Ways of Seeing

Based on the BBC Television Series (A Pelican Original)

by John Berger

176 pages

English language

Published Aug. 25, 1977 by Penguin (Non-Classics).

(43 reviews)

How do we see the world around us? The Penguin on Design series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision forever."Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.""But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but word can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled."John Berger's Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the (London) Sunday Times critic commented: "This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we …

22 editions

rra reviewed Ways of Seeing by John Berger

You probably already know it but you'll want to read it nontheless.

4 stars

A central art-school reference that I actually never read during art school. Too busy making stuff, I guess.

Finally reading it more than a decade after I got it assigned, I find it striking how the ideas it has about images are so normalized that they do not even seem remarkable but rather cliché. It goes to show how early 2010s West-European art institutions live and breathe Berger et al.'s (as well as Beaudrillard, Mulvey, de Beauvoir's) perspectives on classic painting and visual culture.

The visual essays are particularly interesting, but the penguin pocket version butchers their lay-out.

Thanks to @vanderZwan@vis.social for borrowing it to me!

georgewhatup reviewed Ways of Seeing by John Berger

Review of 'Ways of Seeing' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

A brilliant analysis of the socio-political elements of art and how the art establishment tacitly endorses them. An easy read, and helped me appreciate art on a whole other level.

My first impression of his last essay on publicity was that it’s a little dated, then I thought of the facial expression of Balenciaga models and realised how wrong I was. It’s outrageously easy to draw a link from the 1552 painting “The Ambassadors” and any Balenciaga model posing for the camera.

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Have to mention, the formatting of this book is proper bonkers. I assume there was a better edition of this book at some point because this paperback is so bad it actually gets kind of funny. Every example image is an oil painting reprinted in fuzzy black and white and the typeface used is all over the place throughout the whole book.

Angelo Deluxenko reviewed Ways of seeing by John Berger

Art essentials, session №1

5 stars

Отримав велике задоволення та один нічний кошмар, де собаки моїх батьків бігали анаморфовані, як череп з картини "Посланці" Гольбейна.

logan williams reviewed Ways of Seeing by John Berger

It mostly holds up

4 stars

More time has passed between the publication of Ways of Seeing and now than had between Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and Ways of Seeing.

sidra reviewed Ways of Seeing by John Berger

Review of 'Ways of Seeing' on 'Storygraph'

No rating

The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.