11).īetween 15 the main medium of visual art was oil painting. Berger believes that this obscurity (which he calls mystification) was planned and deliberate “because a privileged minority is striving to invent a history which can retrospectively justify the role of the ruling classes.” (p. However, if an image from the past is elevated to the status of a work of art, its meaning is obscured by learned and academic assumptions that are no longer relevant. Consequently, the viewer can understand the artist’s experience of the world through the painting. which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance “(p 9).The image reflects its creator’s way of seeing and the era he lived in. people in the Middle Ages would see fire differently from us due to their belief in hell fire.įor Berger, “An image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced. It follows that what we see is affected by our experiences, knowledge and beliefs “ The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe” page 8 of Ways of Thinkinge.g. We learn to see before we learn to speak and it is sight that enables us to make sense of our environment and our place in it. Finally, in chapter 7, he examines the impact of advertising photography on today’s consumerist society. In the third area, chapter five, Berger maintains that, as oil paintings are linked to ownership and the buying power of wealth, they reflect the importance and power of money. The second area, chapter three, deals with the nude in western art and demonstrates how women have and are being objectified both in art and now in photography. Berger maintains that the way we see things is determined by what we know and that photographic reproductions, monetary value and academics have distorted the true meaning of images. The first area covered, chapter one of the book, deals with how we see things. Although the book contains seven chapters, three are made up of images alone, and the book covers the same four areas as the television series.
#JOHN BERGER WAYS OF SEEING EPUD SERIES#
he is a liberator of images: and once we have allowed the paintings to work on us directly, we are in a much better position to make a meaningful evaluation' Peter Fuller, Arts Review 'The influence of the series and the book.
#JOHN BERGER WAYS OF SEEING EPUD PROFESSIONAL#
'Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of professional art critics. If you enjoyed Ways of Seeing, you might like Susan Sontag's On Photography, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.
(1972) won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Booker Prize. 1926) is an art critic, painter and novelist.born in Hackney, London. he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures.' By now he has. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the Sunday Times critic commented: 'This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.' John Berger's Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and influential books on art in any language. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world we explain that world with words, but word can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.' 'But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. Based on the BBC television series, John Berger's Ways of Seeing is a unique look at the way we view art, published as part of the Penguin on Design series in Penguin Modern Classics.