Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” by Emily McEwan

By: Emily McEwan (May 2011). http://emilymay.wordpress.com/reviews-criticism/john-bergers-ways-of-seeing/
views on art

John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” is an in depth look on art, the way people view it and the influences that traditional oil painting has had on society and modern day publicity. The beginning of the book goes into the issue of how people now look at art versus how people in the past look at art and how reproduction has effected this. The relationship between social status and the subjects of oil painting, particularly the female nude is discussed as well. Berger turns to modern day and explains the role that publicity takes in our daily lives and how it is modeled after the traditional oil painting of the past.
Berger embarks on the explanation of the different views of art from the 1500’s to modern day in this first chapter. Images are the most powerful communicator we have. There are things we cannot describe in words but that images can illustrate. The power images have also mystifies viewers. The artist is really the only one who knows exactly what was going on when the painting was made, viewers can only interpret. The mystery intrigues viewers to want more. The composition of the painting can often create the power a painting has, by having unity, harmony or contrast. During the time of traditional oil painting, from 1500-1900, paintings were prized because they were the only way to capture a moment in time and possess it forever. This all changed at the advent of the camera which has manipulated the way we look at art today. Art is now able to be reproduced and many people can view it, not solely an elite few. It also has the ability to change the entire meaning of a painting by placing it with certain texts or other paintings. With the reproduction, arts value has been placed aesthetically and monetarily on a different level then before. Authenticity is paramount now because of the threat of reproduction. On the other hand, art is more widely viewed and loved because of being about to put pictures in books, postcards or posters. Since art is so widely accessible famous works are being quoted or appropriated for other works of art, advertisements, and merchandise. The way art is viewed has changed dramatically over the course of a hundred years due to technology and social change.
The social meaning of art has always been a dynamic part of art. The masterpieces have always been a symbol of stature, class, culture and education. The subjects of paintings have their own social meaning. The typical female nude painting of traditional oil painting period seems modest compared to what we encounter today, but it is also similar to many photographs today. The typical female nude is painted with the assumption of a male presence, whether in the painting or the viewer as the male presence. The woman is usually posed in a way to please the viewer, her gaze is meant to entice the viewer, and this notion is the same in modern day advertisements and photographs. Berger comments that a woman unconsciously acts in a way knowing she is being viewed. Women are constantly being surveyed, not only by men but by other women, and by themselves. The notion of being viewed is made obvious in the nude paintings. Naked and nude are two separate ideas, the author points out. Naked is being by ones self and naked, without being viewed as an object. Nude is being viewed as an object of sexuality or pleasure. The nude paintings were specifically for men to view as pleasure images. Men could look at this beautiful nude and gain reassurance of their manhood. In return the female gets nothing, this painting seems as if it is about her, but it is not. In fact the artist typically does everything in his power to remove any power she may have, even sexually by removing all body hair. The painting is all about the owner/viewer, the man. The artist may use a mirror for the nude to gaze into, so she also turns into a viewer of herself. The mirror is a symbol of vanity, making the woman vain. Berger points out the hypocrisy of this idea, the woman is vain because she is viewing her self, but the painting is made for the man to view her. Of course Berger explains there is always an exception to the rules and there were masters who created a very unique painting where it was all about the woman and the loving position of the artist. This was a rarity and these pieces are very revered today for that reason.
Berger classifies the women in nude paintings as objects, since that is how they are seen by the artist and the viewer, but objects in paintings also benefited the viewer/owner. Since paintings were already a sign of status and class, the owner wanted to make sure the objects in the painting benefited them through their symbolic meaning. Artist started using metaphysical symbols such as realistic skulls which represented death. These symbols rarely fit into the static materialism way of painting. The illusionism and symbols is what made oil painting stand out from other forms of visual art, and why it was so popular. A portrait could reveal a multitude of characteristics and tastes of the sitter. Reality was being measured by materials in the time of traditional oil painting. Art was just one way to measure reality even though it rarely depicted actual reality. The reality in paintings was supposed to benefit the owner or the sitter in making other people believe the painting depicts owner/sitter’s worth. Oil paintings were to appearances as money was to social relations the author points out. Religious paintings were very popular to show the ‘moral’ standing of the owner, but even these paintings were guilty of provided pleasure for the viewer. Female figures were still posed for the eye of the male viewer even though they were meant to be holy and pure. Anything that could be a status symbol or improve the look of the owner was painted, from food to animals, landscapes to portraits. Rarely was an object painting just because, there was always a self serving purpose behind it. Two of Rembrant’s self portraits are examined to see if they fall into this category. The first, a portrait of him and his new wife, is noted as an advertisement for the artists happy successful life. Later in his life he did another portrait, this is not like the latter. The portrait is solemn and true with his individual style penetrating this painting. This is not an advertisement for his life, this is a question of existence.
