Item: Ways of Seeing
Rating: 4.00
Author: clementine

by John Berger

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.

'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 word can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. 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. 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 . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures.' By now he has.

John Berger (b. 1926) is an art critic, painter and novelist.born in Hackney, London.
His novel G. (1972) won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Booker Prize.

If you enjoyed Ways of Seeing, you might like Susan Sontag's On Photography, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

'Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of professional art critics ... 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 ... was enormous ... It opened up for general attention areas of cultural study that are now commonplace'
Geoff Dyer in Ways of Telling

'One of the most influential intellectuals of our time'
Observer

This is a book about the semiotics of images. It's composed of seven essays, four of which are text- and image-based, three of which are solely made up of images. Despite its subject matter, it's a relatively quick and low-density reading, especially since a good chunk of the book requires no reading.

For the most part I really enjoyed this book and didn't find it dated at all even though it's well over 40 years old at this point. I have a pretty fair background in semiotics from my undergrad, and it meshed well with what I know. I don't know that there are many truly groundbreaking observations, but everything is phrased very well, elucidating things that I know to be true but that I had never myself articulated.

I personally liked the last three text-based essays the best. The second essay is about how women are constructed both in reality and in art, essentially as passive objects for the male subject to survey. (Like I said, nothing groundbreaking for the year 2016, but well-articulated! I particularly love the line "Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated.") The third essay is about oil paintings as a function of capitalism (and, to an extent, colonialism). The final essay is about publicity (or marketing/advertising) and how it hails us as consumers: "The publicity image which is ephemeral uses only the future tense. With this you will become desirable. In these surroundings all your relationships will become happy and radiant."

I wouldn't say this is an extremely meaty book - in fact, it's quite spare. But it manages to fit a lot of eloquent wisdom into a small space. It's not exactly fun reading - it's a bit arty and definitely something I'd recommend to people who already have an interest in semiotics. I'm going to hold onto it because I think it'll be a handy reference in my academic career!

Ways of Seeing (A pelican original)

by John Berger

Reviewed by clementine on Sep 25, 2016

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