John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972)

This series is based on Walter Benjamin’s 1936 essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction

Episode 1:

1) What is perspective?

Perspectives are appearances which travel into the eye and are then perceived by the beholder of the
eye, these appearances are known as realities.

2) What does Berger mean when he says that once all paintings were “part of their own place”?

Paintings were originally created in Records of the building’s interior life, the memory and history of
the original location of the painting.

3) How did the camera change this? What are the most important characteristics of painting in its new
condition?

4) What are Berger's arguments with each of the following?:

a. the National Gallery catalog + Leonardo painting

b. Bruegel's painting of Christ with the cross

c. Goya's The Third of May 1808 (Firing Squad painting)

d. Frans Hals' painting of the Governors and Women Regents of the Haarlem Almshouse

5) How does Berger say he plans to use the tool of image reproduction in the next three programs?
Episode 2:

6) What according to Berger always accompanies a woman even when she is alone?

7) What is a woman in the culture of European oil painters and patrons?

8) What does Berger say we will learn by looking at the conventions of European nude painting?

9) How do Adam and Eve fit in the story? Why does Berger include them? What does this story have
to do with the film's topic?

10) Explain Berger's concept of the spectator-owner.

11) Do you agree with Berger's argument about women in the European oil-painting tradition? In
three sentences, explain why or why not.
Episode 3:

12) What is the significance of the two films of concerts? What does Berger want us to see about
arguments that praise the sublime nature of art?

13) Why was the “solidity” of oil painting important in the European portrait tradition? How does
Berger connect this to the context of sixteenth century trans-Atlantic exploration and early European
colonialism?

14) All portraits say to the viewer, “I once existed and looked like this.” What do European oil
paintings say in addition to this? Explain the historical significance of Berger’s insight here. In other
words, what does he think changed in history to make European art do what he says it did in this
regard?

15) How does Berger use the tools of reproduction to make Gainsborough’s landscape portrait say what
he wants it to say? How does Berger reshape the image and its context to make his own argument? Be
specific about the techniques he uses.

16) What has replaced the tradition of oil painting?

17) In 3-4 sentences answer Berger’s thesis question at the start of the episode: Where does the value of
painting come from?
Episode 4:

18) What is glamour? What emotion does glamour need to survive, and what does that have to do with
the historical development of democracy in societies?

19) What devices does publicity borrow from oil painting? List these [as Berger does].

20) Ponder the scene with the perfume factory conveyor belt? What does Berger say is the relationship
between this present and an imagined future?

21) Identify the three dreams offered by publicity:

a)

b)

c)

22) Why, eventually, are publicity images so bleak? What do they say about “us as we are?”

23) What do you think of Berger’s overall argument throughout the four-part series? Do you find his
argument convincing, or would you like to argue against all or some of it?

24) This series first aired in 1972 when Berger was not cognizant of the power over art that would
come with the age of digital reproduction and transmission. How would you update Berger’s argument
or challenge it given the new mediasphere of digital images and networked computer transmission?