The art of publicity in the modern day does not ask about existence but asks about your future “Will you be happy?” It looks into the past and refers to the future to make people feel like they need certain things in order to be happy. Publicity takes this idea of materialism and advertising one’s things from traditional oil painting and applies it to modern day advertising. Instead of showing the things that the viewer has, publicity shows what they need in order to be happy. Somehow buying these products will make the viewer happier in the future. Advertising skips the presents it uses popular art from the past or events to convince the viewer they will be happier in the future if they possess this material. The concept of envy and glamour is introduced; these make people happy by having something others don’t. Berger explains the different between glamour now and grace and elegance in the past. There was no glamour in the past. Today glamour is showing off the materials you have that other people do not have and want. Envy is key in advertising it makes people want what the person in the advertisement has; therefore being unsatisfied with their present state. Women and sex are used profusely in advertisement since it appeals to both women and men. Men want the women and the sex and the women want to be the women. This idea of women and sex ties into the beginning of the book; where the women in the advertisements are used for the exact purpose that the female nude was used in traditional oil paintings.
Berger paints a grim picture of the effects of traditional oil painting and publicity on the lives of people. It is too often used to promote materialism and individual prosperity and envy. The subjects in oil painting and advertisements are just tools for the constant need to possess certain objects.

"DO NATIONS EXPRESS THEMSELVES IN THEIR FOODS?

Salloum, Habeeb. "DO NATIONS EXPRESS THEMSELVES IN THEIR FOODS?. ." Contemporary Review. 278.1621 (Feb 2001): 107. Academic OneFile. Gale. University of the Philippines - Diliman. 4 June 2011
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Do nations express themselves in their foods? It is a question that I thought would be worth examining. Mulling over this interesting theory in my mind led me to examine my own experiences during more than a quarter century of travel throughout the world. Looking back at the episodes and the many feasts which I relished during these travels, inspired me to relay my thoughts to others. 'Perhaps, there is much to be read in this simple question', I thought to myself.
My trail of memories begins in my own backyard -- from a fine restaurant which I always patronize. 'I love Japanese food! It's my favourite!' Jim, one of my colleagues, remarked when I asked him if he would like to join us for a meal at Toronto's Memories of Japan Restaurant. Now, as we sat around a cooking table, where food is cooked in front of a customer, the chef downed around as he cooked our meal. Jim, between morsels, would come out with phrases such as: 'Isn't Toronto great? Where else would one find the food of the entire world in one city?'
Another time, at one of my other preferred gourmet dining places, The Jerusalem Restaurant, which, in view, serves the best Arab food in North America, I was enjoying my succulent meal, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Looking up, I was astonished to see a Palestinian friend who I knew worked in the United Arab Emirates.
'What are you doing here?', I asked as I jumped up to welcome him. He grinned as I warmly shook his hand. 'In Toronto, I always come to this restaurant. Imagine! It serves great Arab food -- better than the eating places in the Arab world'.
Sometime later, at one of the chain of Mandarin Restaurants in Toronto offering tasty Chinese buffet foods, I walked around surveying the customers as they tried to choose from the seemingly endless and enticing dishes. The mostly young men and women appeared to be as varied as the dishes. Asians, Africans and European-looking individuals made up the milling crowd. All seemed to be familiar with the delights of Chinese food. They were a fair representation of Toronto's cosmopolitan population -- like the city's foods, a multi-national mixture of peoples.
The hundreds of ethnic eating places in the city have created a sophisticated Torontonian. It is said that, in Toronto, one can eat for the 365 days of the year at a different ethnic eating place and never eat the same food twice. Without doubt, the foods of the world, to be found in Canada's larger cities, had a great hand in creating the modern Canadian -- in the main, sophisticated and worldly.
It is a long way from Toronto to the Middle East, but food knows no boundaries. What we eat is one of the basic moulders of our culture. There is no better illustration of this phenomena than the reflections about my countless trips to that part of the world.
