Ways of Seeing

Ways of Seeing

3.83 of 5 stars 3.83  ·  rating details  ·  28,687 ratings  ·  343 reviews
John Berger’s Classic Text on Art


John Berger's Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it 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 wil...more
Paperback, 176 pages
Published December 1st 1990 by Penguin Books (first published 1972)
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Stephen
2007 wrote: This book, based on a television series, explores how the art world of now has come to be by exploring what art was to humans in the past. The theories presented are very interesting and are posed with pictorial references that do very well to prove points. One interesting chapter deals exclusively with the 'Nude' in art overtime. Overtime it has been reviled, reveared, copied, censored, hidden, hoarded and abstracted. Another great chapter deals in the context in which people see ar...more
James
This book is very short and does not really say much of anything that will give you a heightened appreciation of art. What it will do is show you how the history of art is entwined with Capitalism. Berger offers an overtly Marxist critique of the tradition of oil painting and, subsequently, it's relation to modern publicity and advertising. I know quite a bit about Marxist theory, so bits of this were a little old hat. If you don't know a lot about Marxist theory (or Benjamin, for that matter) t...more
Ahmad
Way of Seeing
جان برگر در «راه‌های دیدن» می‌گوید: «مردان به زنان می‌نگرند و زنان به خود نگاه می‌کنند که مورد تماشا قرار گرفته‌اند. این روزها، دیگر برای دوربین‌ها آسان نیست که زنان را فقط به صورت ابزاری جنسی به نمایش بگذارند زیرا زنان کارگردان و بازیگر، از نقش‌های خود برای عرضه‌ی هوش و قدرت آرمانی‌شان بهره می‌گیرند. زنان آمریکایی تلاش فراوانی کرده‌اند تا دنیایی از آن خود بسازند، دنیایی که در آن اصل نگاه مردانه نمی‌تواند از وجود آنها، هویت جنسی‌شان را به نمایش بگذارد بلکه مجبور خواهد بود آنها را زن...more
Pierce
First of all, this entire book is set in bold. I don't know what crazy crazyman let that through the gate at Penguin but I just felt I had to point it out right away. It's still worth reading.

4 essays and 3 pictorial essays. Really interesting stuff cutting away some of the bullshit associated with our appreciation of art. It seems like museums are doing a lot of things wrong as well as right.

Chapter on oil-painting was particularly interesting but it was the last one about advertising (or "publ...more
spoko
By and large, I'm not a fan of manifestos. This one was no exception. It had a lot of insight, as manifestos often do, and I learned a lot from it, which is also not atypical. But to my mind, there's something insulting about a manifesto. To borrow a metaphor from Eudora Welty, writing like this is the equivalent of serving me my brain food already cut up for me. The ideas may be deeper than a trashy romance novel (for example), but the level of respect for the audience is roughly the same. And...more
Manchespoetra
May 09, 2012 Manchespoetra marked it as to-read
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Cheryl in CC NV
My personal rating. I'm not a scholar, but I've informally paid attention to art (in museums, introductory classes at college, etc.) for decades. I get the idea the Berger wants people like me to feel more comfortable with art, as he rejects so many samples of highbrow analyses. But he didn't quite reach far enough out to me. Maybe seeing the tv series upon which the book is based would help.

I will say I was impressed with some of the insights of the first essay. That one relates directly to al...more
Holly Mcintyre
I finally pulled this "oldie but goodie" off my shelf and read it. I wish I had years ago.

Although the examples from its 1970s origin are dated, its thesis is perhaps even more valid today than then: Oil painting emerged just as the Western world entered the era of capitalism and imperialism. The technique of perspective makes the viewer the center of all he (yes, Virginia, "he") sees, just as "Western man" viewed the resources of the world. Oil paintings, therefore, became a vehicle by which We...more
Deborah Palmer
This book though initially written in 1972 is still relevant to the reader today especially the essays dealing with the way women are seen in society. It is composed of seven essys, four use words and images, three only images. It discusses how women are view in society with an emphasis and concentration on European or Western culture. The images are from ads and famous European paintings. Being that I work in a museum and see paintings all day long this aspect interests me in particular.

Basical...more
Malcolm
The 1970s and 1980s saw significant shifts in the ways we thought about art history, alongside its attempts to engage popular audiences. There were BBC TV shows in the 1970s that took art history outside the academy – for the traditionalist view there was Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation and others which espoused a conventional academic art historical view. Whereas Clark’s Civilisation is seen as one of those shows that had lasting power and gravitas (which it did) the show that had the impact was J...more
Jodi
Excellent book. Especially enjoyed the last chapter on advertising--Berger tells us (in 1972) that material consumption has been turned into a "subsstitute for democracy." He declared that the "choice of what one eats (or wears or drives) takes the place of significant political choice"...it "helps to mask and compensate for all that is undemocratic with society."

Enjoyed how Berger gives it to us by summarizing the idea of advertising to the fact that we are made to feel unsatisfied with our own...more
Kislay Verma
Excerpts from my full review at Solomon Says"

"Ways of seeing" consists of 7 essays, four of which use words and the other 3 are pictorial. This review is only for the worded essays. The four essays under consideration deal with the ideological perspective of art, and how the prevalent art forms of any era serve the ideological interests of the people in power. Despite the claims to nobility and notable exceptions to this trend, art reflects the self-image or aspirations of the ruling class and a...more
Trevor
Jun 24, 2012 Trevor rated it 5 of 5 stars
Recommended to Trevor by: Lindig Harris
Shelves: art
This book is based on a television series which can be viewed on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnfB-p...

This is a really remarkable series and a remarkable, although annoying, book. The book is annoying because it should have been a coffee table book with large colour photographs and large font – instead it is a Penguin paperback with a font tending towards the unreadable and grey scale reproductions of the paintings that make them almost impossible to view. This is agonising, as...more
Jule
I read this book in an AMTRAK train from the Bay Area to Portland. It was eye-opening :). Some of the essays are pictures only, pictures of paintings. The book is a little older, to me it portrays the spirit of its time, I enjoyed quite a few surprising moments. It definitely brightened my train ride through the night. All this Marxist vocab...

As the title suggests, "Ways of Seeing" is about the ways we see. How our mind is formed through society and how this conditioning impacts on our percepti...more
Shinn
Once you get past the squat bold typeface and the dated black and white photos, this book actually throws up some interesting questions.

I liked the first essay, which talks of the "mystification" of art, something I agree with myself. The other essays, in images as well as in words, deal with subjects as different as gender roles in Western art, oil painting as a distinct visual language and advertising. Yet, the essays often link together and I especially liked the parallels drawn between oil p...more
Megankellie
On the top floor in the Strand Bookstore in New York, I saw a self-consciously bored worker show a struggling-to-be-bored kid with his mom to the art table. The worker was like "well, you need this, and this, and this" and I realized the kid must be in art school and the worker must have graduated pretty recently. The worker was like "have you read Ways of Seeing? By John Berger?" and wanted to have geeky enthusiasm, but kept her eyes half closed and only lifted the book two inches. The kid was...more
Jimmy
A book about basic visual literacy, with 7 essays, 3 of them containing only images. It's not that he's original... he borrows a lot ideas from Walter Benjamin and Claude Levi-Strauss, but that he explains it in clear, easy language, with examples.

The chapter about oil painting was especially illuminating for me, as I had never understood how to tell a "great" oil painting from a mediocre one, having no context in which to see them. But Berger here really dissects the historical origins of the f...more
Greta
Mar 09, 2011 Greta rated it 4 of 5 stars
Shelves: art
This was an incredible little book about looking at art. John Berger discusses the origins of and meaning behind oil painting and how photography changed our relationship to it, but also gave us another way of looking at things. I particularly liked the chapter discussing "publicity" (advertising) and how he so coherently explains how capitalism and its ensuing consumption is turned by advertising into a substitute for democracy. We perceive choice as freedom and the freedom to choose what to "c...more
Faryal
Read this for my Composition class. Its a great read when first read since his main ideas stand out, have clarity, and are verified (to some degree), however re-reading it introduces the more "radical" ideas.

In his essay he raises the idea of "mysticification." Which is great and all but he chooses to not define it. I had to keep going back trying to find a definition in context however failed. He seems to switch it around a lot.

My Composition professor raised a good point- Berger is so against...more
BonB
A classic.

