Ways of Seeing Season 1

Synopsis

John Berger's Ways of Seeing changed the way people think about painting and art criticism. This watershed work shows, through word and image, how what we see is always influenced by a whole hose of assumptions concerning that nature of beauty, truth, civilization, form, taste, class and gender. Exploring the layers of meaning within oil paintings, photographs and graphic art, Berger argues that when we see, we are not just looking - we are reading the language of images.

Main Cast

John Berger

Self

Age : 90 | Popularity : 25%

Episodes

Episode 1

08 January 1972 - Psychological Aspects

The first part of the television series drew on ideas from Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction arguing that through reproduction an Old Master's painting's modern context is severed from that which existed at the time of its making.

Episode 2

15 January 1972 - Women in Art

The second film discusses the female nude. Berger asserts that only twenty or thirty nudes in the European oil painting tradition depict a woman as herself rather than as a subject of male idealisation or desire.

Episode 3

22 January 1972 - Collectors and Collecting

The third programme is on the use of oil paint as a means of depicting or reflecting the status of the individuals who commissioned the work of art.

Episode 4

29 January 1972 - Commercial Art

In the fourth programme, on publicity and advertising, Berger argues that colour photography has taken over the role of oil paint, though the context is reversed. An idealised potential for the viewer (via consumption) is considered a substitution for the actual reality depicted in old master portraits.

Crew

Department	Role	Name
Editing	Editor	Peter Middleton
Crew	Cinematography	Peter Middleton
Sound	Sound Designer	Peter Middleton
Writing	Writer	John Berger
Directing	Director	Mike Dibb
Production	Producer	Mike Dibb
Department	Role	Name

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