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  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-berger/selected-essays-of-john-berger/yet-why-should",
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  "text": "Yet why should an artist's way of looking at the world have any meaning for us? Why does it give us pleasure? Because, I believe, it increases our awareness of our own potentiality. Not of course our awareness of our potentiality as artists ourselves. But a way of looking at the world implies a certain relationship with the world, and every relationship implies action. The kind of actions implied vary a great deal. ... A work of art can, to some extent, increase an awareness of different potentialities in different people. The important point is that a valid work of art promises in some way or another the possibility of an increase, an improvement. Nor need the word be optimistic to achieve this; indeed, its subject may be tragic. For it is not the subject that makes the promise, it is the artist's way of viewing his subject. Goya's way of looking at a massacre amounts to the contention that we ought to be able to do without massacres.",
  "language": "en",
  "author": {
    "name": "John Berger",
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    "title": "Selected Essays of John Berger",
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  "page": 18,
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  "topics": [
    {
      "name": "art",
      "slug": "art",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/art"
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    {
      "name": "human potential",
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