“A woman is always accompanied, except when quite alone, and perhaps even then, by her own image of herself. While she is walking across a room or weeping at the death of her father, she cannot avoid envisioning herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she is taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does, because how she appears to others – and particularly how she appears to men – is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life.” (J.Berger,1972) John Burger shared ideology and sympathy for the burgeoning woman’s movement, he tested the elitism of arts programming, encouraged the audiences to unpick the meaning of paintings instead of just simply revere them. (E.Hope Allowed,2017) related to what Laura Mulvey’s topic of discussions was, the ways of people look at their subjects and how it effects the ‘gaze’ John Burger discusses how one look at women which resonates most strongly in current image obsessed societies. In this day and age the idea of male gaze my look well established. “The female nude in Western painting was there to feed an appetite of male sexual desire. She existed to be looked at, posed in such a way that her body was displayed to the eye of the viewer”(J.Berger,ND) The ideas that the author put forward were very simple, a female nude in a painting or photograph is there to be looked by males to feed a sexual appetite and desire. By photographers or painters crate a portrait that shows a woman naked for pleasure burgers states that: “You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting ‘Vanity,’ thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.”(J.Berger,ND) Normally, the way female bodies were showed culturally as an object to be gazed at, had effect on woman on the way they became to look at themselves and a sight of vision. During different eras, people/artists had very different ideological ways of looking at art, who believed that the artist would influence how people will look at certain paintings/photographs and who states that a woman is there to be used and photographed just to please the man’s sexual pleasure. With his writings Burger Taught the audience that photographs always need language and require a narrative of some sort to make sense. He also took care to differentiate how people react to photographs of their loved ones. Berger’s work is infused with a sensitivity to how long views the narratives of history come alive only with the addition of “close-up” stories of human relationships, that retell the narrative but from a different angle. (Y.Gunaratnam,V.Bell,2017) References:
Allwood, Emma. "Why We Still Need John Berger’S Ways Of Seeing". Dazed. N.p., 2017. Web. 6 May. 2017. Berger, John. Ways Of Seeing. 1st ed. 1972. Print. "How John Berger Changed Our Way Of Seeing Art". The Conversation. N.p., 2017. Web. 6 May. 2017. "John Berger, Art Critic And Author Of Ways Of Seeing, Dies - BBC News". BBC News. N.p., 2017. Web. 6 May. 2017. Livingstone, Josephine. "Beyond John Berger’S Ways Of Seeing". New Republic. Web. 6 May. 2017.
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May 2017
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