Book review
This is an extraordinarily persuasive set of 7 essays, 3 of which are pictorial; the remaining 4 a combination of text and images. I was amazed at how easily the authors convinced me of their arguments regarding art history, artistic value, and the most dominant image in modern society; the advertisement. This book has caused me to unearth a few other books on high culture and popular culture (to be read soon!) Though the authors never identify themselves with any strains of thought, their analyses fall squarely along Marxist and feminist lines. Though this book is about theory, it is thoroughly readable. Berger and the others clearly are an authority on the subjects, as they draw heavily from a plethora of historical and contemporary imagery to demonstrate their points.
Underlying all of their essays is the notion that Western art has always been in the “preservation” (both materially and intellectually) of a ruling class. First, religious in nature; art was removed from everyday life in order for it to exert control over everyday life. Later, in a social class; so that both the ownership of the art piece and the subject legitimized their social position.
The first essay offers an excellent introduction to basic ideas about the image, the painting, and the photograph. In this, the authors assert that before, pieces of art were valued by their uniqueness; an owner would keep the object in their possession. The photograph made these pieces less unique, as they could produce reproductions. Now, the uniqueness of an image lies in it being the original of a reprodution.
What I thought was one of the more revolutionary arguments was about the importance of the oil painting tradition. Oils was the first medium that had the unique ability to render objects as realistic and tangible. The ability to “see” objects convinces the ability to own objects. In the oils tradition, overwhelmingly, subjects were treated as objects/commodities: animals were painted as domesticated (not cows, but cattle), buildings not for their architecture, but as property. The authors refer us to several pieces that offer a meta-example to this, in which a ruling class subject is rendered amongst their oil painting collections!
The second essay is a smart analysis of the tradition of the nude, which I believe, draws heavily from Simone de Beavouir’s thinking. The authors begin with a theory of gender social relations, to better understand the creation of the nude subject and how it reflects and reinforces those relations. In Western society, the presence of men and women is defined in different ways. Men are socialized to establish their presence by their ability to exert power towards others. Furthermore, men survey women before treating them. In contrast, women express their presence by their own attitude towards themselves and defines what can and cannot be done to her. It follows that women embody both the (male) surveyor and the surveyed so as to demonstrate to others how her whole self would like to be treated. Women must watch themselves being looked at, thereby turning themselves into objects of vision; a sight. The nude embodies these relations. For example, in oil paintings, the implication is that the woman is aware of being seen by a spectator: the woman subject, “passively looking at the spectator, staring at her naked” (52). Even when male lovers are depicted, the woman usually looks not toward him, but toward her “true” lover, the painting’s spectator-owner.
The final essay shifts its focus from the relation between spectator-owner and image to spectator-buyer and image, in order to deconstruct contemporary advertising. At its most basic, advertising is about glamour: “the happiness of being envied (by others) is glamour” (132). For the spectator-owner, oil paintings re-informed their status. Oils addressed those who make money from the market. Alternatively, for the spectator-buyer, advertisements make them dissatisfied with their life (not with society but their life within it) and offers them an improved life through consumption. Advertisements address the masses who constitute the market. Brilliant!
- Goodreads rating – 3.91
- REVIEW – Adam