Ways of Seeing by John Berger

So much more of the meaning of Berger's treatise can be understood by actually watching his series. Here is episode one as presented on You Tube. My notes follow

Photography meant that paintings were no longer unique to the place where they were hung but copies can now be placed in familiar surroundings.

Painting was often an integral part of the building. Icons are no longer specific to a location but can be transported to home. When you later see an original you see it as the original of the reproduction and therefore its "first meaning is no longer to be found in what is says but what it is." (p21 of book)

"It is the image of the painting which travels now - the meaning is transmittable.

"The National Gallery catalogue is for art experts" Da Vinci's The Virgin of the Rocks has 14 pages of closely researched text to prove it is the original, for example. Art needs to be stripped of false mystery and false religiosity.

Paintings are silent and still so can be manipulated by movement - zoom in to the detail and some of the overall meaning of the image is lost. You can add sound too and change your view of a painting as a result (he evidences with a painting by Caravaggio). The painting is no longer a constant but the meaning can change by what is around it. 

Berger is scornful of the 'mystification' that surrounds artistic commentary, evidenced by repeating some words of a recent (as in 1972) analysis of Hals' Regents of the Old Men's Alms House and Regentesses of the Old Men's Alms House. He then compares this approach to that of children before they become 'mystified'. He shows a group of children a painting by Carvaggio. What is particularly noticeable is that the children are more direct - to them the gender of the central character is of key interest, the girls favouring a woman, the boys a man. Berger points out that Caravaggio was homosexual but the children did not need to know that to realise there is ambiguity.

valuation 

This is a classic and has been acknowledged as such for a long time. It is just the first of four episodes and I feel the need to see the rest, if not now then over the period of doing the course.

Berger has been criticised a lot since the programme (see my notes on Howells and Negreiros - Ideology) but some of that, notably by H&N themselves, lose the central core of Berger's argument: that the way we look at art is influenced by the fact of its replicability, and that replicability means that one's view of a painting can/will be manipulated by what is juxtaposed with it, whether other visual stimuli, or audio. That is surely nowadays viewed as mainstream and not at all contentious. That Berger may have gone too far in some respects does not invalidate everything he said. I particularly like his view of the mystification of art commentary, as I believe that there is a conspiracy of complication in the world of academic art - there is a perceived need to use pompous and pretentious language as a method of self promotion without adding (indeed detracting from) the message. Clarity is to be avoided at all costs. Succinctness sucks.   

Having seen episode one, I consider it important to see all four episodes and will make further notes.