John Berger / Ways of Seeing , Episode 2 (1972)

A BAFTA award-winning series with John Berger, which rapidly became regarded as one of the most influential art programmes ever made. This second programme deals with the portrayal of the female nude, an important part of the tradition of European art. Berger examines these paintings and asks whether they celebrate women as they really are or only as men would like them to be.

Ways of Seeing is a 1972 BBC four-part television series of 30-minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. Berger's scripts were adapted into a book of the same name. The series and book criticize traditional Western cultural aesthetics by raising questions about hidden ideologies in visual images. The series is partially a response to Kenneth Clark's Civilisation series, which represents a more traditionalist view of the Western artistic and cultural canon.

Men
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dream of women
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women dream themselves being dreamt of
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men look at women
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women watch themselves being looked at the
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well
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to
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do
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women constantly meet glances which act like news
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reminding them how they look my homage minimum
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behind the big runs you an email
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sometimes the grounds the medium is the island
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reflected back from a real man I'll
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you
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the
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to
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a woman is always accompanied except when 2011
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perhaps even then
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I had an image asylum
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while she's walking across a poem weeping in the desert like
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she cannot avoid the envisaging self walking
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a weeping from the earliest childhood cheese torte and persuaded
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to survey herself continually the
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chance to survey everything she is everything she does
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because how she appears to others and particularly hard it is to men
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the is a crucial importance the
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partisan only sort of success I'll
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Don
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0
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do
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do
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0
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E in
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a woman in the culture of privileged europeans
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is first and foremost site to be looked at what kind of site
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is revealed in the average European oil painting
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the reporters that women as a reporter's men
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but in one category of painting women with the principal
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ever coming subject that category was the nude
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in the news that European painting we can discover some of the
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criteria and conventions by which women would charge
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we can see how women was seen what then is in you
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in his book on the new would Kenneth Clarke says that
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being naked is simply being without clothes
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the new would according to him
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is a former Oct I would put it differently
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to be naked is to be oneself to be new food
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is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself
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a nude has to be seen as object
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in order to be unused in the European oil painting
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nakedness is not taken for granted as an archaic
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Oct nakedness is a site for those who addressed
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that is why man is painting which way to mark the end of the period I'm
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considering
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is so profound the comment on all the works which proceeded
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the story begins
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with the story Adam and Eve as told in Genesis and when the woman saw that the
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tree was good for food
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and it was a delight to the eyes and the tree was to be desired
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to make one wise she took the fruit they're all and did eat
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she gave also and her husband with her and he'd
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and I is them both were opened and they knew that they were naked
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and the Lord God called on to the man and said unto him
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where art thou he said I heard my voice in the garden and I was afraid
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because I was naked and I hate myself unto the woman
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got said I will greatly multiply by sorrow
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and I conception in sorrow that I shall bring forth children
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and I desire to be to my husband and he shall rule
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over the two things are striking about this story
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they become aware being naked because
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as a result to beating the Apple each sees
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the other differently nakedness is created
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in the mind of the beholder the second striking fact
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is that the woman is blamed and is punished
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by being made subservient to the man in relation to the woman
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the man becomes agent of God in medieval art
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the stories often illustrated seen following see
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as in A Streetcar to in during the Renaissance
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the narrative sequence disappears and the single moment
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which is nearly always depicted is a moment shape
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the couple left figleaves
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or make a modest gesture with their hands but now
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their shame is not so much in relation to one another as to the spectator
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it is the spectators looking which aims them
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later as painting became more secular
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many other subjects offered the opportunity continues
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but always in the European tradition the new
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implies and awareness being seen
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by the spectator they are not
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naked as they are they are naked
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as you see them
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often as with the favorite subject Susanna and the elders
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this is the actual theme a picture we join the elders
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to spy on her she looks back at us
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looking at a sometimes the woman suzanna
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looks at herself in a pictured to herself
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how men see her she sees herself
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first and foremost as a site which means
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site for men nice the Miller became a symbol
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the vanity of women get the mail hypocrisy in this is blatant
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you paint a naked woman because you enjoy looking at a
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you put in there were in hand and you call the painting vanity
