Everything became interchangeable because everything became a commodity. It reduced everything to the equality of objects. Oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. What is being proposed is a little more precise that a way of seeing the world, which was ultimately determined by new attitudes to property and found its visual expression in the oil painting and could not have found it in any other visual art. "The art of any period tends to serve the ideological interests of the ruling class. Take Berger's discussion of oil painting. We look at it through eyes shaped by our own experience, as well as eyes that have seen countless reproductions and re-interpretations.
But it is the radical approach to art outlined in its short essays (both those with words, and those with only pictures) is what really makes this book stand out. Art doesn't exist for art's sake, it exists as a product of past ages that has survived into our time. From its radical design and layout, to its unusual notion of what constitutes an essay, John Berger's Way of Seeing is a striking book. How we view art, how we understand it, how we copy it and discuss it, has everything to do with the world in which we live.
Berger locates art in the prevailing political and economic situation. From its radical design and layout, to its unusual notion of what constitutes an essay, John Berger's Way of Seeing is a striking book.
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