Ways Of Seeing By John Berger

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Recommended: Confusing art and women

In "Ways of Seeing" John Berger analyzes nude portrayals of females in the European artistic tradition. The first example of this is the passage of text on pages forty-seven through forty-eight, that of Eve from the story of the Garden of Eden as told in Genesis.

Here, Berger is trying to provide an example of how women supposedly became subservient to men.

The story is told that Eve gave Adam an apple that they weren’t supposed to eat. After then eating the apple they were made to become conscious and insecure of the fact they were both naked, so they made clothes for themselves to cover up. Eve subsequently was punished for eating the apple and giving to Adam by being made subservient to the man. This relates to art because, in Berger’s …show more content…

The gaze is associated with a desire to fix, arrest and take possession of. Adam and eve story is like the subjects of painting such as the nudes portrayed became ‘objects’ of desire rather than ‘innocent’ representations. They were subjected to the gaze of another. So now, the subject (a woman) is aware of being seen by a spectator. She is not naked as she is; she is naked as the spectator sees her. The woman has been objectified into an object of desire by an observing eye that seeks to possess her.

Berger has played a role in modern female thinking by exploring depictions of women in classical painting and in advertising. He takes on the subject so straightforwardly, taking into question the entire of the women's classical images. Berger's conclusion and that of his interviewees is that the nude women's paintings' hanging in the best European museums is nothing more than pornography. The women in those paintings are nothing but objects that can be consumed or violated, and nothing more. He so forcefully speaks against this part of the western

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