#Ways of Seeing

[journalette]

September demands blank new pages to put our thoughts in order so they are easier to materialize.

#studygram #studyblr #phone pic #student #study motivation #study blog #bookish #bookstagram #books and reading #ways of seeing #notebook #study notes #stationery #digital diary #studyspo

[wizardpimp69]

#john berger #ways of seeing #quotes #words #womanhood #mine

[ivandurak]

The mirror was often used as a symbol of the vanity of woman. The moralizing, however, was mostly hypocritical. You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.

John Berger. Ways of Seeing.

#john berger #ways of seeing #art history #feminism

[essayisms]

Hi, how is everyone? I’ve not been here for a while but I have so much to update everyone on! But for now, this is my latest non-fiction read.

Rhi Harper

#journal #books #booklr #ways of seeing #john berger #literature #litblr #art #art theory

[markmcevoy]

Two Ways of Seeing

#john berger #ways of seeing

[tri-ciclo]

#ways of seeing #John Berger

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Rebecca Solnit  :: [Painting by Paul Delvaux]

I don't know how John Berger managed such feminist insight so long ago, but in “Ways of Seeing” (1972, 50 this year) he wrote: 

“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another...."

One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.” 

#quote #Rebecca Solnit #Paul Delvaux #John Berger #Ways of Seeing

[marinabandelyuk]

windows on the world. each has it’s own perspective

#photographers on tumblr #photography #window view #cityscape #city photography #bulgaria #road trip #road movies #road photography #lgbt art #queer artist #queer #queer community #ways of seeing #ukranian #art #day off

[vsslxo]

Asymmetry

One of the benefits of channeling art on a daily basis is the opportunity to recognize patterns and recurring symbols, imagery, or themes over a span. Sometimes these are things we don't expect or understand at first, but over time or upon questioning, layers of meaning emerge.

For example, I channeled a set of images with Hadit yesterday. The resulting images were conceptual and forced me to expand my ways of thinking and seeing in order to engage with them. This morning, while working on something else, my attention was drawn to three collages from a series I had channeled a little over a year ago.

The first image was of Hadit, as we had learned after it was created. It is relatively minimal in appearance, but took many layers to create. When I zoomed in on the image, I noted that some of the geometric shapes were not perfectly symmetrically aligned. As someone who is generally obsessed with details like this, it irked me. I had spent many hours creating each of these collages in deep trance and each tiny nudge and digital placement was guided and confirmed. Knowing this, I mentally took a step back and realized that it was intentional.

When channeling the most recent images with Hadit, I received some imagery related to portals, wormholes, and interdimensionality. Often these initially rub me the wrong way because they do not exhibit the symmetry that I've been trained to desire. But they speak to something more, a way through. The way the geometric shapes in the collage were offset echoed this. Once I was able to grasp this, this reframing of my mindset helped me to better understand the collages as well as the newly channeled images and subsequently identify more symbolism and meaning that I had previously overlooked.

—IYNX

Images in post: 1 - "A," digital collage, Oct 2022 2 - Untitled, channeled AI art, Feb 2024

#channeled art #channeled message #Hadit #symbolism #sacred geometry #pagan #witch #esoteric #interdimensional #free your mind #ways of seeing #beyond the veil #abstract art #conceptual #asymmetry #digital art #spirituality

[deadpoetsmusings]

John Berger, Ways of Seeing

#ways of seeing #John Berger #books #my posts #book photos #booklr #non fiction #on beauty #art #on art

[ipeeifart]

John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972)

#john berger #ways of seeing

[pomiidor]

to be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men... a woman must continually watch herself. she is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. from earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.

John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972)

#quotes #words #john berger #ways of seeing #women #womenquotes #male gaze

[ivandurak]

The oil painting showed what its owner was already enjoying among his possessions and his way of life. It consolidated his own sense of his own value. It enhanced his view of himself as he already was. It began with facts, the facts of his life. The paintings embellished the interior in which he actually lived. The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life. Not with the way of life of society, but with his own within it. It suggests that if he buys what it is offering, his life will become better. It offers him an improved alternative to what he is. The oil painting was addressed to those who made money out of the market. Publicity is addressed to those who constitute the market, to the spectator-buyer who is also the consumer-producer from whom profits are made twice over — as worker and then as buyer. The only places relatively free of publicity are the quarters of the very rich; their money is theirs to keep.