During one of these trips, after enjoying a restful afternoon siesta, we were that evening seated in Abo Alez Restaurant, housed in a renovated, beautifully tiled old Arab home across the street from the renowned Umayyad Mosque in Damascus -- the oldest inhabited city in the world. Here, surrounded by groups of tourists, a traveller can dine on the tastiest food in Damascus -- a city noted for its fine dishes.
Nibbling on endless mazzas (appetizers), I looked around me as we gorged on these tidbits of food. In the background, the melodies of the muwashahat (classical music and song developed in Arab Spain) soothed our nerves and this created an atmosphere conducive to friendly conversation. The captivating tunes of these classical songs and music from Andalusia were like sirens calling us to come and enjoy the pleasures of life as we relaxed and waited for the meal to come. Of course when, more than an hour later, the main course came, we could not do it justice. Like the others around us, we just nibbled on our newly served food.
This way of dining tells better than words the story of the Middle Eastern way of life. Dining is the essence of existence itself. Life revolves around food. The longer it takes to consume a meal, the more one is imbued with zest for living. The food itself, even though important, is, in the main, a way of coalescing social life.
The way Middle Easterners eat, indicates to the outsider that in this part of the world the people love to relax and eat while they enjoy each others company. In North America and the majority of European countries, people usually relax and converse while sipping their drinks; in the Arab East, it's nibbling on food which brings social grace and contentment.
In Europe and North America, the cities are saturated with fast-food outlets where people eat and run. This reflects their lifestyle -- a fast pace of life where, in order to succeed, time means everything.
On the other hand, in the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern lands, food and tradition go hand in hand. Take for example the hours it takes to make a meal in the Arab Middle East. It is as if time is of no essence. Cleaning, cutting and grinding meats and vegetables can take an entire morning, just for preparing the ingredients for a simple meal. In Europe and North America, preparation is effortless. One can buy the ingredients canned, frozen or prepared by the butcher, indicating a fast-moving society with hardly any time to spare.
In classical and medieval times, the Arabs and Chinese prepared sumptuous feasts and, in some cases, their recipes were recorded. Following these banquets of culinary delights, in poetry and prose, guests would laud the host and the pleasures they found in his food. In those eras, the opulence of culture was to be found in the dishes each nation could produce. As an example, the Chinese are said to have some 80,000 and the Arabs 40,000 dishes in their storehouses of foods. The leisurely ways of dining gave them the incentive to create countless dishes and this gave birth to a person and a lifestyle easygoing, friendly and hospitable.
In Spain, an Arab land for some 800 years, it is the same story. Abo Alez Restaurant and its mazzas came to mind as we dined in the Alhambra Palace Hotel -- a Moorish style red-ochre palace overlooking the renowned Alhambra Palace. Nibbling on dish after dish of tapas, mazzas Spanish style, while sipping wine, I observed my co-diners as they conversed in a leisurely style. It was a Damascene scene with a unique Andalusian ornamentation.
Even though for centuries Spaniards and Arabs warred against each other, the basic way of life remains similar. Their siestas, their mazzas and tapas tell the same story. Leisurely dining is inbred into the culture. Conversing and enjoying tidbits of food is the core of the Spanish character.
Even more than in Spain, food in Morocco is the mirror of the nation. During my first visit to that country in the early 1960s, as we sat down to dine in a Moroccan friend's home in Rabat, the beautiful capital of that country, I was astonished at the eating ritual. Living all my life in North America, I was ignorant of other people's cultures.
I had become acquainted with my Moroccan friend, Idriss, during his student years in Canada. He had dined in our home many times and now I was enjoying his hospitality. In a Moorish style dining room, made stunning by exquisitely tiled walls, we sat down on low stools around a huge copper platter on which course after course of different dishes was served. With the exception of the soup, everyone scooped up the food with their right hand from common dishes. It was a scene as old as time -- going back to the very beginning of human civilization.
Idriss was a member of one of the aristocratic families in Morocco and his family followed the traditions of his ancestors in dining and food. His roots went back to medieval Arab Spain -- to the time when Morocco and Spain were one nation. Proud of what the Arabs had accomplished in the Iberian Peninsula, he carried on the traditions of his ancestors.
