In Ways of Seeing, art critic John Berger discusses a key argument, which is, that if you know your history, then you know where you are coming from. The print itself is reproduced here by kind permission of Yves Berger. The Analysis of John Berger’s Work Ways of Seeing. The photograph of Berger's self portrait shown here is by John Christie. John Berger was a storyteller, a novelist, a painter, a poet, a critic, a screenwriter, a playwright. He is a Fellow of the Centre for Life-Writing Research at King’s College London, and a Writer in Residence at Jerwood Visual Arts. He is currently working on Berger's biography, and The Good Archivist, a book on archives and migration. Tom Overton is the editor of Portraits: John Berger on Artists (2015) and Landscapes (2016), two volumes of John Berger's writing about art published by Verso Books. This is the way we use technology, but it doesn’t have to be." Chapter 7 of John Berger's Ways of Seeing explores the relationship between art and advertising and the ways in which modern day media both extends and subverts the history of art. This is the government we have, but it doesn’t have to be. This is how this picture looks, but it didn’t have to be. For him, a lifetime looking at art was a lifetime thinking about the power art has over people, and being reminded that it is part of a world in which decisions have consequences, but also alternatives. "I hope you will consider what I arrange, John Berger says at the end of the first episode of Ways of Seeing. In today's episode, Berger's biographer and archivist Tom Overton looks at a self-portrait made by Berger at the age of 19. To mark the 50th anniversary of Ways of Seeing, Radio 4 invites five writers to tell us about a work of art that is important to them, and to reflect on how Ways of Seeing influenced their own ways of looking at - and thinking about - art.
John berger ways of seeing good life series#
The book published to accompany the series has never been out of print and has had a profound influence on popular understanding of art criticism and visual culture. The programmes explored Walter Benjamin's ideas about the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction the female nude and the male gaze oil painting, status and ownership advertising, art and commerce. Our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing". The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe.
Across a series of four half-hour episodes, Berger talked about how we look at art, and why it matters: "The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. (Berger, 126) This quote from, ‘Ways of Seeing’ indicates a portion of John Berger’s bitterness towards the reproduction of art. First broadcast in 1972 on BBC Two, Ways of Seeing was a collaboration between the writer John Berger and director Mike Dibb. What the modern means of reproduction have done is to destroy the authority of art and to remove it.