Berger, John

John Berger (1926–) is a British art critic, artist, and acclaimed novelist, best known among scholars of gender and media for the 1972 British television series and accompanying book he created, Ways of Seeing. In Ways of Seeing Berger argues that power relations, particularly related to gender, class, and capitalism, are visible in the history of western European art as well as in the advertising of his day. His work inspired scholarly attention to the media as central to gendered power relations.

Although Ways of Seeing is often attributed to Berger alone, it is a coauthored book, with Sven Blomberg, Chris Fox, Michael Dibb, and Richard Hollis. In both the book and the television series, Berger brings a Marxist critique to art history and criticism and compares fine art to contemporary advertising. What makes his critique Marxist is his attention to how European art, particularly oil painting, has been shaped by power relations in society, so he foregrounds who produced the paintings, for whom they produced these paintings, and how the resulting images reinforced the status quo. Berger is concerned that the conditions of production of these paintings have been obscured and are routinely ignored by both art critics and audiences, and therefore their ideological meanings have become naturalized.

Ways of Seeing is a short book containing seven essays, four of which are visual essays that feature series of images. The central argument of the book is that images are not benign; rather, they invite viewers to see the world in particular ways. Berger demonstrates that the ways of seeing promoted in western European art are very particular by pointing out patterns and conventions in how certain kinds of subjects, such as women or animals or possessions, are represented. Berger's observation that relations of looking, particularly through images such as paintings and photographs, are central to how power works in modern society is a key premise of many theories of visual culture.

The best-known phrase from Ways of Seeing is that, arguably, “men act, and women appear” (p. 47). Berger argues that this is the case because European oil paintings were produced by men, for men, and that women were represented for men's pleasure in looking at them, even possessing them. While this pattern of representation naturalizes the idea that women should be available for the pleasure of men, Berger argues that it also shapes the subjectivity of women. He writes, “Women watch themselves being looked at” (p. 46). Therefore, female subjectivity is split in two—a woman is aware of being surveyed by men, but she also surveys herself. Berger points out that in the tradition of western European art the female nude is often arranged in paintings for the pleasure of the male spectator (often the patron who commissioned the work), and further that she looks not at her environment but at the spectator, acknowledging and even inviting the spectator's gaze. Otherwise, Berger notes that the female nude is often looking at herself in a mirror, thereby justifying the desire of the spectator to look at her. Berger argues that the nude is depicted as passive, which communicates that the female subject must submit to the desire of the spectator. In other words, European oil paintings objectify women, turning them into objects of pleasure for their male spectator-owners.

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