Ways of Seeing by John Berger

Ways of Seeing by John Berger 1977 originally published in 1972

Seeing comes before words - a child can look and recognise before it can speak. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Seeing comes before words and establishes our place in the surrounding world and we explain our world with words and are surrounded by it.

Men act and women appear, men look at women and women watch themselves being looked at. The surveyor of woman in herself is male and the surveyed is female – she turns herself into an object of vision. Men survey women before treating them. How a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. To control this, women must contain it and interiorize it. The woman’s surveyor ‘self’ treats the part which is the surveyed so to demonstrate to others how her whole self would like to be treated and constitutes her presence. Every woman’s presence regulates what is and is not ‘permissible’ within her presence. Everyone of her actions is read as an indication of how she would like to be treated.
I feel that this interpretation and concept how women are viewed is outdated but not completely. As a woman myself I always wonder or worry how I am viewed upon by other people but mainly other women. I see other women as my competition. People may think that this is because I have a partner and I'm insecure. However I do this because women are more judgemental and opinionated then men of today, but this is my own opinion. 

In the nudes of European oil painting we can discover some of the criteria and conventions by which women have been seen and judged as sights.

The first nudes depicted were Adam and Eve and as told in the Genesis story they became aware of being naked because of eating the apple, and saw the other differently. Nakedness was created in the mind of the beholder. Woman was blamed and is punished by being made subservient to the man – the man becomes the agent of God.

During the Renaissance the Medieval scene following scene disappeared and the single moment depicted became the moment of shame – couple wearing fig-leaves or modest gesture with hands, the shame in relation to the spectator. Shame then became a kind of display and the opportunity of painting nudes. There remained the implication that the woman subject is aware of being seen by a spectator. In Susannah and the Elders we join the  Elders spying on her taking a bath – Susannah looks back on us looking at her.

In Tintoretto Susannah looks at herself in a mirror – joins the spectators looking at herself. The mirror was used to treat the woman as a sight and not vanity by the artist placing the mirror in her hand.

In the Judgement of Paris again the idea is  man/men looking at naked women but an apple is awarded to the women he finds most beautiful.

Charles the Second commissioned a secret painting from Lely – typically a Venus Cupid looking portrait that was in fact the Kings mistress Nell Gwynne passively looking at the spectator staring at her naked – not an expression of her own feelings but submission to demands of her owner.

Non – European art  never depicted  nakedness in this way but if sexual likely to show active sexual love between two people – absorbing each other.

This difference between nakedness and nudity in European tradition is described by Kenneth Clark as naked is without clothes and nude is a form of art – a form of seeing which the painting achieves. To be naked is to be oneself and to be nude is to be seen naked by others – not recognised for oneself, as the body becomes an object to become nude. Nakedness reveals itself and nudity places itself on display.

In the average European oil painting of the nude the principle hero is never painted assumes it is a man and everything is addressed to him, as a result of him being there sexual provocation.

John Berger asks the reader to consider the Allegory of Time and Love by Bronzino – sent a present from Grand Duke of Florence to the King of France. Venus is kissing a Cupid but in a way to display it to the male looking at the picture – appealing to his sexuality and nothing to do with her sexuality. Women are simply to feed a male appetite and not to have any of their own.

John Berger then asks the reader to compare two pictures that have similar expressions that offer their femininity as the surveyed to the male. Even if the painting depicts a male lover the female attention isn't always on him but to the observer of the picture and looks out and continues well into the nineteenth century. John reminds us that often influential men would discuss issues under painting and seek consolation from the picture if they were outwitted.