Ways of Seeing
File:Waysofseeingcvr.jpg | |
Author | John Berger |
---|---|
Cover artist | René Magritte |
Country | U.K. |
Language | English |
Subject | Art, architecture, photography |
Publisher | Penguin |
Publication date
|
1972 |
Pages | 166 |
ISBN | 0-14-013515-4 |
OCLC | 23135054 |
Ways of Seeing is a 1972 BBC four-part television series of 30-minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. Berger's scripts were adapted into a book of the same name. The series and book criticize traditional Western cultural aesthetics by raising questions about hidden ideologies in visual images. The series is partially a response to Kenneth Clark's Civilisation series, which represents a more traditionalist view of the Western artistic and cultural canon.
Description
The book Ways of Seeing was written by Berger and Dibb, along with Sven Blomberg, Chris Fox, and Richard Hollis.[1] The book consists of seven numbered essays: four using words and images; and three essays using only images.[1] The book has contributed to feminist readings of popular culture, through essays that focus particularly on how women are portrayed in advertisements and oil paintings.[2] Ways of Seeing is considered[by whom?] a seminal text for current[when?] studies of visual culture and art history.
The first part of the television series drew on ideas from Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction arguing that through reproduction an Old Master's painting's modern context is severed from that which existed at the time of its making. The second film discusses the female nude. Berger asserts that only twenty or thirty old masters depict a woman as herself rather than as a subject of male idealisation or desire. The third programme is on the use of oil paint as a means of depicting or reflecting the status of the individuals who commissioned the work of art. In the fourth programme, on publicity and advertising, Berger argues that colour photography has taken over the role of oil paint, though the context is reversed. An idealised potential for the viewer (via consumption) is considered a substitution for the actual reality depicted in old master portraits.
References
- Fuery, Patrick and Kelli Fuery, Visual Cultures and Critical Theory, London: Hodder Arnold Publications. (2003) ISBN 0-340-80748-2.
External links
- Illustrations and Amplifications for John Berger's Ways of Seeing
- Excerpt from Ways of Seeing
- part of Ch.1 of Ways of Seeing
- "Puritanic Relationalism: John Berger's Ways of Seeing and Media and Culture Studies" by Jan Bruck and John Docker, Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media & Culture 2(2):77–95, 1989.
- "Notes on 'The Gaze': John Berger's Ways of Seeing by Daniel Chandler, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, MCS (website), 10 April 2000.
- Ways of Seeing on YouTube
- Use dmy dates from April 2011
- Use British English from April 2011
- Pages with broken file links
- Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from December 2014
- Vague or ambiguous time from December 2014
- Art history books
- Works about art genres
- Works about ideologies
- 1972 books
- 1972 in British television