Will change your way of seeing (Ways of Seeing - John Berger)

Member Name: hulahoop

Product:	Ways of Seeing - John Berger
Date:	18/11/00 (7436 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Has some brilliant insights into our perceptions of the things around us

Disadvantages: A little outdated and serious for some

‘Ways of Seeing’ was a BBC2 prrogram showed in the 1970s which was translated into a book of the same title. I was asked to read it as part of my art course, and reluctantly borrowed it from the library, expecting some dull artsy rubbish that I would not understand.

Instead it is a thin book with bold type and not a lot of words. It has a rather strange format which I have not experienced in such a book before, in that there are seven chapters, four of which are written and illustrated, and the other three, interwoven with the written chapters, are simply illustrated. Berger explains that the written chapters put forward ideas to be developed in the reader’s own mind, and picture chapters are there for the reader to decide on entirely themselves. This was refreshing for me, having done A-levels in which the texts are thousands of pages long, crammed ful of rubbish explaining everything down to the smallest detail. Obviously in art you can draw (excuse the pun) your own conclusions and analyse things in a different way from everyone else, and in other subjects it is not so easy to do. But I enjoyed this method of writing thoroughly.

The actual book explores the way we see, the way humans have seen and the way in which seeing has been manipulated through art and the media. The four written chapters are totally separate and can be read in any order, and some would appeal to people more than others. For instance one chapter describes a lot of original oil paintings and the way in which painters have viewed their subjects and the reasons behind the paintings. I found this a little dull because I am not particularly interested in art in the oil painting era (from around 1500 to 1900). However it has some interesting things to say about Rembrandt and artists who are now described as ‘Masters’ of their genre, even though they actually defied the conventions that their contemporaries and predecessors had set.

Other c
hapters, including one concerned with women and ‘the male gaze’ (i.e how women have become objects to be looked at) and one about the way reproductions, photographs television and copies have affected the message of art and similar things, fascinated me because they pointed out things that should seem obvious to everyone, but are not. The chapter about women and the male gaze is pretty outdated in many respects due to feminism and the evolution of the female role in society. This actually made it more interesting because I got to realise how women were treated before I was born and how fortunate I am that the ideas put forward seem extreme to us now. The final chapter talks about advertising and its
relevance to fine art and its shallowness, or not as the case maybe, regarding deeper situations in life. This was really interesting because of the idea that advertising is all about envy - envying the model in that dress, envying your future self wearing that dress, and all the affects this has on life that revolves around images of advertising.

I have not even dealt with the picture chapters, but because these rest entirely upon the reader it is hard to define them, although they did raise some pretty interesting ideas in my mind.

This is a brutally honest book which asks you to look at yourself looking, realise the
consequences of your looking at certain things, and even reflects upon the authors’ own perceptions.

I found it a little difficult, or perhaps just slow, to read, because almost every sentence is loaded with concepts that you can develop in your own mind, thus meaning that each word of every sentence must be understood clearly and read in the right context. If you are looking for something light and casual to read, this just won’t do, but if you really want to make yourself think and realise the world around you a little better, go for it. It is pretty short so you can spend little time gaining a
lot of insight.

If you do read it, bear in mind that this was pretty amazing stuff when it was written in the 1970’s, but now because the world has changed so much a lot of it might not make so much sense. I.e read it in the context that it was written in.

Summary: