John Berger is an English art critic, novelist, painter and author who lives ("voluntarily exiled") in France. He made a television series called "Ways of Seeing" in 1972 for the BBC, and a companion book was published. I have had that (small, paperback) book for many years, and was just starting to re-read it the other day when I thought to see if there was anything on video about John Berger's ideas. It turned out that the whole "Ways of Seeing" series can be seen (broken into several small videos), but so far I've only found two sites where the videos are shown, and neither one has videos that are of good quality.
Nevertheless, it's a very interesting, thought provoking series and so today I finally got around to putting all the "Ways of Seeing" videos that I found on YouTube in order (they are all over the place on YouTube). Prepare yourself to gaze for quite a while at Berger looking awfully dated in that early 1970s hairstyle and flashy shirt.
VIDEOS
BBC TV DOCUMENTARY - WAYS OF SEEING - WITH JOHN BERGER
FIRST EPISODE (LOOKING AT ART)
"The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe ..... Today we see the art of the past as nobody saw it before. We actually perceive it in a different way ..... The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost." -- Quotes from the book Ways of Seeing based on the BBC TV series with John Berger.
LOOKING AT ART - PART 1 OF 4
7 MINUTES, 25 SECONDS
Left-Click on the arrow to begin.
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LOOKING AT ART - PART 2 OF 4
8 MINUTES, 4 SECONDS
Left-click on the arrow to begin.
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LOOKING AT ART - PART 3 OF 4
7 MINUTES, 59 SECONDS
Can only be viewed on its YouTube page, via this link.
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LOOKING AT ART - PART 4 OF 4
6 MINUTES, 42 SECONDS
Can only be viwed on its YouTube page, via this link.
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SECOND EPISODE (THE FEMALE NUDE)
"A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. His presence may be fabricated, in the sense that he pretends to be capable of what he is not. But the pretence is always towards a power which he exercises on others.....By contrast, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her.....One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.....Thus she turns herself into an object...." -- Quotes from the book Ways of Seeing.
THE FEMALE NUDE - PART 1 OF 4
8 MINUTES, 10 SECONDS
Can only be viewed on its YouTube page, via this link.
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THE FEMALE NUDE - PART 2 OF 4
8 MINUTES, 4 SECONDS
Can only be viewed on its YouTube page, via this link.
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THE FEMALE NUDE - PART 3 OF 4
7 MINUTES, 23 SECONDS
This particular part is not very interesting to me - It's just a conversation about the subject by some women sitting at a table with Berger.
Can only be viewed on its YouTube page via this link.
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THE FEMALE NUDE - PART 4 OF 4
5 MINUTES, 55 SECONDS
This is a continuation of the above, with the women talking.
Can only be viewed on its YouTube page, via this link.
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THIRD EPISODE (OIL PAINTING)
"Oil paintings often depict things. Things which in reality are buyable. To have a thing painted and put on a canvas is not unlike buying it and putting it in your house. If you buy a painting you buy also the look of the thing it represents.....What distinguishes oil painting from any other form of painting is its special ability to render the tangibility, the texture, the lustre, the solidity of what it depicts. It defines the real as that which you can put your hands on.....Oil painting, before it was anything else, was a celebration of private property. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are what you have." -- Quotes from the book Ways of Seeing.
OIL PAINTING - PART 1 OF 4
7 MINUTES 47 SECONDS
Can only be viewed on its YouTube page, via this link.
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OIL PAINTING - PART 2 OF 4
7 MINUTES, 40 SECONDS
Can only be viewed on its YouTube page, via this link.
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OIL PAINTING - PART 3 OF 4
7 MINUTES, 46 SECONDS
Can only be viewed on its YouTube page, via this link.
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OIL PAINTING - PART 4 OF 4
4 MINUTES, 15 SECONDS
Can only be viewed on its YouTube page, via this link.
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FOURTH (AND FINAL) EPISODE (ADVERTISING)
"In no other form of society in history has there been such a concentration of images, such a density of visual messages.....[P]ublicity as a system only makes a single proposal. It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more.....Publicity persuades us of such a transformation by showing us people who have apparently been transformed and are, as a result, enviable." -- Quotes from the book Ways of Seeing.
ADVERTISING ("Publicity") - PART 1 OF 4
6 MINUTES, 50 SECONDS
Can only be viewed on its YouTube page, via this link.
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ADVERTISING - PART 2 OF 4
7 MINUTES, 2 SECONDS
Can only be viewed on its YouTube page, via this link.
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ADVERTISING - PART 3 OF 4
7 MINUTES, 46 SECONDS
Can only be viewed on its YouTube page, via this link.
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ADVERTISING - PART 4 OF 4
7 MINUTES, 25 SECONDS
Can only be viewed on its YouTube page, via this link
LINKS
A very thorough and interesting commentary by Peter Steven on John Berger and the Ways of Seeing series, which here is compared with Kenneth Clark's series called Civilization. The site is called JUMP CUT (which "publishes material on film, television, video and related media ad cultural analysis").Review of a book written by Geoff Dyer about John Berger's works. Dyer considers Berger his mentor. The site is called The Complete Review.
Another review of Berger's Ways of Seeing. The site is called Typotheque
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There's a good article on John Berger here in the New York Times (January 13, 2002)
Here's the Wikipedia entry on John Berger. There are many links you can follow to find out more about him in this Wikipedia article.
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Free Thinking About Art Monthly Newsletter - See bottom of this page.
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