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How are we seen? Might we see differently? In the episode, Berger showed the continuities between post-Renaissance European paintings of women and imagery from latter-day posters and girly magazines, by juxtaposing the different images and showing how they similarly rendered women as objects.
Berger argued that this continuity constrained how certain forms of femininity are understood, and therefore the terms on which women are able to live their lives. He taught us that photographs always need language, and require a narrative of some sort, to make sense. He also took care to differentiate how our reaction to photographs of loved ones depends on our relationship to the person portrayed. Seen in the darkroom when making the print or seen in this book when reading it, the image conjures up the vivid presence of the unknown boy.
Because he had been a painter, Berger was always a visual thinker and writer. It is an exquisite analysis that he borrows from philosopher Walter Benjamin. Knowing that the 17th-century Dutch painter Frans Hals, for example, lived in bitter poverty when he painted group portraits of well-off citizens, does indeed make you look at those works of art very differently.
With this other approach, Berger knocked down quite some sacred houses, especially those of traditional art critics and their emphasis on the creative genius and timelessness of works of art. He was forcefully criticized for it, but it must be said that he himself did not shy away from sharp polemics, also in this booklet.
His analysis of how women take into account how they are viewed especially by men is particularly lucid and unfortunately still topical. The way in which publicity influences and manipulates our visual language is also aptly articulated and represented. Berger also demonstrates the enormous impact of new techniques reprography and the camera in Berger's time , making artworks available permanently and everywhere, regardless of their context, and therefore they are seen in a different way than before.
I can imagine that 50 years ago this little book was a real eye-opener pun intended. Nevertheless, during the reading, the impression came to me that the work is not really fresh anymore. Perhaps that is because a number of his views have since become commonplace. Perhaps it is also due to the layout of the booklet, with small black-and-white illustrations. View 1 comment. Jul 07, Deborah Palmer rated it it was amazing. This book though initially written in is still relevant to the reader today especially the essays dealing with the way women are seen in society.
It is composed of seven essys, four use words and images, three only images. It discusses how women are view in society with an emphasis and concentration on European or Western culture. The images are from ads and famous European paintings. Being that I work in a museum and see paintings all day long this aspect interests me in particular.
Basical This book though initially written in is still relevant to the reader today especially the essays dealing with the way women are seen in society. Basically the book is saying that in our European based culture women are objects, men are subjects. Men survey, women are surveyed. Since women are always on display in our society, they adjust their behaviour in order to please and fit in with our male dominated society. I reference this book many times in my own personal writings. What Mr.
Berger has written still has value today. Actually in many ways not much has changed for women. We in the USA and Western Europe are a little better off because we can work, make money and have legal rights but that is not true for women in the rest of the world.
Living in a Democratic or secular society does give women more control over their lives as opposed to dictatorships and theocracies. However even in the United States our actions as women and men are based on social constructs and society's defintions of how men and women should behave towards each other.
Even how women view and interact with each other to the point that women are very competitive, jealous and vindictive in order to get or keep a man. But that is another story for discussion in the essays I have written. View all 3 comments. Apr 20, Matthew Ted rated it really liked it Shelves: 20th-century , art , non-fiction , essays , read , philosophy. I got this as a present today, and have spent the day, on and off, reading it between cake and beer and garden sunshine.
This is usually regarded as the 'most influential' book on art ever, or at least one of them. Berger writes in a clean, no-nonsense kind of way. Despite discussing nudity in art, or the history of art, or discussing the paintings printed in the book, it's never hard to follow.
I suppose someone with even no background interest in ar 62nd book of I suppose someone with even no background interest in art could read it without any trouble. That being said, without any interest in art, I'd say this book wouldn't be for you. Though the book is 'Ways of Seeing' - that is very much in relation to art.
A more suitable name may be 'Ways of Seeing Art '. But, as for me, an art lover, I found this deeply insightful and fascinating. And Berger's writing was just an added bonus as he takes us on this short romp through art.
There are many reproductions of art inside, and for some reason, the text is all bold. Not sure whose bright idea that was. View all 7 comments. If you think you like looking art and going to galleries - ha - then you need to take a minute to read and listen to this conversation Berger is going to have with you. Will add my proper in-depth review of this later as it really does deserve one. For now, I will just say that Berger makes us think: he makes us think about the impact of images, their h If you think you like looking art and going to galleries - ha - then you need to take a minute to read and listen to this conversation Berger is going to have with you.
For now, I will just say that Berger makes us think: he makes us think about the impact of images, their history, their place in society and their role in furthering capitalist agendas.
He makes us think about the image of women, the role they play in the system, the condition of modern galleries and museums, and most importantly, Berger makes us think about the modern day photograph and what it means for me as a functioning member of society - it's all very insightful and he demystifies art in a fashion which is simple to understand as far as theory goes.
Very marxist in his views and vocabulary which I know will bother some but I enjoyed that part hah. Dec 06, Mia rated it really liked it Shelves: books-with-pictures , nonfiction , made-me-think. And they truly made me think. They made me think about art as a sign, a symbol, an argument, a brag, a promise, a prison.
