John Berger, Ways of Seeing: Context, Meaning and Advertising
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This presentation revisits John Berger's classic TV programme Ways of Seeing and considers how new contexts of consumption - eg. the internet and social media - might be informing new meanings. The presentation was intended to start a conversation about digital marketing of various types and to ask whether the advertising industry erodes truth. Ugly grey boxes represent elements of my voice over, including links to YouTube clips I used to better illustrate some points.
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John Berger, Ways of Seeing: Context, Meaning and Advertising
- 1. JOHN BERGER WAYS OF SEEING
- 2. Ways of Seeing is a 1972 television series of 30-minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. It was broadcast on BBC Two in January 1972 and adapted into a book of the same name.
- 3. Berger’s message and style were radical. He was influenced by Marx’s ideas of class struggle and considered art historians like Kenneth Clark (Civilisation) “a privileged minority…striving to invent a history which can retrospectively justify the role of the ruling classes.” This perspective influenced Ways of Seeing in style and substance; Berger displays an uncanny ability to describe complex ideas in beautifully lucid terms, using the language of images as much as the language of words. (image essays)
- 4. 45 years later Ways of Seeing is best known because of the paperback co-produced by BBC Publications and Penguin. Ironically, the copyright of the works shown as reproductions in the TV shows prevents the series from being available on DVD, so the four episodes can only be found in lo-res moody YouTube uploads. (links in accompanying word document)
- 5. “In the age of pictorial reproduction the meaning of paintings is no longer attached to them: that is to say it becomes information of a sort” Information is transmittable. No longer must we travel to the art piece itself to receive its image and its meaning.
- 6. “For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free.”
- 7. “[images and Artworks are in this sense disconnected]. [Images] surround us in the same way that language surrounds us.”
- 8. And like language, images can be used, through manipulation and juxtaposition, to say things in a way that they couldn’t when they belonged solely to the artwork and its privileged owner.
- 9. We’re able, in a sense, to remix art to create new meanings, just as the pioneers of hip-hop isolated drum breaks using turntables and then samplers to build a fresh sound. Goya and channel hopping, episode 1, 18:40 – 20:52 https://youtu.be/0pDE4VX_9Kk?t=1118
- 10. So we see that reproduction has separated the artwork and the image and granted images new meanings through allowing them new contexts.
- 12. “The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images.”
- 15. “What matters now is who uses that language and for what purpose.”
- 18. What do you think? Do you think that context informs meaning? What does that mean for our work?
- 19. Mr and Mrs Andrews by Thomas Gainsborough are “not a couple in nature as Rousseau imagined nature. They are landowners and their proprietary attitude towards what surrounds them is visible in their stance and expression.”
- 20. In fact, a statement of ownership, of wealth and power, was the principal way oil painting operated in Western culture.
- 21. Art (and images) belonged and were available to only a privileged elite, and operated in a way that reconfirmed and assured their privilege.
- 22. But now we live in a world saturated with images where they once would’ve been far more rare.
- 23. Who images are for is significant. People have different needs, depending on their status and the era they live in. Images operate in different ways depending on their audience.
- 24. Glamour (the condition of being envied) is a peculiarly new idea. In days past the ideas of grace, elegance and authority amounted to something similar but fundamentally different. When everybody’s place in society is determined by birth personal envy is a less familiar emotion.
- 25. Without social envy glamour can’t exist. Envy becomes a common emotion in a society that has moved towards democracy but stopped half-way. Where status is theoretically open to everyone but only enjoyed by a few.
- 26. Images have gone from making a statement of ownership, of wealth, of power (all of which are statements of fact), to a statement of desirability and aspiration (which are fantasies).
- 28. Where in the past wealthy collectors owned beauty…
- 29. …now beauty belongs to no one
- 32. Both these images are fantasies. In one the nymphs belonged to a wealthy art collector. In the other the Victoria’s Secret models belong to no-one. Rather than being a beautiful possession, they are a dream designed to manufacture dissatisfaction. One images asserts the owner’s position – “I own these women” – the other denigrates us all.
- 33. What effect does being surrounded by these dreams have? How do these images change our relationship with reality?
