Status Updates From Ways of Seeing

“The formal portrait, as distinct from the self-portrait or the informal portrait of the painter’s friend never resolved this problem. But as the tradition continued, the painting of the sitter’s face became more and more generalized. His features became the mask which went with the costume. Today the final stage of this development can be seen in the puppet tv appearance of the average politician.” Uh, no.

“… a way of seeing the world, which was ultimately determined by new attitudes property and exchange, found its visual expression in the oil painting, and could not have found it in any other visual art form. Oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality of objects. