I’ve been critical of many things in that tradition, of our culture, of some of the values which it celebrates, and I’ve illustrated my arguments by using the modern means of reproduction. Because I believe that, in many respects, these images continue that tradition. It has ended by us looking at publicity images today.
#John berger ways of seeing 1972 series#
This series began by considering the tradition of the European oil painting. The final installment in the series explores the world of advertising and its perpetual promise of an even-elusive alternative way of life, depicted through a language of words and images that never cease to seduce us. It is a mistake to think of publicity supplanting the visual art of post-Renaissance Europe it is the last moribund form of that art. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are what you have. Oil painting, before it was anything else, was a celebration of private property. There are several reasons why these images use the language of oil painting. It propagates through images that society’s belief in itself. Publicity is the culture of the consumer society.
In the third episode of the series, Berger looks at oil painting and its formative role in the creation of consumer culture, showing that paintings are, before anything else, objects to be bought and sold, and admonishing that “we should be somewhat wary of a love of art”: Soon adapted into a book, Ways of Seeing ( public library) went on to become a landmark postmodernist critique of Western cultural aesthetics, exploring not only how visual culture came to dominate society but also how ideologies are created and transmitted via images - a subject of pressing timeliness in that golden age of photography.
“We learned from him to see that basic assumptions about everything-work, play, art, commerce-are hidden in the surrounding culture of images.Forty years ago this year, BBC premiered a series of four 30-minute films written and anchored by art critic and author John Berger. “In contemporary English letters he seems to me peerless.” - Susan Sontag “Over the past sixty years, the great John Berger - art critic, essayist, screenwriter, novelist, poet, and artist - has made immeasurable contributions to our understanding of culture and politics, never more potently than in Ways of Seeing.” – The Village Voice He is a liberator of images: and once we have allowed the paintings to work on us directly, we are in a much better position to make a meaningful evaluation.” -Peter Fuller, Arts Review
#John berger ways of seeing 1972 professional#
“Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of the professional art critics. “…perhaps the most bold, clear, and widely renowned explanation of art’s entanglement with capitalism.” - The Paris Review It opened up for general attention to areas of cultural study that are now commonplace.” -Geoff Dyer “The influence of the series and the book. “Berger fulfils the roles of a philosopher, listener, and somewhat of a magician as he makes tantalising worlds appear, and illusions vanish.” - Pratibha Rai, Oxford Culture Review “It’s a book about art history and the media, but it’s also a magic trick.” - The New Republic