Ways of Seeing John Berger 5.7 PDF
Ways of Seeing John Berger 5.7 PDF
Ways of Seeing John Berger 5.7 PDF
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 words 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 Bergers Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and the
most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it
JOHN BERGER
was based on the BBC television series about which the (London)
Sunday Times critic commented: ~This is an eye-opener in more ways
than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings ... he will Seeing comes before words. The child looks
almost certainly change the way you look at pictures. By now he has. nizes before it can speak.
But there is also another sense in which seeing
Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of the before words. It is seeing which establishes our place
professional art critics ... He is a liberator of images: and once we have rrotmding world ; we explain that world with words,
allowed the paintings ~o work on us directly, we are in a much better ;an never undo the fact that we are surrounded by
position to make a meaningful evaluation Peter Fuller, Arts Review relation between what we see and what we know is
r settled.
,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
14 15
away what might otherwise be evident. Hals Was the first
po~raitist to paint the new characters and expressions
created by capitalism. He did in pictorial terms what Balzac
did two centuries later in literature. Yet the author of the
authoritative work on these paintings sums up the artists
achievement by referring to
That is mystification.
In order to avoid mystifying the past (which can
equally well suffer pseudo-Marxist mystification) let us now
examine the particular relation which now exists, so far as
pictorial images are concerned, between the present and the
past. if we can see the present clearly enough, we shall ask
the right questions of tl~e past.
17
The camera isolated The invention of the camera also changed the way
momentary appearances and in so doing destroyed the idea in which men saw paintings painted long before the camera
that images were timeless. Or, to put it another way, the was invented, Originally paintings were an integral part of the
camera showed that the notion of time passing was building for which they were designed. Sometimes in an early
~nseparabie from the experience of the visual (except in Renaissance church or chapel one has the feeling that the
paintings). What you saw depended upon where you were images on the wall are records of the buildings interior life,
whan. What you saw was relative to your posit~on in time and that together they make up the buildings memory - so much
space. It was no longer possible to imagine everything are they part of the particularity of the building.
converging on the human eye as on the vanishing point of
infinity.
This is not tO say that before the invention of the
camera men believed that everyone could see everything, But
perspective organized the visua! field as though that were
indeed the ideal. Every drawing or painting that used
perspective proposed to the spectator that he was the unique
centre of the world, The camera - and more particularly the
movie camera - demonstrated that there was no centre.
The invention of the camera changed the way men
saw. The visible came to mean something different to them,
This was immediately reflected in painting.
For the impressionists the visible no longer
presented itself to man in order to be seen. On the contrary,
the visible, in continual flux, became fugitive. For the Cubists
the visible was no longer what confronted the single eye,
but the totality of possible views taken from points all round
the object (or person) being depicted,
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Church 66 45 30.5
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in a film the way one image follows another, their succession, This is a landscape of a cornfield with birds flying
constructs an argument which becomes irreversible. out of it. Look at it for a moment. Then turn the page.
z~
Or"
it appears.
30 31
Nor are we saying that all art can be understood all the time to promote the illusion that nothing has changed
spontaneously. We are not claiming that to cut 0U~ ~~agazine except that the masses, thanks to reproductions, cdi~ now
reproduction of an archaic Greek head, because it is reminiscent begin to appreciate art as the cultured minority once did.
of some personal experience, end to pin it on to s board Understandably, the masses remain uninterested and sceptical.
beside other disparate images, is to come to terms with the If the new language of images were used
full meaning of that head. differently, it would, through its use, confer a new kind of
power. Within it we conld begin to define our experiences more
The idea of innocence faces two ways. By refusing precisely in areas where words are inadequate. (Seeing comes
to enter a conspiracy, one remains innocent of that conspiracy. before words.) Not only personal experience, but also the
But to remain innocent may also be to remain ignorant. The essential historical experience of our relation to the past: that
issue is not be~Neen innocence and knowledge (or between the is to say the experience of seeking to give meaning to our lives,
natural and the cultural) but between a total approach to art of trying to understand the history of which we can become
which attempts to relate it to every aspect of experience and the active agents.
the esoteric approach of a few specialized experts who are the The art of the past no longer exists as it once did.
clerks of the nostalgia of a ruling class in decline. (in decline, Its authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images.
not before the proletariat, but before the new power of the What matters now is who uses that language for what
corporation and the state.) The real question is: to whom does purpose. This touches upon questions of copyright for
the meaning of the art of the past properly belong ? To those reproduction, the ownership of art presses and publishers, the
who can app|y it to their own lives, or to a cultural hierarchy total policy of public art galleries and museums. As usually
of relic specialtsts~ presented, these are narrow professional matters. One of the
The visual arts have always existed within a aims of this essay has been to show that what is really at
certain preserve; originally this preserve was magical or stake is much larger. A people or a class which is cut off from
sacred. But it was also physical : it was the place, the cave, the its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or
building, in which, or for which, the work was made. The class than one that has been able to situate itself in history.
experience of art, which at first was the experience of ritual, This is why - and this is the only reason why - the entire art
was set apart from the rest of life - precisely in order to be of the past has now become a political issue.
able to exercise power over it. Later the preserve of art became
a social one. it entered the culture of the ruling class, whilst
physically it was set apart and isolated in their palaces and
houses. During all this history the authority of art was
inseparable from the particular authority of the preserve.
What the modern means of reproduction have
done is to destroy the authority of art and to remove it - or,
rather, to remove its images which they reproduce - from any
preserve. For the first time ever, images of art have become
ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free.
They surround us in the same way as a language surrounds us.
They have entered the mainstream of life over which they no
longer, in themselves, have power.
Yet very few people are aware of what has
happened because the means of reproduction ere used nearly
I~any of the ideas in the preceding essay have been taken from
another, written over forty years ago by the German critic and
philosopher Walter Benjamin.
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew
that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves
~erse~f by herseff ~ons~u~es her presence. Eve~ womans together and made themselves aprons .... And the
46 47
During the Renaissance the narrative sequence
Lord God called unto the man and said unto him,
disappeared, and the single moment depicted became~the
Where are thou? And he said, ~ heard thy voice in the
moment of shame. The couple wear fig-leaves or make a
garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid
myse~lf ....
so much in relation to one another as to the spectator.
Unto the ,,v:~rnan God said, I will greatly multiply thy
sorrow and thy conception; in so~row thou shalt bring
forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband and
he shall rule over thee.
48 49
She is not naked as she is. The mirror was often used as a symbol of the
She is naked as the spectator sees her. vanity of woman. The moralizing, however, was mostly
hypocritical,
Often - as with the favourite subject of Susannah
and the Eiders - this is the actual theme of the picture. We
join the Elders to spy on Susannah taking her bath. She looks
back at us looking at her.
50 51
But a further element is now added. The
element of judgement. Paris awards the apple to the woman it is worth noticing that in other non-E~tropean
he finds most beautiful. Thus Beauty becomes competitive. traditions - in Indian art, Persian art, African art, Pre-
Columbian art - nakedness is never supine !n this way. And if,
(Today The ,Judgement of Paris has become the Beauty
in these traditions, the theme of a work is sexual
Contest.) Those who are not judged beautiful are [~ot/~eautifu/.
Those who are, are given the prize. attraction, it is likely to show active sexual love as between
two people, the woman as active as the man, the actions of
each absorbing the other.
one the model for a famous painting by Ingres and the other a
model for a photograph in a girlie magazine.
The result would glorify Man. But the exercise Today the attitudes and values which informed
presumed a remarkable indifference to who any one person that tradition are expressed through other more widely
really was. diffused media - advertising, journalism, television.
But the essential way of seeingwomen, the
essential use to which their images are put, has not changed.
Women are depicted in a quite different way from men - not
because the feminine is different from the masculine - but
because the ideal" spectator is always assumed to be male
and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him. If you
have any doubt that this is so, make the following experiment.
Choose from this book an image of a traditional nude.
Transform the woman into a man. Either in your minds eye or
by drawing on the reproduction. Then notice the violence
which that transformation does. Not to the image, but to the
assumptions of a likely viewer.
Oil paintings often depict things. Things which in
reality are buyable. To have a thing painted and put on a canvas
is no~: unlike buying it and putting it in your house. If you buy
a painting you buy also the look of the thing it represents.
84 85
P, gain, L~vi-Strauas comments on how e collection proposed is a little more precise; that a way of seeing the
of paintings can confirm the pride and amour-propre of the world, which was Ultimately determined by new attitudes
collector. property and exchange, found its visual expression in the oil
painting, and could not have found it in any other visual art
For Renaissance artists, painting was perhaps an form.
instrument of knowledge but it was also an instrument
of possession, and we must not forget, when we are
dealing with Renaissance painting, that it was only
possible because of the immense fortunes which were
being amassed in Florence and elsewhere, and that rich
Italian merchants looked upon painters as agents, who
allowed them to confirm their possession of all that was
beautiful and desirable in the world. The pictures in a
Florentine palace represented a kind of microcosm in
which the proprietor, thanks to his artists, had recreated
within easy reach and in as real a form as possible, all
those features of the world to which he was attached.
87
treated today as works of fine art, and of thi~ fraction another Although its painted images are two-dimensionalo its potential
small fraction comprises the actual pictures repeatedly of illusionism is far greater than that of sculpture, for it can
raproduced and presented as the work of "the masters. suggest objects possessing colour, texture and temperature,
filling a space and, by implication, filling the entire world.
Visitors to art museums are often overwhelmed
by the number of works on display, and by what they take to Holbeins painting of The Ambassadors (1533)
he their own culpable inability to concentrate on more than a stands at the beginning of the tradition and, as often happens
few of these works, in fact such a reaction is altogether with a work at the opening of a new period, its character is
reasonable. Art history has totally failed to come to terms with undisguised. The way it is painted shows what it is about.
the problem of the relationship between the outstanding work How is it painted? ~
and the average work of the European tradition. The notion of
Genius is not in itself an adequate answer. Consequently the
confusion remains on the walls of the galleries. Third-rate
works surround an outstanding work without any recognition
- let alone explanation -- of what fundamentally differentiates
them.
The art of any culture wii| show a wide differential
of talent. But in no other culture is the difference between
"masterpiece" and average work so large as in the tradition of
the oil painting, in this tradition the difference is not just a
question of skill or imagination, but also of morals. The
average work - and increasingly after the seventeenth century
-was a work produced more or less cynically: that is to say
the values it was nominally expressing were less meaningful
to the painter than the finishing of the commission or the
selling of his product. Hack work is not the result of either
clumsiness or provinclalism; it is the result of the market
making more insistent demands than the art. The period of the
oil painting corresponds with the rise of the open art
market. And it is in this contradiction between art and market
that the exp|anations must be sought for what amounts to the
contrast, the antagonism existing between the exceptional
work and the average.
Whilst acknowledging the existence of the
axceptiona~ works, to which we shall return later, Ict us first
look broadly at the tradition.
9O 91
it is the same contradiction which makes the It is interesting to note here the exceptional case
average religious painting of the tradition appear hypocritical. of William Blake. As a draughtsman and engraver Bl~ke learnt
The claim of the theme is made empty by the way the subject according to the rules of the tradition. But when he came to
is painted. The paint cannot free itself of its original make paintings, he very seldom used oil paint and, although
propensity to procure the tangible for the immediate pleasure he still relied upon the traditional conventions of drawing,
of the owner. Here, for example, are three paintings of ~tlary he did everything he could to make his figures lose substance,
I~agdalene. to become transparent and indeterminate one from the other,
to defy gravity, to be present but intangible, to glow without
a definable surface, not to I~_e reducible to objects.
of ~he wor~ ?
The p~in~ed objects on the she~ves between them
were inten~e~ to suppJy - to the few who cogJ~ read the
aSgusions - a Ce~in amount of information ~bout their position
~n ~he worgd. Four centuries later we can interpret this
~.~orm~tion according to our own perspective.
How directly or not the two ambassadors were The gaze of the ambassadors is both aloof and
involved in the first colonizing ventures is not particularly wary. They expect no reciprocity. They wish the image of their
important, for what we are concerned with here is a stance presence to impress others with their vigilance and their
towards the world; end this was general to a whole class. The distance. The presence of kings and emperors had once
~wo ambassadors belonged to a class who were convinced that impressed in a similar way, but their images had been
the world was there to furnish their residence in it. in its comparatively impersonal. What is new and disconcerting
extreme form this convictionwas confirmed by the regations here is the individua/izeff presence which needs to suggest
being set up between colonial conqueror and the colonized. distance. Individualism finally posits equality. Yet equality must
be made inconceivable.
The conflict again emerges in the painting-
method. The surface verisimilitude of oil painting tends to
make the viewer assume that he is close to - within touching
distance of - any object in the foreground of the picture. If the
object is a person such proximity implies a certain intimacy,
97
They are there in all their particularity and we san study them, Let us now briefly look at some of the genres of
but it is impossible to imagine them considering us in a oil painting - categories of painting which were pa(t of its
similar way. tradition but exist in no other.
