If in the anti-elitist atmosphere of the 1960s still anyone believed in the idea of the artist as a genius it was Andy Warhol who thoroughly disabused them: in his latest act of devotion and surrender to America's mass culture he develops a process that enables him to photographically transfer tabloid and advertisement pictures directly on to a silkscreen, allowing not only the infinite production of the original work but also the elimination of any apparent sign of the artist's involvement. To make his point clear he then rocks the art markets by declaring (and later retracting) that some of his work was actually executed by assistants. With some delay also art historians started to shift their attention from the retualized celebration of the artist towards the role of spectators and buyers in defining the status and value of art. It is this context in which "Ways of Seeing" has been written.
The multitude of approaches to art suggested by the book's title is also reflected in its composition - if that is the word. Although consisting of numbered essays (both verbal as well as entirely pictorial) Berger explicitly advises the reader (the text begins in a whimsical and refre
Far less contentious than in the case of oil painting "Ways of Seeing" identifies the idea of ownership also as central to the understanding of modern advertisement. There, buying is presented as the transformation of one's self into a better, a "richer" way of living. By buying the proposed product we become the cheer- and successful people depicted and the envy of others. In this respect advertisement dwells on and stimulates the discontent with the present to hold out the future. Of course (and here "Ways of Seeing" picks up on its political theme), this hope only addresses the personal life of the individual and thereby diverts attention from the need for social change.
Once the film of scholarly mystification is removed, clarity, precision, solidity, lustre and verisimilitude reveal the main characteristic of European oil painting: the representation of material wealth. Following the ideas of Levi-Strauss, Berger explains the development of this particular art technique and art form and its phenomenal rise in the 15th century by the need of an emerging class of mercantile capitalists, and later the landed gentry, to confirm their sense of ownership and the importance o
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