"Ways of Seeing" by John Berger

We are asked by our professor to watch the “Ways of Seeing” in advance so that we can have an idea what do it really talks about. Aside from just watching it, I also read some articles about it so that I can clearly understand the stories behind it.

“Ways of seeing” is written by John Berger it was divided in four part television series in just thirty minutes. This book was contributed to the culture of feminist that has the idea on depictions of women in advertisements and oil paintings. It focuses on aesthetic properties and art history approach.

The first episode of the book is all about the painting. It talks about what painting means and also the idea behind it. Also talks about on how reproduction possible by the camera and thus it change the meaning of art. This episode has a very interesting idea that probably talks about reproduction in different way possible. The first thing is that he tried to reproduce works of arts in poster, newspaper, book, postcards and screen. And it means that art is experienced in a context way.

Before knowing all this things, I find time to view art works by the materials used on it and how it was made, and the skills that was applied on it.

I agree with John Berger’s Theory because once you reproduce a art it makes a lot of changes specially in the colour of it. Youwill see the difference of it from the original one that can give it lots of meaning and ideas.

My example is the painting of “Venus of Urbino by Titian“ the two kinds of image I got from my research is that they both give a different meanings and ideas because they are different in colour and how the wag it was reproduce. The one who reproduce this painting as an image find time to show that this kind of painting is already old and make it colour more yellowish. Two people may have different idea about these two pictures with different style because John Berger was right. When you reproduce a painting or any kind of art, it gave us more ideas on how we see it. These example that I chose change my way of seeing it just proven that if you focus on the original picture of the painting and compare it from the reproduce one, you can say that art has a lot of meaning and style.

Venus of Urbino by Titian