Berger is very clear about his purview here, which I appreciate. Though he mentions photography and advertising and film, and he draws contrasts to sculpture and Eastern art, the real subject of analysis is European oil paintings and, by extension, the rise of capitalism. There are both visual and written essays, and while I was initially wary about how well an essay told only through images would work, I was quickly won over.
Comparatively, my problems are rather slight. The book is set entirely in bold, which is weird. The cover is hideous; whose idea was it to just paste the first few paragraphs of the essay right onto the cover?! The images are in tiny and black and white and in some of the visual essays they run across the crease of the spine, rendering them nearly indiscernible. The best thing I can say about a collection of essays is that it changed my way of thinking—my way of seeing!
Who and what are the subjects? How are the people looking at me, the observer, and how are they arranged to appeal to or challenge my point of view? What sort of place would this have been hung in before it was brought to this museum? And who would have been looking at it there? And what would they have hoped to show to people who visited their home or abbey or office, to make them feel? More often than not, according to Berger, the answer to the last question is envy. May 29, Daniel Clausen rated it really liked it Shelves: books-of I first read the book in as a young freshman in a class on Popular Culture and Ideology.
I remember being overwhelmed by the wonderful insights of this book. Now, more than 20 years later, I can still appreciate the book, while at the same time being a bit more skeptical of its insights If I had to sum up the book in a few short sentences it would be this: Paintings and pictures are always for something and s I first read the book in as a young freshman in a class on Popular Culture and Ideology. If I had to sum up the book in a few short sentences it would be this: Paintings and pictures are always for something and someone.
Often, paintings and pictures express the desires of capital and the ruling class. When the artist does get a moment of triumph over the medium and its language of power, it is often a hard fought and meager one. Perhaps that short summary has done some lasting epistemic damage to the book and its meaning. After all, one of the lessons of critical works such as Berger's is that life, power, and imagery is never so simple. And yet, in my middle age years, I feel like I need critical and postmodern scholars to be less baroque in their insights and more modern.
The short summary, the abstract, with all its obfuscating simplicity is needed in order to give a very "modern" sense of order to the world. At a time when conspiracy theories and epistemic anarchy is spreading, I wonder what John Berger would make of flat-earthers, climate change denialists, and other conspiracy theorist advocates. Are they the noble anti-establishment avant garde? I tried to find anything in this book that would speak to our unsettled times.
I found brilliant insights but nothing that spoke to my own sense of unease specifically. For that reason, perhaps I enjoyed the picture essays the best this time around. Those chapters where the art and pictures were left without text to speak through me and let my anxieties and thoughts have free reign. Mar 07, Christopher Luciano rated it did not like it. All of what I picked up from this atrocity of a Book is that John Berger is a pretentious cunt. He hides behind the fact that he states he's "demystifying" art when in actuality he's giving you his opinion on the propaganda of art and how the artist doesn't exist.
Berger is merely under the assumption that all art is just a way for the elite white male All of what I picked up from this atrocity of a Book is that John Berger is a pretentious cunt. Berger is merely under the assumption that all art is just a way for the elite white male population to flaunt and reassure themselves that they are superior to the plebeians.
I'm paraphrasing of course, but this book clearly undermines the intent of the artist. In this book Berger devalues the artist by saying that their creations are merely a tool for the elite to flaunt their wealth, as is expected from a contextualist. He only gives credit to the "masters" of the medium. Whom he states surpassed all the average form of art by going outside the boundaries of standard commissioned art Such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, etc.
Berger also has the problem of most contextualists, by which I mean he tries to find meaning or more accurately make up meaning whenever possible.
One of the finest examples of this is when he described a simple livestock oil painting as, and I quote "furniture with four legs in the eyes of the viewer that emphasizes the social status of their owners. Essentially what I'm saying is that Berger's book might appeal to contextual art historians, feminists and socialists, but I feel it lacks any serious criticism or review on art as a whole.
It is less of a book about how to see art and more a way to simplify art as a commodity for wealthy, sex-driven, elitist men. Oct 21, Peycho Kanev rated it it was amazing. Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it.
The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible.
This was once achieved by extensive deprivation. Today in the developed countries it is being achieved by imposing a false standard of what is and what is not desirable. Dec 20, Pete rated it it was amazing. Apr 10, Anthony Ruta rated it really liked it Shelves: nonfiction , philosophy , essays , history , criticism.
Oct 21, Jimmy rated it really liked it Shelves: male , years , united-kingdom , poetic-essay. A book about basic visual literacy, with 7 essays, 3 of them containing only images. It's not that he's original The chapter about oil painting was especially illuminating for me, as I had never understood how to tell a "great" oil painting from a mediocre one, having no context in which to see them.
But Berger here really dissects the historical origins of the f A book about basic visual literacy, with 7 essays, 3 of them containing only images. But Berger here really dissects the historical origins of the form, and what oil really allowed artists to do that they weren't able to do before. Major turn off: the entire book is set in bold type. I have no idea why this decision was made, but the book is worth reading, despite this huge flaw.
Another smaller flaw: a book about images should definitely have been printed in color. Sep 17, Diz rated it it was amazing Shelves: fine-arts , art. This book really made me think about how to view art. In particular, the connection between the oil paintings of the last few hundred years and advertising images was something I had never thought about.
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