Like every art history student in the late 70s, I first read it in an Introduction to Art History class. It is in itself a historical document; published before America's fascination with French theory really took hold, and it neatly and succinctly offers capsule overviews of Benjamin and Barthes as well as a good if somewhat dated analysis of the nude from a feminist viewpoint. When Berger wrote this book, he was very much the rebellious iconoclast (going so far as to suggest that tra...more
سلمى  الشمّري
الكتاب يحوي سبعة مقالات، مبنية على برنامج تلفزيوني من إنتاج البي بي سي والذي يحمل العنوان ذاته. أربعة منها مستخدمة اللفظ والصورة بينما الثلاثة الأخرى تضم لوحات وصور تعبيرية فقط، مفسحة بذلك دورا للقارئ في ملاحظة واستنباط نظريات أخرى، شاذة أو مشابهة للنُسق الوارد هنا. من مرجع العلاقة بين ما نُبصره، ما نراه حقيقي بشكل ملموس، وما قد نتخيله لأفكارنا المصاغة مسبقا والمتأثرة بأحوال البيئة والمجتمع المحيط. مرورا بتاريخ اللوحات الزيتية وأثر وسائل النسخ الحديثة عليها وعلى قيمتها الحالية التي تعمد على كونه...more
Audrey
An excellent review of ideas about art history in real-world (read: political and social) context. Berger synthesizes ideas from Walter Benjamin, Levi-Strauss, and other thinkers succinctly and to great effect. He powers through the obfuscatory bullshit of art historians to get to meaty ideas about power and wealth, though I will warn you about a leftward slant. Personally, I'm in complete agreement with him, but if you are in a different political camp, or if you subscribe to the aforementioned...more
Bailey
I can only wonder how I study what I do and how I went so long without reading this prolific little book. Composed of four text + image essays and three image-only essays, Ways of Seeing traces art history from the Renaissance era through contemporary publicity spreads. Of note to me is the last essay on publicity, and it's relationship to oil paintings, and it's worth derived from the "future tense" of commodities. Berger asserts that our own personal view of our self is dramatically changed by...more
Patrik Sampler
John Berger is a brilliant writer, and I'd recommend Ways of Seeing as an important must-read, not only because the subject is fascinating, but also because the book is easy to get through. The first chapter will be nothing new to anyone with a basic background in art history, but the analysis gets more engaging as the book goes on. The last chapter, on advertising, may be out of date -- things have changed (somewhat) since 1972. This was nevertheless one of the more inspiring parts of the book...more
David
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this book. It was extremely enjoyable with paintings I recognized as well as new ones to read about. The author was well versed in the subject matter, as well as thought provoking. I especially enjoyed his thoughts on oil painting tradition and materialism. However, one point did stick with me throughout the book: the subjectivity of women. I don't think I agree with his stance on it, but, then again, I don't think, given my lack of expertise on the subject...more
Danny
This is, in essence, a wake-up call for everyone when dealing with visual art. If there's one thing this book (and the TV-series) manages to do, it's bring awareness. And that's not too shabby.

What really makes this great is its core message and educative value. I think it does so brilliantly. As much as there is a lot of space dedicated to Rembrandt or some more personal facts about historical figures, it's the attention to society, to context and so on that matters.

This is also the reason why...more
erase-rwd
* Words written next to an artwork will change the way it's entirely perceived - such as in advertising, and the works of Damien Hirst (see "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living")
Reproductions and cropping a part of a painting will also change the way it's meaning.

This also draws similarities & differences between the wealth, status & power one already has, represented by the subjects/still-life objects/themes of paintings (everything but landscapes) which o...more
Kelly
". . . [M:]en act, and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves." Berger's hypothesis in this essay is supported by his deconstruction of women taken as the subject of post-medieval European paintings. It's a set-up, mostly, so that he can then defend socialism. Whatevs. This essay alone is worth the read. The paintings are included in the book (only in black...more
Jeffery
I found this book incredibly powerful. I read it during my most formative years. This little book was largely responsible for turning me against capitalism. It really opened my mind. I was young, naive, and thirsty for knowledge at the time- so this little book hit me like an epiphany. I think if you wanted to learn or teach a friend some core ideas of Marxism, you ought use this book instead of some boring treatise by Marx himself I or something. The book shows you not only new ways of seeing a...more
Doug
The links between art and ownership and capitalism in the four essays seem obvious now, but certainly weren't before I read this book. I never thought to put art in a historical context to see that the beginnings of capitalism coincided with the development of oil painting, which turned into a way for rich people to display their stuff. And I never thought to make a distinction between art and its images, where context matters more than its original purpose. I don't think I got anything out of t...more
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Pictographic Essays 2 57 Feb 06, 2013 08:05am  
Ways of Seeing (Paperback)
Ways of Seeing (Paperback)
Görme Biçimleri
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John Peter Berger is an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a college text.
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“A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. By contrast, a woman's presence . . . defines what can and cannot be done to her.” 33 people liked it
“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.” 23 people liked it
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