Before the tradition of oil painting, medieval
painters often used gold-leaf in their pictures. Later gold
disappeared from paintings and was only used for their frames.
Yet many oil paintings were themselves simple demonstrations
of what gold or money could buy. Merchandise became the
actual subject-matter of works of art.
!oo 101
Sometimes the borrowing of the classic guise was The so-called "genre" picture - the picture of ;low
simple, as in Reynoldss painting of the daughters of the family life" - was thought of as the opposite of the mythological
dressed up as Graces decorating Hymen. picture. It was vulgar instead of noble. The purpose of the
"genre" picture was to prove - either positively or negatively -
that virtue in this world was rewarded by social and financial
success. Thus, those who could afford to buy these pictures -
cheap as they were - had their own virtue confirmed. Such
pictures were particularly popular with the newly arrived
bourgeoisie who identified themselves not with the
characters painted but wit~the moral which the scene
illustrated. Again, the faculty of oil paint to create the illusion
of substantiality lent plausibility to a sentimental lie: namely
that it was the honest and hard-working who prospered, and
that the good-for-nothings deservedly had nothing.
103
Prior to the recent interest in ecology, nature was not thought
of as the object of the activities of capitalism; rather it was
thought of as the arena in which capitalism and social life and
each individual life had its being. Aspects of nature were
objects of scientific study, but nature-as-a-whole defied
possession.
One m~ght put this even more simply. The sky has
no surface and is intangible; the sky cannot be turned into a
thing or given a quantity. And landscape painting begins with
Landscape, of all the categories of oil painting, is the problem of painting sky and distance.
the one to ~/hich our argument applies least. The first pure landscapes - painted in Holland in
the seventeenth century - answered no direct social need. (As
a result Ruysdael starved and Hobbema had to give up.)
Landscape painting was, from its inception, a relatively
independent activity. Its painters naturally inherited and so, to
a large extent, were forced to continue the methods and norms
of the tradition. But each time the tradition of oil painting was
significantly modified, the first initiative came from landscape
painting. From the seventeenth century onwards the
exceptional innovators in terms of vision and therefore
technique were Ruysdael, Rembrandt (the use of light in his
later work derived from his landscape studies), Constable (in
his sketches), Turner and, at the end of the period, Monet and
the Impressionists. Furthermore, their innovations led
progressively away from the substantial and tangible towards
the indeterminate and intangible.
104 I05
~evertheless the special relation between oil simple as to ask him for a painting of his park: Mr
painting and property did play a certain role even in the Gainsborough presents his humble respects t~o Lord
development of landscape painting. Consider the well-known Hardwicke, and shall always think it an honour to be
example of Gainsboroughs Mr and Mrs Andrews. emptoyed in anything for His Lordship; but with regard
to rea/views from Nature in this country, he has never
seen any place that affords a subject equal to the poorest
imitations of Gaspar or Claude."
106 107
The professors argument is worth quoting Our survey of the European oil painti,g has
because it is so striking an illustration of the disingenuousness very brief and therefore very crude. It really amou~s to
that bedevils the subject of art history. Of course it is very no more than a project for study - to be undertaken perhaps by
possible that Mr and Mrs Andrews were engaged in the others. But the starting point of the project should be clear.
philosophic enjoyment of unpervertod Nature. But this in no way The special qualities of oil painting lent themselves to a special
prec|udes them from being at the same time proud landowners. system of conventions for representing the visible. The
In most cases the possession of private land was the total of these conventions is the way of seeing invented by oil
precondition for such philosophic enjoyment - which was not painting. I~: is usua|ly said that the oil painting in i~s frame
uncommon among the landed gentry. Their enjoyment of li~e an imaginary w~ndow open on to the world. This ~s roughly
"uncorrupted and unperverted nature" did not, however, usually
include the nature of other men. The sentence of poaching at s~y~ist~c changes {Mannerist, Baroque, Neo-C~ss~c,
that time was deportation, if a man stole a potato he risked a e~c.) which ~oo~ p~ace during four centuries. We ~re
public whipping ordered by the magistrate who would be a th~ ~f one s~ud~es the culture of ~he European oi~ p~int~n~
landowner. There were very strict property limits to what was
considered natural.
