his own

creation by himself.’ Understood in its universal dimension, human

activity reveals that ‘for man, man is the supreme being.’ It is thus

vain to speak of God, creation, and metaphysical problems. Fully

naturalized humans are sufficient unto themselves: they have

recaptured the fullness of humanity in its full liberty.

Marx argues that in capitalist societies, individuals are not truly free and suffer from being

“alienated beings” not at home in their world. This alienation stems from the fact that [in

capitalist societies] more production by the individual equals less consumption by the individual

and the more “value” the laborer creates, the less they value themselves, causing the labor and

the fruit thereof to become foreign. In this system, labor denies the fullness of humanity; “man is

made alien to man,” (Chambre & McLellan).

In addition to this economic alienation, other forms of political and ideological alienation

ensue, “…which offer a distorted representation of and an illusory justification of a world in

which the relations of individuals with one another are also distorted,” (Chambre & McLellan).

This is what Berger is trying to convey via his concept of mystification. The purposeful

distortion of this relation between individuals in order to justify a continued and ever-expanding

power differential between the classes.

To further assist in illustrating the phenomenon of mystification, I found two articles

about art reviews for Leonardo DaVinci’s famous Mona Lisa. In a 1917 review published in The
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Dr Champagne
Art World, Petronius Arbiter discusses the Mona Lisa (or La Joconde). His first sentence about

why this is a great portrait states that, “In the first place, the whole work radiates a certain

distinction, all is refined and uncommon; one feels the lady is a born aristocrat.” This

immediately screams “mystification.” The fact that Arbiter is saying that the Mona Lisa was

born to a higher station reinforces the ideology that social status, power, wealth, et cetera are

innate. One is either born to a higher class or not, equating this inequality with a natural law.

Because people are being told she is refined, it adds to this distancing between classes and serves

to bolster Arbiter’s argument that “…true democracy in life and art means the people plus the

aristocracy, refinement plus power,” insinuating that democracy cannot function without an

aristocracy reigning over the people, and that distinction (between the people and the aristocracy)

was “…already settled in the artist’s mind….” The pyramidal configuration of her folded hands

as the base imbues the work with “…power which we cannot escape and helps to give it its

eternal distinction and nobility.” She does have a certain power, that much can be agreed upon,

but this idea of “eternal distinction and nobility” is only eternal because Mona Lisa has been

mystified not just to the point where it is expensive, it is priceless. She has been so far removed

from society (for so long) that it is impossible not to develop a sense of distinction and nobility

because the general public cannot relate to her, cannot relate to DaVinci.

All this effort went into discerning her as an obvious aristocrat, yet the part that most

people puzzle over, her expression, is “really not that mysterious at all.” Arbiter describes it as a

“…state of mental alertness aroused in the soul of a highly intellectual and exquisitely refined

woman”, which is a subtle reference to the idea that only aristocrats could be intelligent and

refined, because that was the natural law. He goes on to suggest that the Mona Lisa typifies the

idea of the “eternal feminine,” which is inherently racist since he is suggesting that the ideal
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Dr Champagne
woman, the true nature of beauty, is this aristocratic white woman, and he even insinuates that

she was “…most likely, also discreetly in love.” While it does assert that the Mona Lisa is one of

the greatest paintings in history, which many can agree with, however the entirety of the review

is dripping with mystification.

Another review by Paul Barolsky in a volume of Source: Notes in the History of Art

(13(2) pp. 15-16, 1994), the Mona Lisa’s higher status is mentioned, however, Barolsky

discusses the dialogue occurring between DaVinci and the viewer, “lies in the dialogue between

it and the beholder.” Her familial name, Giocondo, is referenced for the fact that the Italian word

giocondità translates to “…the state of the soul when it is content or serene” and is used to

illustrate the notion that she is psychologically superior and that one looks at her from their

perspective of psychological incompleteness. In this position of subordination, the viewer is

subject to her attention. This makes one ask questions like “why is she observing me?” or “what

is she thinking about [me]?”, throwing one’s sense of self, one’s position in the world,

everything into question

For if the Mona Lisa is fictional and she is primarily looking at us,

making us the subject of her penetrating gaze, then who in the end

are we, what are we that she is mindful of us? …the figment of an

imaginary creature’s imagination? (Barolsky, 16).

Obviously, Barolsky does discuss the idea of her being “above” the average person and he

suggests that her family name, meaning “mental serenity”, is perhaps the reference to her

mysterious smile, or the smile references the name. This could be tied to the idea that her

demeanor is a direct reflection of who she is, who she was born as, a member of a white
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aristocratic family, suggesting that being white and wealthy are the keys to mental serenity.

However, he does go on to ask questions such as “who or what are we?” prompting the viewer to

ask these questions of themselves. His appraisal of her psychological superiority and

commanding attitude may indeed be the product of mystification, but ultimately, I think the

questions that Barolsky mentioned circumvent that notion and help the reader understand not so

much what to question, but to question in the first place. Much like an apple a day can keep the

doctor away, a healthy dose of skepticism can help keep people from being deceived and

exploited.
Christopher Siters
ENGL 15
Dr Champagne
References

Arbiter, P. (1917). A Great Work of Art: “Portrait of Mona Lisa” by Leonardo Da Vinci. The Art

World, 2(2), 160–162. https://doi.org/10.2307/25587912

Barolsky, P. (1994). “MONA LISA” EXPLAINED. Source: Notes in the History of Art, 13(2),

15–16. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23205051

Berger, J. (1972). Ways of seeing. In Bartholomae, D., Petrosky, A., Ways of reading: An

anthology for writers. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's. Sixth ed., 2002. 0312258976.

pp. 104-127.

Chambre, H., and McLellan, D. (2021, December 14). Marxism. Encyclopedia Britannica.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Marxism

Dr. Harris, B., and Dr. Zucker, S. (2015, December 10). Titian, Madonna of the Pesaro Family.

Smarthistory. https://smarthistory.org/titian-madonna-of-the-pesaro-family/

Mendelssohn, J. (2022, June 7). Ways of seeing at 50: An icy blast of a book about male

voyeurism, art, capitalism, and so much more. The Conversation.

https://theconversation.com/ways-of-seeing-at-50-an-icy-blast-of-a-book-about-male-

voyeurism-art-capitalism-and-so-much-more-182285

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Mystification. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mystification