- 34. Here Berger explores what effect “publicity” (advertising) and its river of dissatisfying fantasy might have on the meaning of images more generally Times Magazine clip, episode 4, 21:28 – 25:28, https://youtu.be/5jTUebm73IY?t=1288
- 35. What do you think? Does advertising debase news? Has ‘image overload’ dulled their power? Have we become more sophisticated consumers of imagery?
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Ways of Seeing is a 1972 television series of 30-minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. It was broadcast on BBC Two in January 1972 and adapted into a book of the same name.
- Berger’s message and style were radical. He was influenced by Marx’s ideas of class struggle and considered art historians like Kenneth Clark (Civilisation) “a privileged minority…striving to invent a history which can retrospectively justify the role of the ruling classes.” This perspective influenced Ways of Seeing in style and substance; Berger displays an uncanny ability to describe complex ideas in beautifully lucid terms, using the language of images as much as the language of words. (image essays)
- 45 years later Ways of Seeing is best known because of the paperback co-produced by BBC Publications and Penguin. Ironically, the copyright of the works shown as reproductions in the TV shows prevents the series from being available on DVD, so the four episodes can only be found in lo-res moody YouTube uploads. (links in accompanying word document)
- “In the age of pictorial reproduction the meaning of paintings is no longer attached to them: that is to say it becomes information of a sort” Information is transmittable. No longer must we travel to the art piece itself to receive its image and its meaning.
- “For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free.”
- “[images and Artworks are in this sense disconnected]. [Images] surround us in the same way that language surrounds us.”
- And like language, images can be used, through manipulation and juxtaposition, to say things in a way that they couldn’t when they belonged solely to the artwork and its privileged owner.
- We’re able, in a sense, to remix art to create new meanings, just as the pioneers of hip-hop isolated drum breaks using turntables and then samplers to build a fresh sound. Goya and channel hopping, episode 1, 18:40 – 20:52 https://youtu.be/0pDE4VX_9Kk?t=1118
- So we see that reproduction has separated the artwork and the image and granted images new meanings through allowing them new contexts.
- So we see that reproduction has separated the artwork and the image and granted images new meanings through allowing them new contexts.
- “The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images.”
- “The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images.”
- “The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images.”
- “What matters now is who uses that language and for what purpose.”
- “What matters now is who uses that language and for what purpose.”
- “What matters now is who uses that language and for what purpose.”
- Mr and Mrs Andrews by Thomas Gainsborough are “not a couple in nature as Rousseau imagined nature. They are landowners and their proprietary attitude towards what surrounds them is visible in their stance and expression.”
- In fact, a statement of ownership, of wealth and power, was the principal way oil painting operated in Western culture.
- Art (and images) belonged and were available to only a privileged elite, and operated in a way that reconfirmed and assured their privilege.
- But now we live in a world saturated with images where they once would’ve been far more rare.
- Who images are for is significant. People have different needs, depending on their status and the era they live in. Images operate in different ways depending on their audience.
- Glamour (the condition of being envied) is a peculiarly new idea. In days past the ideas of grace, elegance and authority amounted to something similar but fundamentally different. When everybody’s place in society is determined by birth personal envy is a less familiar emotion.
- Without social envy glamour can’t exist. Envy becomes a common emotion in a society that has moved towards democracy but stopped half-way. Where status is theoretically open to everyone but only enjoyed by a few.
- Images have gone from making a statement of ownership, of wealth, of power (all of which are statements of fact), to a statement of desirability and aspiration (which are fantasies).
- Images have gone from making a statement of ownership, of wealth, of power (all of which are statements of fact), to a statement of desirability and aspiration (which are fantasies).
- Where in the past wealthy collectors owned beauty
- Now beauty belongs to no one.
- Now beauty belongs to no one.
- Now beauty belongs to no one.
- Both these images are fantasies. In one the nymphs belonged to a wealthy art collector. In the other the Victoria’s Secret models belong to no-one. Rather than being a beautiful possession, they are a dream designed to manufacture dissatisfaction. One images asserts the owner’s position – “I own these women” – the other denigrates us all.
- What effect does being surrounded by these dreams have? How do these images change our relationship with reality?
- Here Berger explores what effect “publicity” (advertising) and its river of dissatisfying fantasy might have on the meaning of images more generally Times Magazine clip, episode 4, 21:28 – 25:28 https://youtu.be/5jTUebm73IY?t=1288
- A new language of images