Ways of Seeing
Based on the BBC Television Series
Published on 1. December 1990
Book
Paperback/Softback
176 pages
978-0-14-013515-2 (ISBN)
Description
"Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.""But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but word can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled."John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the "London Sunday Times" critic commented: "This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings ...he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures." By now he has.
Reviews / Votes
"It's a book about art history and the media, but it's also a magic trick." -- The New Republic"Berger fulfils the roles of a philosopher, listener, and somewhat of a magician as he makes tantalising worlds appear, and illusions vanish." -- Pratibha Rai, Oxford Culture Review
"Berger reveals a dreamworld that we all move through continuously, a visual bombardment designed to conjure deep feelings of inadequacy and desire, the long seduction by capitalism upon its hapless subjects." -- Olivia Laing author of The Garden Against Time
"The influence of the series and the book . . . was enormous . . . It opened up for general attention to areas of cultural study that are now commonplace." -Geoff Dyer
"...perhaps the most bold, clear, and widely renowned explanation of art's entanglement with capitalism." -- The Paris Review
"Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of the professional art critics . . . He is a liberator of images: and once we have allowed the paintings to work on us directly, we are in a much better position to make a meaningful evaluation." -Peter Fuller, Arts Review
"Over the past sixty years, the great John Berger - art critic, essayist, screenwriter, novelist, poet, and artist - has made immeasurable contributions to our understanding of culture and politics, never more potently than in Ways of Seeing." -The Village Voice
On John Berger:
"In contemporary English letters he seems to me peerless." -- Susan Sontag
"We learned from him to see that basic assumptions about everything-work, play, art, commerce-are hidden in the surrounding culture of images." -- Jane Gaines
"One of the most influential intellectuals of our time" -- Observer (London)
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
352 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-14-013515-2 (9780140135152)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Previous edition
John Berger | et al
Ways of Seeing
Book
04/1973
Penguin Books Ltd
€26.18
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Person
John Berger was born in London in 1926. He is well known for his novels & stories as well as for his works of nonfiction, including several volumes of art criticism. His first novel, "A Painter of Our Time", was published in 1958, & since then his books have included the novel "G.", which won the Booker Prize in 1972. In 1962 he left Britain permanently, and he lives in a small village in the French Alps.