Comments on: Ways of Seeing

By: Sally Visual Arts teacher

Sally Visual Arts teacher — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 06:02:48 +0000

As a text on its own it is hard to navigate but if it is used in conjunction with the video series of the same name, the students get a lot out of it. I wouldn’t try to do this work with students younger than Year 12 (17- 18 year old). You can watch it on YouTube these days if you don’t have the original video available to you. We use the text of the book as a back up resource that we work through and discuss AFTER we have watched the sections of the video series that are relevant to our unit of work. Before we start we do remind the girls that the video and book were produced in 1970′s and to keep that in mind. However, I do believe it still has relevance today. It needs to be used in conjunction with other material and lots of discussion. We use this particular reference as the beginning of a unit on The Representation of Gender – with a special focus on the representation of women and the differences of representation in portaits of men and women. There are many other related resources ( videos and essays) that follow our discussions that are initiated by this text. e.g a video called “Picturing the Genders” and one in the series of “Private Life of a Masterpiece “- on Velasquez’s artworks known as “The Rokeby Venus”, followed by studies of Manet’s “Olympia” and “Luncheon on the Grass”. This unit is then followed by a unit on Feminism focusing on Feminist artists like Judy Chicago, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, the Guerilla Girls etc

By: becky

becky — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:35:41 +0000

i’m currently reading the book at present for an essay, and so far although i have found it hard to get into once i have understood the authors points i found the book thoroughly engaging and has to an extent altered my perception on art. i think chapter 3 was the most interesting for me, and as a woman myself i found most of what to be said true. i found the book inspirational and i personally believe that this theory or vanity etc within the female sex is also true and we should maybe be trying to alter that slighty

By: a nony mouse

a nony mouse — Tue, 05 May 2009 17:53:41 +0000

OK quick summery of comments:
1. important and excellent read for anyone whom it relates to.
2. i agree that the points made are put across in an unnecessarily boring way and could be said much more simply.
3. if they were written simply then everyone would have dismissed it.

so stop moaning and read the text, you might learn something.~( and appreciate your not as dyslexic as me… reading it and writing this took ages!!!)

By: Student

Student — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:00:34 +0000

Hard read, yet it cleverly presents aspects of art from the camera’s reproduction changing the context of a work to the history of oil painting.

“The uniqueness of every painting has been destroyed by the camera” John Berger

Can anyone help this essay we are only allowed to discuss the Mona Lisa and its reproductions…

Thanks

By: Forward thinking.

Forward thinking. — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 18:23:43 +0000

Yes it is on the reading list for many art history courses today. Yes it is still relevant, but I am afraid to say that this book is by no means shocking any more. Most people understand the concepts behind advertising these days and that is where I believe Berger did not take on the sooth-seeing role that he’d have Antal take, perhaps his t.v series and book had something to do with it. But my general understanding of our modern day culture is that people are now educated in the ways and means of propaganda as used in images. To combine the visual with the text is of course now fully accepted and images can and do carry powerful messages but what Berger didn’t forsee was how society would move towards a pluralism previously unheard of. Now instead of pitting the image against the text in an anti-platonic manifesto the need for argument no longer exists, both carry value. As a peice of art-criticsm, it lacks evidence; what it is good at howver is using art as a vehicle for his own political means and message. As Berger implies, evrything has a subjective value; and I’d say that these essays are more than weighted with the author’s own intent. It is a brilliant and refreshing peice of literature, truly provovative as its aim; yet I’m afraid now it has become part of that History and rather than see our History as a linear and evolutionary passage, in our pluralistic society surely it is better to isolated it from our own contemporary time and personal experience but instead to place it within its own context. As Baxandall does with the Renaissance; surely now we must do the same with Berger – put him in his own contextual box to understand him better. Over 30 years on I would like to say that his third essay no longer stands as a generality. Due or not to his starting the ball rolling (bearing in mind the fact that Marxist discourse had already been around for some time), our contemporary world is a diferent one to his, although we may still see many of these concepts as foundations to what exists now. Thus whilst we move with the times and grapple to understand our polemic plurality, Berger stays on the shelf, epitomising a discourse that is fresh, with no frills yet infact employs the very thing he seeks to crticise. It is a marvellous peice of propaganda, and a marvellous backdrop to understanding the role of Art History and Cricticsm in the Britsh 70s, however surely it was about time we looked to reading some art criticism put forward in this day and age?