John Berger. Ways of Seeing.

#John Berger #Ways of Seeing #art history #capitalism

[socialbutterfly19]

I put me first and my happiness

#ways of seeing #the truth #people lie #hard to trust

[markmcevoy]

Two ways of seeing

#John Berger #ways of seeing

[robertogreco]

This post of mine is from September 2022, now migrating here from my hard drive having removed it from a watch forum that I left last year.

Ways of Seeing with John Berger and Pete McConvill

I’ve had that photo above of the late John Berger on my computer since August 25. I was trying to identify the watch he was wearing and my best guess is a Patek Philippe Calatrava 5127 like this one. Please let me know if you have better ideas.

But that’s not the primary reason that I am making this post. It’s a video by Pete McConvill, his latest, that has me thinking about Berger beyond his watch. You might not agree with Pete (I don’t always, but I very much do in this case), but you can’t accuse him of not being very thoughtful about his opinions. He himself admits,“I overthink everything.” I am probably the same way. Anyway, I recommend watching “Two Watches you should NEVER buy” and I’m going to build on it a bit below.

At 1:30, Pete references art criticism. He recommends using a technique he learned from that realm to form better opinions about the watches we see. That technique begins with a call to “deliberately focus on something for longer than you maybe feel comfortable with and drink in the detail.” He goes on from there to “Can I close my eyes and describe it accurately from memory?” This approach has a focus on aesthetics, and when we make jewelry purchases – Pete is also good at reminding us* that watches are mostly jewelry these days – that can be very important in making informed decisions to avoid buyer’s remorse.

But seeing and noticing can go beyond that too. That’s where John Berger, whose work I admire, comes in. In 1972, he created a television series called Ways of Seeing. I recommend it to people all the time. It’s easy to find online. Here’s the first episode to get you started:

The process of seeing paintings, or seeing anything else, is less spontaneous and natural than we tend to believe. A large part of seeing depends upon habit and convention.

There is also a great book adaptation of Ways of Seeing that came after the series. You should be able to find a used copy very easily and inexpensively if you are interested. Or you can just read it online here. It’s a great book and I have passed along many copies over the years.

The Wikipedia entry for Ways of Seeing leans on a quote of James Bridle, author of the reverently titled Ways of Being (2022), to succinctly describe the series:

The series was intended as a response to Kenneth Clark's Civilisation TV series, which represents a more traditionalist view of the Western artistic and cultural canon, and the series and book criticise traditional Western cultural aesthetics by raising questions about hidden ideologies in visual images.[3] According to James Bridle, Berger "didn't just help us gain a new perspective on viewing art with his 1972 series Ways of Seeing – he also revealed much about the world in which we live. Whether exploring the history of the female nude or the status of oil paint, his landmark series showed how art revealed the social and political systems in which it was made. He also examined what had changed in our ways of seeing in the time between when the art was made and today."

This is all to say that Pete’s recommendation to look closely even beyond comfort resonates deeply with me. I like to look very deeply aesthetically, but also – as Berger instructs – ideologically, socially, economically, and politically. It helps that I am a strong believer in delayed gratification as this can take a very long time to do. Many of you know I was very slow to buy a watch. My next watch, if there is one, will take an equally long or longer time coming. In the mean time, I might not get the adrenaline rush and gaga feelings of a new watch, but I will be very gratified with all the seeing I get to do.

---------

*From the caption to Pete’s video (and on all of his videos):

In my opinion a $15 Casio or a $50 G-Shock are probably the only real tool watches and pretty much everything else is jewelry.  So as we are talking about jewelry I think style is substance and I tend to believe history, brand, style, design, execution, and aesthetics are more important than specs.  A dull design with a good movement is a dull watch, and an exciting design with an average movement is an exciting watch.

#watches #wristwatches #John Berger #Ways of Seeing #James Bridle #Pete McConvill #Patek Philippe #slow #aesthetics #art #seeing #noticing #looking #Youtube