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John Berger, Ways of Seeing
14
Transcript
John Berger, "Ways of Seeing"
Chapter 5: art, class, and possession
Genres
- Portraits
- Animals as valuable property
- Objets d’art
- Buildings as landed property
- History or mythological
- "Genre" picture
- Landscape
What makes a masterpiece?
- works that show emotion and not materialism are the exception, not the rule
Portraits
- contrast of formal distance with visual proximity
- painter makes subjects appear stiff
- faces are generalized
Mythological
- average work was produced cynically, to meet the demands of the market, not the artist's morals
- considered highest form of oil painting
- moral values and etiquette drawn from classics, therefore paintings vacuous and unoriginal
Main idea
"Genre" picture
Oil painting glorifies money and ownership because of its realistic depiction of objects that can be purchased and possessed.
- Showed lower social classes as happy
- Virtue rewarded by financial/social success
Landscape
- Exception to Berger’s argument
- Landscape has intangible elements like sky
- Used to show off property
Purpose
Rembrandt
- misunderstood; "had no followers but only superficial imitators"
- stereotype of great artist's struggle
- was not representative of oil painting, but antagonistic
- Remedy the lack of discourse of art historians on the link between “possessing” and the “way of seeing” in oil painting
- Anthropologist Levi-Strauss first identified this relationship, but related it to all Western art.
- Berger argues it is best exemplified in oil painting, Levi-Strauss’ thesis is too general
Love of Art
- "The art of any period tends to serve the ideological interests of the ruling class."
- oil painting is especially suited to expressing new focus on property
- wealth was no longer static (ie old families), but dynamic (new money, demonstrated by purchasing power)
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