Ways of Seeing- John Berger

John Berger's book is very easy to read and understand because the title of the book describes the entire content of what he talks about.

This book is based on the way we see things and how this is affected by our own personal knowledge and beliefs. As Berger says in the book '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.' I think that he has a point because we use words to try and explain the environment, but words are static and the environment changes, so there is a gap.

Berger says that Magritte's painting "The Key of Dreams" comments on the gap. This painting is the image on the front of the book. Underneath the image of the suitcase is the words 'the valise', which is another word for suitcase. However, below the horse head, clock and pitcher are words which do not correspond to the images in that quadrant. Also ironically the image does not suggest anything to do with a key or dreams, which is the point made by Berger that there is a gap between what we see and the words we use to express our sight.

Berger questions assumptions about the traditions of European art history, and talks about the specific paintings that are presented and the ways that we understand them now.

'An image became a record of how x had seen y.' This shows that vision became seen as an individual perspective, accompanying an increasing awareness of history. 'The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost.' What Berger means is that we see art completely different to how it was seen in the past, in its place we have a language of images and see the purpose. Personally I think that Berger is going too far with what he says because he says 'the entire art of the past has now become a political issue'. In my opinion the art of the past just has a different meaning to us now than it did in the past, but this is because we have a different style and interpretation, this doesn't mean that the authority of it has been lost!

Berger says that a woman's actions indicate the way she would like to be observed/treated, contrary to man's actions which are just actions. Berger simplifies this notion by arguing that "men act – women appear". Women look at themselves being looked at. The surveying woman is a man, the surveyed woman is a woman, and by this the woman objectifies herself as a subject of gaze, this is the meaning of Berger's title "Ways of Seeing" – essentially meaning that there are different ways of seeing man and woman.

Overall, "Ways of Seeing" grasps that the humanist tradition of European painting holds a contradiction: on the one hand the painter's, owner's and viewer's individualism and on the other the object. These unequal relations between men and women are, in Berger's view, deeply assimilated in our culture and in the consciousness of women who do to themselves what men do to them –objectify themselves. Berger shows how the framing of visual images shapes the viewer's perception of those images and of what they attempt to represent. Chapters two and three, on "ways of seeing women", are especially powerful illustrations of how particular attitudes are reflected in visual representations and of how those attitudes are reaffirmed for the viewer. Berger's argument is that discourse -- visual in this case -- is never purely objective, but is always reflective of a particular way of seeing the world. This is not to say that we should attempt to overcome our particular ways of seeing -- which cannot be done. It is instead a call to be aware of the ways of seeing to which we have become accustomed, and which we reproduce in our own lives.