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does Molly condemning the woman whose nakedness you have depicted
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for your own pleasure and us incidently
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repeating the biblical example by blaming the woman
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the judgment of Paris
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was another favorite mythological subject with the same in written idea
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up man looking at naked women and judging Paris
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towards the Apple to the woman he finds most beautiful
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duty in this context is bound
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to become competitive the judgment of Paris
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is transformed into the beauty contest aesthetics when applied to women
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are not as disinterested as the word beauty
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might suggest I don't want to deny
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the crucial part that see place in sexuality
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but there's a great difference between being seen as oneself
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naked or seeing another in that way at a body
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been put on display to be naked
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is to be without disguise to be on display
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is to have the surface of one's own skin the has a one's own body
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turned into a disguise a disguise which
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cannot be discarded amongst the tens of thousands of European oil paintings at
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Newlands
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perhaps twenty 30 exceptions
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paintings in which the artist seen the woman the field
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as herself this rubin's
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this rembrandt
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this George 2.2 these paintings are as personal as love times
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and that character is quite distinctive most you'd seen oil paintings
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have been lined up by their painters for the pleasure
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the male spectator owner who will assess
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and judge them as sites that nudity is another former dress
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they are condemned to never be naked with their clothes off
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they are as formal as with their clothes on
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those who are not judged beautiful are not
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beautiful those who are are given the prize
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applies is to be held that is to say
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to be available Charles the Second
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commission to this secret painting from Lee it's like hundreds of others
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it might be Venus and Cupid but in fact
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it was a portrait one of his mistresses Nell Gwyn it shows how passively looking
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at the spectator
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staring at her naked her nakedness
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is not an expression happened feedings it is only a sign
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a submission to his demand painting when he shows it to others
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demonstrates the submission his guests in
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him by contrast in another tradition
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nakedness is a celebration active six your luved
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as between two people the woman as activism and
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the actions that each absorb the other
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in oil painting
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the second question or a second person who matters
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is a stranger looking at the picture compared the expression
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these two women when the model for what is considered a masterpiece by EIN
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the other until paid model for photograph in a girlie magazine
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of these two just the expression
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look RTC it seems to me that in each pair
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the expression is remarkably similar and his expression
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responding with calculated charm to the man
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whom she knows is looking at a although she doesn't know him it is true that
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sometimes a painting includes a male lover
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but the woman's attention is very very
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directed towards him she looks away from him she looks out of the picture
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towards he who considers himself a true lover
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the spectator this painting was sent as a present from the Grand Duke of loans
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the King of France the boy kneeling on the cushion and kissing a woman
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is Cupid she's penis but the way her body is arranged has nothing to do
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without kissing a body is arranged the way it is
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to display it to the man looking at the picture the picture is made
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to appeal to kids sexuality has nothing to do with her sexuality
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the conventional not picking the half on a woman's body
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helps towards the same and hair is associated with sexual part with passion
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the woman sex or passion needs to be minimized
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so that the spectator may feel that he has a monopoly
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such passion there were paintings
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which depicted male lovers sees that exist but they were mostly private
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simi pornographic pictures in most paintings which were painted to be seen
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rather than hidden the only rival to the male spectator
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is a cupid how extraordinary it is
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the pictorial symbol a passion was a small boy
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for a similar reason women in the European onto the art painting
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a seldom shown dancing they have to be shown
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languid exhibiting minimum energy they are there to feed
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an appetite not to have any of their own the appetite
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was theoretically gargantuan
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the absurdity of this male factory
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although it was not seen as upset then reached its peak
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in the public academic Oct at the 19th century prime ministers discussed
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under paintings like this when one of them felt he'd been outwitted
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he looked up for consolation
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the new in European oil painting is usually presented as an
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ideal subject it is said to be an expression from the European
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humanists do it I don't want to reject entirely the truth to this
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but I've tried to add to it starting off from a different viewpoint
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dealer who believed in the ideal nude
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sort to this ideal could be constructed
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by taking the shoulders one body the hands of another
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the best another and so on
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was this humanist idealism
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or was it was out have an indifference to who any one person
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really was do these paintings
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celebrate as we normally talked the women within them
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or the mail wire
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is that sexuality within the frame
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or in front of it I showed the program
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as you have seen it up till now 25 women
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it began to seem absurd that the only images you were seeing
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women silent newt so I showed it to them
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and ask them to comment to comment not so much on the program but rather on the
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questions raised by it
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above all on the question of how men see women or have seen them in the past
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and how this influences the way women see themselves today
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we have an English course will happen image sensitive issue
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image but I wonder how much
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the sort of classical European painting
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has shaped that image in my own case I find it quite impossible when I look at
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the paint institution
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your film I can take them seriously I cannot identify with them because they
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are so immensely
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exaggerated police you know the fasten home to some
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secondary sexual characteristics release norms
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Press great be to beastin bottoms and a huge things like that
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and they just aren't real whereas with photographs
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I'm you can you can feel that is potentially that's possibly me although
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the it probably isn't but these these
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nearly all the paintings you have shown I'll what is
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called idealized am and therefore
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they are to me very unreal in connection with
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with any deep down image that I might have myself
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and in connection with any deep down pleasure that I might have
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in looking at another female body they don't give me that
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engine tall can moms painting
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but the on the they don't mean human beings to me
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I'm the image that I compare myself with is the photograph
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because it's with photographs that I've been encouraged to think for myself
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this weight is essentially advertising me that's contributed to this
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and consequently I find it extremely interesting to go back
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and think newt's in this way because I've never done sir
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having seen the film I have no doubt that the same thing plants
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and do you find that they knew it in painting under the
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in the same way yes
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will you come get any information from it minute
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snow guide to execute a one-time animation is lacking
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oh well activity unit dynamism anything
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it is has someone sees you in that something later
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on I'm glad you showed them any picture
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because I always find is extreme shocking
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because the men address and women a naked
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and he seems to be some the whole situation is a humiliating
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position and women are will be
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am and I think this is whole scheme teams and
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at most people have had and something to nightmares about
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lenses peaks nothing incidents
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and this seems to me one and picked
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I'm very interesting thing you said in the film was
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about how nudity
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was really a kind of disguise it wasn't the real person themselves and free
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but it was just another comment wearing and worse than a garment in a sense
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because
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something that you can take off this comes I think
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from nudity being combined with the polls
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and that's inevitable if you're going to have a painting over model
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bomb in a way
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i think thats we're always dress always dressing up for a part
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always on putting on a uniform of one kind or another
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and I think women do this almost more than men have only begun doing he said
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he recently
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women are always getting to show the kind of character
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what they want to percent the mother the working woman
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the pretty young chick are and nudity
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is a uniformed in a way for
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I'm ready now for sexual pleasure you see
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and so it doesn't YouTube you can't come you can't identify being nude
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with being free only just recently read
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that look eastward do which describes them
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way in which room is reduced for sexy special mention
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with to complete object and what struck me in all that
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book as the most impressive image was the fact that
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she was told that she was never
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to touch her breasts to entirely clothes from a
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all too close or to put her legs together
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and so the whole point about her stance all the time with cheese available
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and this the sense being available the senses waiting for other people
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is the antithesis in action and
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eat unit just like the home the book street be right there Smith
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Tony hasn't run you know he's finished lotioning
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and you feel this whole situation number when you talk to you say
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I stay in seven nights a week waiting for somebody to rain
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the concept availability implies facility because
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if you simply want somebody else to act when you contact
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yes it's is lack and you awake
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when the man tapped mmm kisses him
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rising and I'm made it an excuse to get yourself
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I think you need to shine
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there waiting
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to him yes yes could I say something about narcissism
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I think that both men and women old
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but in different senses and I think that one
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in sometimes I'd I have the impression
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men and women no tremendously narcissistic concussion from each other
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by their images themselves but it whereas the woman's
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image herself is derived directly from other people
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mirror you're talking about a man's image of himself
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is derived from world that is
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it's the world gives him back his image because he acts in it
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and and women are drawn to him as a source
