Alba Reyes
Prof. Michael Rodriguez
HUA 290
February 13, 2007
The Ways of Seeing
In chapter one of the book “The Ways of seeing” by John Berger, the surrealist
painter Magritte tries to demonstrate in his work The Key of Dreams that things or
objects are affected for what we know or believe about them. The relation between what
we know and what we see cannot be concluded. We explain the world with words to
identify certain things but in reality what we see comes into our mind before any type of
word (7).
History is important to the author because it is an element that relates present and
past. As a result, the fear of present, guides to mystification of the past. The art of the past
can be mystified or can involve mystery because not everyone has the opportunity to
invent a history that can be directed to the past to justify the role of the ruling classes, and
then those justifications don’t make any sense in the modern terms for what it get
mystified. “Mystification is the process of explaining away what might otherwise be
evident”(16). For instance, the two paintings by Fran Hals in which he portraits The
Governors and Governesses of an Alms house in Haarlem a small Dutch city of the
seventeenth-century, have a little or almost not enough historical information for what it
is impossible to produce circumstantial evidence to establish what were their relation. On
the other side, there is the evidence of the paintings themselves: “The evidence of a group
of men and a group of women as seen by another man, the painter”(13).
The relation between photography and cubism is that the invention of the camera
changed the way men saw. The visible had a different meaning to them. This was
immediately reflected in painting. “For cubists, the visible was no longer what confronted
the single eye, but the totality of possible views taken from points all round
the
object (or person) being depicted” (18). “The invention of the camera also changed the
way in which men saw paintings painted before the camera was invented”(19). In fact
original painting were part of buildings and were designed especially for them. In early
Renaissance church or chapels, painting were records of the building’s interior life that
made a building’s memory and a particularity of it. Every painting was unique to the
place were it was originally installed (19).
The paintings were transportable in some cases, but they were seen either in one
place or the other, never in two places at the same time. The camera’s reproduction of a
painting destroys its originality and uniqueness. Then, its meaning tends to change;
sometimes it has more than just one meaning. For instance when a famous painting is
shown on a TV program, it goes to many spectators instead of being the spectator the one
who goes to see the painting. This type of travel makes the meaning of the painting
change enormously.
In chapter 3 John Berger discussed the history of nude. I believe many aspects of
history of nude still exist today in mainstream media. Like in European oil painting we
see women like the principal subject. In fact, woman’s presence expresses different type
of ideas according to the gestures, expressions, clothes, and chosen surroundings. We still
see women with mirrors symbolizing the vanity of woman in commercials and
advertisement, journalism, television. Some photographers and painters still portrait
naked women to show their feelings. In his book on “The Nude” Kenneth Clark sees
being naked as simply to be without clothes, but as the author implies “the ways of seeing
‘a nude’ is not necessarily confined to art: there are also nude photographs, nude poses,
nude gestures”. (Quoted in John Berger’s .53). In most of today’s cases these poses and
gestures are a common element to pornographic work and male magazines. We can
compare this to the category of “private” used in the eighteen century. Some of the nude
has also homosexual and heterosexual desires. The nude is highly used to sell and
commercialize any type of merchandise.
It is important to look at art history with a critical eye, because there are still
patterns that are important to follow when we want to represent a nude. Everything
depends on the significance or the meaning the artist wants to give and the impact that he
wants to give to the spectators. The position and the surroundings of the nude can make
of a painting a totally different piece of art with a specific meaning.
Oil painting is more than a technique. It defines an art form. Oil painting was
traditional between 1500 and 1900. Its tradition was defined by cultural assumptions and
its norms affected the way we see things such as landscape, women, food, dignitaries, and
mythology (84). The art in any period of time tends to serve the ideas and interests of the
ruling class. As a matter or fact the exact same thing happened in Europe between 1500
and 1900. The ruling classes depended on the power of capital. The ways of seeing the
world was determined by the property and exchange, which was in the oil painting and
wasn’t found in any other type of visual art form. “Oil painting did to appearances what
capital did to social relations”(87). Everything became exchangeable because everything
was a commodity at the time. The reality was measured by its materiality. “Oil painting
celebrated a new kind of wealth- which was dynamic and which found its only sanctions
in supreme buying power of money”(90). A painting could speak to the soul. Oil painting
had the ability of showing textures, the solidity and luster of what it depicted. It has the
power of illusionism. That’s why the objects posses color, texture and temperature filling
the space and the entire world (89). In oil painting the edible is made visible; at this point
the artists demonstrate their virtuosity and confirms the owner’s wealth and habitual style
of living. It also refers to the strata of the ruling class. Some pictures such as the ‘genre’
proved that virtue in this world was rewarded by social and financial success. Those who
could afford to buy these pictures had their own virtue confirmed. The honest and hard
working were the one’s who prospered, and the lazy people good for nothing never had
anything. These pictures hardly arrived to the bourgeoisie. As a result, some of them
pictures were never bought, except by other painters like Rembrandt and Rubens (103).
The relation between property and art in European culture appears natural to that culture,
and if someone demonstrates the extent of property interests in a specific cultural field is
demonstrating his obsessions. Exceptional artist like Rembrandt in specific circumstances
broke free of norms of the tradition and instead made his own work that was
diametrically opposed to its values. Artists like him are acclaimed as the tradition’s
supreme representatives. This claim was easier after his death, that’s why Rembrandt had
no followers but imitators (109).
Rembrandt vision was formed by a tradition, but he needed to recognize his own
vision and separated from what he had learned. The effort required on his two-self
portraits were clear suggested. On his first painting he showed a happier time next to his
wife, and used the traditional methods for the traditional purposes. The painting as a
whole, advertise good fortune, prestige and wealth. In his later painting he turned the
tradition against itself. He was old and expressed just the meaning of his existence, and
he extracted any language away from the painting. It was cold and a little rude. He finally
expressed it in the traditional way that was created to prevent any question (112).