Drer and the Self-Help Brochure Walking through the Museum of Fine Arts at first seemed like a very

surr eal experience. Im not going to claim to be an avid museum goer nor am I going to claim that I am a, as Berger would say, relic specialist. I am just an average co llege student but the feelings I received from each room in the museum was overw helming to say the least. From the Egyptian relics to the greco-roman frescos to the art of the Italian Renaissance, I felt transported through time with each r oom I walked through. However, for the first time I wasnt gawking at the massive paintings or the elaborate statues. This time I paid a lot of attention to the s mall detailed portraits and drawings as I felt they are many times neglected. The engraving The Prodigal Son amid the Swine which was considered a mas terpiece by German printmaker Albrecht Drer around 1496, was not the first and ce rtainly not the only piece of art that caught my eye but was by far the most int riguing. This engraving depicts a man, who is clearly in a low point in his life . It is not a very usual depiction of sacred art with cute cherubs in the backgr ound or halos in the sky but a depiction of a man who is down on his luck. Not o nly did this unusual representation catch my eye but the great detail and obviou s effort put into the engraving made me chose it. The best part about this piece was that the Museum of Fine Arts had not only one but two similar but different renditions of it. The first was one of th e first printings and the second was printed nearly 30 years after its inception . The first one was darker and had a much more ominous aura about it. This is be cause when Drer first made the engraving plate he would not clean the extra metal which in turn retained more ink and gave the picture richer, darker tones. The darkness and detail of this engraving gave a very ominous feeling as if the emot ion the man was feeling was bleeding out through the ink. Then turning to the second printing, which in this case would be conside red a reproduction, I felt a similar feeling but as if the reproduction wasnt as compelling as the original. Berger says, One might argue that all reproductions m ore or less distort, and that therefore the original painting is still in a sens e unique(107). At first I didnt agree with Bergers stance on reproductions taking a way the value and uniqueness of an original, but seeing an original and a reprod uction side by side I started to see what Berger was getting at. The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe(97). This quote by Berger was running through my head the entire time i was looking a t The Prodigal Son. I wondered if it was meant to be pro-Christian or possibly r efuting the ideas of Christianity. My personal belief was that it couldnt possibl y be a sacred piece of art because it didnt seem to have the characteristics I pr esumed all sacred pieces like cherubs, halos, or blatant depictions of God. It depicted a man who is clearly down on his luck as he is forced to su rvive by eating with pigs. Not only is he eating with pigs but the pigs wont even let him eat the food until they have gotten their full, which since were dealin g with pigs seems fairly unlikely. The man is on his knee praying, presumably to change his fortunes around. Anybody regardless of creed can see that the artist isnt showing this man in a good light, so I came to the conclusion that it was n ot made for the benefit of Christians. After reading the Parable of the Prodigal Son I realized that my preconceived notion had tainted the way i saw the painti ng and that I wasnt even close to seeing it the way that Drer had intended. This engraving is to many on the same level as work from Italian Renaiss ance artists Michelangelo and da Vinci. I think that not knowing this fact was good because I came into it without the assumption of a great work of art becaus e the way people look at it is affected by a whole series of learnt assumptions a bout art(99). I picked this work because I was under the impression that it wasnt some grand masterpiece crafted by a Renaissance great. Even so I still came into it with the assumption that it was not a sacred piece of art which affected the way I saw The Prodigal Son and limited me as to the way I viewed it. The beauty of The Prodigal Son is that Drer gave a modern and German feel ing to it. Instead of trying to imagine what the man would have looked like, ins

tead of trying to imagine what the farm would have looked like, instead of tryin g to portray emotions he never experienced, he portrayed what he was already fam iliar with. Drer characterizes the man with, at the time, modern clothing instead of trying to copy the clothing that he would have worn in biblical times. Not o nly did he illustrate the man in modern day but he also illustrated the whole th ing in modern day. From the layout of the farm to the architecture of the buildi ngs it all represents what would be found in 15th century Germany as apposed to biblical Israel. After finding out these apparently insignificant pieces of information i t drastically changed the way I saw it. I no longer saw this sacred image but in stead I saw a completely different story. It wasnt about the Parable of the Prodi gal Son anymore to me but it was the story of the many people that were just dow n on their luck. It seemed to have so many more applications than just of a reli gious nature and made me appreciate it that much more. Now that I can see this image in a different light i wonder what applica tions it could be used for today and to me it seems endless. In a world where so many people battle personal failures everyday, I think it might be a great adve rtisement for different self-help or outpatient programs. The real question is: t o whom does the meaning of the art of the past properly belong? to those who can apply it to their own lives, or to a cultural hierarchy of relic specialists?(11 7) I think that it belongs to the people who can apply it to their own lives. Th ere is a serious message within Drers Prodigal Son that if applied to peoples own l ives through self-help programs, would benefit them very much. I would have this picture be on the front of a pamphlet for pretty much any self-help program that there is. If I wanted the program to be religious the n on the inside it would have a brief summary of the Parable of the Prodigal Son . If I wanted the program to be secular I would include a story that has the sam e allegory. The reason why I think self-help programs would benefit from this pa rable is because the story is basically that a man realizes that what he has bee n doing is wrong and wants to correct the mistakes that he has made, which is th e point of most self-help programs. I think that as in most art the power or authority that it has over peop le is all in the eye of the beholder. For instance if a person with a deep seeded drug problem was to enter him/herself in an outpatient program he would first be presented with a brochure with The Prodigal Son on the front and then given an explanation of the parable of the Prodigal Son. I think that this would have a m uch greater power and influence on the person than say if they were to go to a m useum and just happen to see the engraving in its original form. The authority do es change very much so depending which context it is displayed in, likewise the authority changes with each person who views it. I believe that the generalizati on that a reproduction that is used for the means of something the original was not intended for destroys the value and uniqueness of the original is a huge ove rstatement. For some people a reproduction may instill a watered down feeling of the original or even a flat out hatred for the reproduction. To the same effect an original may instill a similar feeling as a reproduction but not the same as the reproduction because the reproduction is what really changed their live.

Works Cited Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. Eds. Davi d Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Boston: Bedford, 2008. 95-123. Pegues, Emily. "What is Art? What is an Artist? Engraving by Durer." Art History . Web. 07 Feb. 2010. <http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/artartists/printsdu

rer.html>. "Albrecht Drer." Wikipedia. Wikimedia. Web. 3 Feb. 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/ Albrecht_Drer>.