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a central activity and as the
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a salsa were me since he is in the world the fact she values her
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is important and and so because they're supercenters
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narcissus different and the woman's is essentially
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only related to the other person she's much more passive position
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mentioned yes do you see
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you see narcissism essentially a and
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a negative or positive well
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i think thats very difficult to answer but
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in the sense that which is related to identity
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I'm it supposed to film and it seems to me that what women Indian men
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the times they have sent to the identity that
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there is it something in them which is important to them other them simply what
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other people think
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them and I think that that think is the product to their interaction with
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world people and its so true
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it's almost as if through this interaction actually build up a stall
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all were sense it themselves
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I'm which it which is a constant I mean it can't be lost
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but because the woman doesn't go out a nap she doesn't create the store
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she waits only for the present interaction
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that and that can go that can just ended any moment
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up
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strap occur
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classicism is he sold
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paramount's way they
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a should
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but a.m. this
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other question which is contained within it yes
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and it is
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this sort itself delight at the Perth
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whether it's an all in
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lie what they're doing relationships
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with men or women and
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it a thing met as Shin and is not only a kind
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in a thing I which with it
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but is it really after in by which
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to gay in relationships with you know I'm context
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well but you can't gain any other way bit
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its when you have some have been made some countries
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now yet you easily
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naturally so compulsively girl to
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whatever is going on you now we're not
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child that 10 northern
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with people to be on p with
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mansions 3 this will you
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girl a.m. her
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and then only grant you as
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on you make this kind
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absolutely necessary
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contact with people but I do think
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that the soda essence
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self tonight as kinda possible thing
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in the modern world them something that fewer women have remained
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and won't months is
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the other compulsion not the
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the compulsion to make
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contact with the world as you are living in it
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my said just me the people next door
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print I simply pockets going
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item
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sure about the delight I think it's very HH thing
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I'm I know as is for several reasons
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I became aware film I have never consciously look at myself in the mirror
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and see myself as I am
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I only seen image that I want I know
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my children notice it if I make up my face I put on them
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question if I from adolescence on
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if I see myself naked Miller not for metals naked I told myself is a new
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and I think this campaign I G from having being tailed
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major his culture his beauty
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capital be and course up to a point from advertising
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to much more the painting am
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that you use you think the female body
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is beautiful I am beautiful object if not I have to do something about it
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am and therefore the painful part narcissistic
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hitting the feeling inadequate see am
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now this businesses always posing in the mirror
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I think wonder absolutely automatically and without
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is it if you actually catch shoot up in america
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am by chance not deliberately because you didn't list
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had a ball but because there's one in street you capture so
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in in a shop window if the two men shot because in some ECU
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as you are which windblown untidy
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badly dressed tired and so on don't see the pose little
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and I think this is what happens to women but they always trying to measure
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up to the
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erotic images projected
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that are some paintings and I think
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at this moment particular one painting where there's a woman
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who is wary gone she's not nude but it is a garment sew
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loose so comfortable so easy
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and is my idea very much on of
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of want a picture of a woman might be like
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it I think it's actually before your period on this is so long ago and it
27:05
sits by Lauren city
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it comes in the good and bad government its fresco it's very very old
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you know and it is a picture of a woman we supposed to represent
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peace it's quite extraordinary but she could be one
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of the liberators are trying to the liberators young women
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today she's at ease she is relaxed
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she's not me any part at all she is
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able to combine occasional thoughts
27:34
and was dreaming and she's she might spring into action
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any moment and I for me
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she she has much much more to do with
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with with nakedness with oneself with the truth about himself and he number
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youth C
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on
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and the third party way to seeing is here at the same time tomorrow
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next tonight and you Graham Dixon is at the Tate Modern print exhibition by Max
28:12
Beckmann
28:14
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