In his essay, Berger explains the difference between naked and nude. Berger explained this as a way for the woman to offer herself to the man, giving him social power (Berger E). she was being watched and that was often portrayed in the painting.
In those paintings, nude women were popular subjects. Berger states that men act and women appear, simplifying the idea that a woman’s actions depict how a man treats her (gerger 5).īerger uses European paintings to prove his argument. Women are always aware of how they look as well as how others see her, especially men. He describes that a üoman views herself in two ways, as the surveyed and as the surveyor (Berger 4). A few masters like Rembrandt could break away from this system by creating deeper meaning in their work than just showing off material possessions.Erin Svvanson Amanda Zoch English 131-17495 28 August 2012 A Different View In his essay, ‘Ways of Seeing”, Iohn Berger discusses how women are seen differently then men. Within this period, most paintings were commissioned for wealthy people who wanted to glorify their wealth and power through art.
The essay focuses on the European tradition of oil painting, which lasted from 1500 to 1900. Rather than making a point about oil painting or photography, they appear to be saying something about wealth and excess.Ĭhapter 5 expands on Chapter 4 by explaining how oil paintings function in a market economy. Unlike Chapter 3, where all the images were related by their common subject matter, the images in Chapter 4 don’t seem to be related in content. It’s hypocritical that we presume males have subjectivity when denying females any individual agency at all in society.Ĭhapter 4 is another image-only essay. Although there are more images now than ever before, some aspects of this representation still remain today: depicting women as passive objects for male pleasure while men enjoy diverse representations across media formats such as television and movies. Rather, their nudity was meant to please men who owned these paintings. Women were typically depicted nude because it was thought to be vain or because beauty tools like mirrors were associated with them, but they weren’t usually behind the scenes making those decisions. The nudity isn’t for a reason rather it’s just to please the (presumably) male spectators who own these paintings.
He simplifies this by writing that “men act while women appear.” This is especially noticeable in European oil paintings, which often depict nude female figures. Berger begins by observing that men are represented as active, whereas women are mostly concerned with self-presentation. Berger does not explicitly connect these images rather he leaves their relationship open-ended.Ĭhapter 3 explains the relationship between images of women and how they’re represented. The theme of women appears in a variety of settings throughout history: there are photos from contemporary workplaces, oil paintings showing nude women, and advertisements for products sold by women. Text appears only occasionally to attribute paintings and photographs, and not every image is attributed. In the second essay, all of the images are related. Throughout the first essay in the book Berger draws heavily on work by Walter Benjamin to explain how reproduction changes what images mean by circulating them in new ways and alongside new ideas breaking down rarified narratives handed down from elite which often seek stabilize our understanding meanings From this premise Berger explains how images have layers deeper meaning beyond what they show on the surface they can offer a valuable document of how their creator saw the world but their underlying politics can also be obscured or mystified in order to uphold powers that be. Another way of phrasing this: all images are encoded with ideology regardless if their creators consciously want them to be. This term is used to describe paintings, photographs, films or any other representation that humans can construct and it’s assumed that every image externalizes its creator’s way of seeing. One way to recreate our way of perceiving the world is through images. John Berger opens his seminal text Ways of Seeing with an observation that seems counterintuitive, considering its status as a written text: that, as we inhabit the world, we constantly perceive it, only later naming the things we see. 1-Page Summary of Ways Of Seeing Overview
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