The point being made is that, among the pleasures
their portrait gave to Mr and Mrs Andrews, was the pleasure
of seeing themselves depicted as landowners and this pleasure ~e ere accused of bein9 obsesse~ by prope~y.
was enhanced by the ability of oil paint to render their land in The t~uth [s the other way r~und. Jt is the society and c~Jture
all its substantiality. And this is an observation which needs to in ~uestion which is so obsessed. Yet to an obsessive his
be made, precisely because the culturaJ history we are obsession aJwa~z seems to be o~ the n~tu~ of things and so
normally taught pretends that it is an unworthy one.
129
a page, as we turn a corner, as s vehicle passes us. Or we see consumer) and the most efficient manufacturers - and thus the
it on a television screen whilst waiting for the commercia| national economy, it is closely related to certain ideas about
break to end. Publicity images also belong to the moment in freedom: freedom of choice for the purchaser: freedom of
the sense that they must he continually renewed and made enterprise for the manufacturer. The great hoardings and the
up-to-date. Yet they never speak of the present* Often they publicity neons of the cities of capitalism are the immediate
refer to the past and always they speak of the future. vislbie sign of The Free World.
131
Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It
depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those
who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not
it is important here not to confuse publicity observe with interest - if you do, you will become less enviable.
in this respect the envied are like bureaucrats; the more
with thelpleasure or benefits to be enjoyed from the things it
advertises. Publicity is effective precisely because it feeds impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves
upon the real. Clothes, food, cars, cosmetics, baths, sunshine and for others) of their power. The power of the glamorous
are real things to be enjoyed in themselves. Publicity begins by resides in their supposed happiness: the power of the
working on a natural appetite for pleasure. But it cannot offer bureaucrat in his supposed authority, it is this which explains
the real object of pleasure and there is no convincing the absent, unfocused look of so many glamour images. They
substitute for a pleasure in that pleasures own terms. The look out over the looks of envy which sustain them.
more convincingly publicity conveys the pleasure of bathing
in a warm, distant sea, the more the spectator-buyer will
become aware that he is hundreds of miles away from that
sea and the more remote the chance of bathing in it will seem
to him. This is why publicity can never really afford to be about
the product or opportunity it is proposing to the buyer who is
not yet enjoying it. Publicity is never a celebration of e
pleasure-in-itself. Publicity is always about the future buyer.
It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the
product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The image then
makes him envious of himself as he might be. Yet what makes
this self-which-he-might-be enviable ? The envy of others.
PubliciW is about social relations, not objects, its promise is
not of pleasure, but of happiness: happiness as judged from the
outside by others. The happiness of being envied is glamour.
133
132
Publicity images often use sculptures or paintings
The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as
she will become if she buys the product. She is meant to to ~end allure or authority to their own message. Framed
imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of pei,tings often hang in shop windows as pert of their display.
Any work of art "quoted" by publicity serves two
envy for others, an envy which wiii then justify her loving
herself. One could put this another way: the publicity image purposes. P, rt is a sign of affluence; it belongs to the good
steets her love of herself as she is, and offers it back ~o her life; it is part of the furnishing which the world gives to the
for ~he price of the product. rich and the beautiful.
!38 139
Publicity needs to turn to its own" advantage the Both media use similar, highly tactile means to play upon the
traditional education of the average spectator-buyer. What he spectators sense of acquiring the lea/thing which ~he image
has learnt at school of history, mythology, poetry can he used shows. In both cases his feeling that he can almost touch
in the manufacturing of glamour. Cigars can be sold in the what is in the image reminds him how he might or does
name of a King, underwear in connection with the Sphinx, a possess the real thing.
new car by reference to the status of a country house.
14O 141
The oil painting showed what its owner was All publicity works upon anxiety. The sum of
everything is money, to get money is to overcome ~nxiety.
already enjoying among his possessions and his way of life. It
consolidated his own sense of his own value. It enhanced his
view of himself as he already was. It began with facts, the
facts of his life. The paintings embellished the interior in which
he actually lived.
144 145
Publicity speaks in the future tense and yet the
achievement of this future is endlessly deferred. How then
does publicity remain credible - or credible enough to exert the
influence it does? it remains credible because the truthfulness
of publicity is judged, not by the real fulfilment of its promises,
hut by the relevance of its fantasies to those of the spectator-
buyer. Its essential application is not to reality but to day-
-I EII OI G .1
148 149
The entire world becomes a setting for the Publicity can translate even revolution into its
fulfilment of publicitys promise of the good life. The world
smiles at us. It offers itself to us. And because everywhere is
imagined as offering itself to us, everywhere is more or Jess
the same.
-Ir-
154 155