That evening as we feasted with Idriss and his family, he talked about Andalusia and of how many of his relatives and friends still eat the same food and live as their forefathers had done in that once Arab land. Eating with his hand from a common dish and dining in the atmosphere of Moorish arches and seductive tiles was a way of keeping the pride and traditions of his ancestors alive. There is little doubt that these embellishments and the food, once eaten in Moorish Spain, along with its traditions, gave him pride and kept his connections with the past alive. It moulded, to a great extent, his and his compatriots' personalities and way of life.
A few years later, while vacationing in Acapulco, Mexico's top resort, I was surprised to find a small restaurant edging the Zocalo, in the heart of the old city, with an Arab owner. Seemingly overjoyed at meeting us, he invited my daughter and myself to join him for breakfast a few days later.
During that morning's repast I discussed with him Mexican food for an article I was in the process of writing. When I asked him about the original dishes of that country, he thought for awhile, then mischievously said, 'Oh! I don't know! All their foods are only touched up Arab dishes. One of their most favoured dishes is paella -- a true Arab invention'. He went on, 'What they eat here is only a version of what we eat in the Middle East'.
The Arab contributions to the Latin-speaking world, not only in the food arena but in almost all aspects of life has had a great hand in forming the Latin individual. It is said that inside every person with a Spanish or Portuguese ancestry, lies a hidden Arab still enjoying the dance, music, song and, above all, the food of the Arab lands.
I will never forget a beautiful tourist guide in one of Acapulco's numerous travel agencies telling me, 'Of course we are proud of the Arabs, and why should we not be? Here, many of us in Mexico say, "Our fathers were the Spaniards but our grandfathers were the Arabs"'. Without doubt, her words and those of the restaurant owner reflect the Mexican personality. It is a combination of Arab, Iberian Peninsula and the American native cultures -- its yeast, the foods consumed.
The combination of cultures and food is even more evident in southeast Asia, best reflected in Malaysia. The first time that I explored Kuala Lumpur, its dazzling capital, I was fascinated by its architecture, exuding the aura of the Arab/Islamic lands, China and India. It seemed to me that the city was an enchanted world of make-believe.
I felt even more of a thrill when I sampled that country's exotic food. Malaysian cuisine is, if one is to somewhat exaggerate, a combination of the world's culinary arts. The dishes of Malaysian indigenous people, the Arab lands, China, India, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, some of the European countries and a combination of these foods are to be found, not only in Kuala Lumpur, but in all the large cities throughout Malaysia.
The some 22 million people of the country consuming these foods are themselves as diverse as the cuisine they enjoy. Their foods reflect their personality -- springing up from a Malaysian base and ornamented by the complexity of cultures which thrive in that tropical land.
In the words of a Malaysian acquaintance who said when I remarked on how the Malaysian had retained so much culture from the British, 'We have not only inherited some of the British ways, but we have also retained parts of other cultures which passed through our country'. He smiled as he continued, 'This is especially true when it comes to food. Note all the foreign dishes offered in our country! They have made us adaptable to foreign influences'.
From the words of my Malaysian acquaintance and from my own observations and sampling of Malaysian food, I am convinced that the culinary art of the country is one of the main elements in the evolution of its people. One can honestly say, without much contradiction, that food had a great hand in the formation of the modem Malaysian.
In the medieval ages, Arab writers wrote about peoples and their environment. In the majority of cases, they stressed that climate, history, culture and food when combined create an individual's culture and that humans with similar backgrounds usually become a part of the same nation.
These writers could have a point. I remember in the 1970s, during my travels through Communist Bulgaria, I found that the people, who dined on a very plain cuisine, seemed sad and unhappy. In contrast, travelling to Communist Cuba during the same era, I found the Cubans, whose main diet consisted of tasty beans and rice, always dancing and happy. Both peoples had very little to eat. However, was it the food they ate that made the difference? I cannot say, but it could very well have been.
The incidents which I have related are only a miniscule part of my encounters with people throughout the world and I have written much about their culture and food. My travels and experiences with the inhabitants of other lands have left me with an indelible feeling that people express themselves, to a great extent, in their foods.
It appears that food, like education and experiences in life, lends a hand in the evolvement of human beings. Excitement, generosity, graciousness, hospitality, irritation and relaxation, all could have some connection to the food we eat. Collectively, the eatables of nations have a great hand in giving their people their uniqueness. The idea that 'nations express themselves in their food' has much merit.
Habeeb Salloum is a Canadian travel writer. His most recent book is Classic Vegetarian Cooking from the Middle East and North Africa
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