Study Art with Ways of Seeing – A Book Review

***

BOOK: Ways of Seeing

AUTHOR: John Berger

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 1972

REVIEW:

John Berger recently died (at the age of 90) so I thought I’d dig out my old paperback copy of Ways of Seeing and give it another look. It was startlingly original in 1972, and when I encountered it, probably 17 or 18 years later, I found it startlingly original then. It was certainly unlike anything I’d ever read before. And I suspect that it is still an original book, at least for many young people.

At the time I first picked up Ways of Seeing, I’d looked at paintings before, and of course, illustrations in books, photographs, countless advertisements in magazines and on billboards, postcards…much like everyone else. But I had never given serious thought to the questions addressed in this short collection of essays about images. Why are these particular subjects depicted in art, and not others? Who is the intended audience? How does our culture define art? How does an image’s meaning change when it is reproduced?

Berger’s distinction between nudes in the classical tradition, as opposed to paintings depicting nakedness, and his examples of each (there are many, many more to be found in the first category) clarified things for me, put into words what had only been a vague feeling of unease. And when I then read Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in which she introduced the term, “the male gaze,” I began, I think, to start to see not just images, but plots and viewpoints as well, a bit more critically.

Berger’s critique of advertising and publicity, and its cynical manufacturing of glamour for the purpose of separating us from our money, has also stayed with me to this day. Although I am still occasionally seduced by glossy catalogues and the lifestyles they depict, I do remind myself that the lovely patio furniture with the matching cushions and large umbrella won’t actually come with that ocean view, or a chef to create a lovely meal, or the wait staff to serve it, and I will of course have to wash all that impractical stemware myself…

This is an excellent text for a young student interested in art, or, honestly, someone of any age who hasn’t previously been interested in art. And it is really not at all a large leap to go from seeing a bit more critically to thinking a bit more critically. Why is this news story getting coverage and not another one? Who decides what is newsworthy and what isn’t? Who is being served by this politician’s narrative? At what point does a healthy patriotism become a toxic nationalism? Which opinions are valuable? Whose opinions are heard? Whose questions are answered?

Ways of Seeing challenged conventions and profoundly influenced the study of art. I wish very much that it would be updated; a book so focused on the visual would benefit greatly from larger illustrations, in full color. Still, it’s worth reading (and seeing) the small paperback.  There’s a lot of wisdom packed into the 166 pages, which ends, in a profoundly democratic fashion, “To be continued by the reader…”

RATING (one to five whistles, with five being the best): 4 Whistles

***

HOW TO PURCHASE: Amazon

***

Lead-In Image Courtesy of  meunierd / Shutterstock.com – Sherbrooke Fresco Murals, Canada, 2015

art embed

***

Laura LaVelle is an attorney and writer who lives in Connecticut, in a not quite 100-year-old house, along with her husband, two daughters, and a cockatiel.

Laura can be contacted at laura@newswhistle.com

***

ALSO ON OUR BOOKSHELVES:

A Countess Below Stairs, Eva Ibbotson

A Patchwork Planet, Anne Tyler

A Room With a View, E.M. Forster

An Infamous Army, Georgette Heyer

Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Anne Of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery

Bleak House, Charles Dickens

Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon

Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan

Books for Living, Will Schwalbe

Bunker Hill, Nathan Philbrick

Burmese Days, George Orwell

Cannery Row, John Steinbeck

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast

Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

Cloudstreet, Tim Winton

Cockpit Confidential, Patrick Smith

Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons

Doctor Jazz, Hayden Carruth

Ed Emberly’s Drawing Book of Animals, Ed Emberly

Endangered Pleasures, Barbara Holland

Envious Casca, Georgette Heyer

Foreign Affairs, Alison Lurie

Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers

Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee

Good Poems, Garrison Keillor

Gowanus Waters, Steven Hirsch

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, & Jack Thorne

Heads in Beds, Jacob Tomsky

Here is New York, E.B. White

Hide My Eyes, Margery Allingham

Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, Laurie Colwin

Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou

If on a winter’s night a traveler, Italo Calvino

Lexicon, Max Barry

Longbourn, Jo Baker

Madeleine’s Ghost, Robert Girardi

Malice Aforethought, Frances Iles

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, Jon Krakauer

Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut

My Life in France, Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

Notorious RBG, Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik

One Summer: America 1927, Bill Bryson

Out of the Blackout, Robert Bernard

Parnassus on Wheels & The Haunted Bookshop, Christopher Morley

Plotted: A Literary Atlas, Andrew DeGraff

Possession, A.S. Byatt

Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle…and Other Modern Verse, Stephen Dunning, Edward Lueders, and Hugh Smith

Ringworld, Larry Niven

Rose Madder, Stephen King

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rivelli

Straying from the Flock: Travels in New Zealand, Alexander Elder

Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart

The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Ed., Lewis Carroll & Martin Gardner (with original illustrations by John Tenniel)

The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith

The Dancer of Izu, Kawabata Yasunari

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, Oliver Sacks

The Martian, Andy Weir

The Missing Piece, Shel Silverstein

The Modern Kids, Jona Frank

The Monogram Murders, Sophie Hannah

The Mother & Child Project, Hope Through Healing Hands (ed.)

The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark

The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss, Theodor Geisel (illustrator), Maurice Sendak (introduction)

The Snowy Day, Ezra Jack Keats

The Tender Bar, J.R. Moehringer

The Translator, Nina Schuyler

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce

The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories, Saki

The Weird World of Wes Beattie, John Norman Harris

The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin

The Women in Black, Madeleine St John

They Call Me Naughty Lola, David Rose

Thing Explainer, Randall Munroe

What If?, Randall Munroe

When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi

Up At the Villa, W. Somerset Maugham

84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff