John Berger Ways Of Seeing

Ways of Seeing is a very thin book, with few words, yet it is an extremely influential book, and confronts several important aspects of art, unlike any other author. John Berger takes a general approach of Marxism and New Art History relating to social history in Ways of Seeing. He focuses less on the aesthetic properties of art, and more on the New Art History approach; on the social and political construction of artworks, mainly oil paintings concerning class, race, gender, and ethnicity. Berger also focuses on a Marxist methodology, in which he explains art works as the reflection of the values of the economically dominant class and as participants in political exertions. An example of this appears in chapter five, in which Berger depicts much art that illustrates tangible possessions, and land enjoyed by the wealthy. More specifically, a painting, of Mr. and Mrs.
There are actually very few original ideas in Berger's book. Just about the entire content can be found in a variety of thinkers either inspiring, belonging to, or influenced by the Frankfort school, for instance, Meyer Schapiro, Adorno, and especially Walter Benjamin. None of these thinkers are household names in the English speaking world, even though Schapiro may well be the greatest art critic America has produced, and despite Benjamin's possibly being the greatest cultural critic of the 20th century. One reason their ideas have not become more widely known is the fact that all of these thinkers were deeply influenced by Marxism, though none of them were Communists. As a result, while many of the ideas that Berger presents in his work are well known in literary and scholarly circles, they remain unknown to most casual visitors to art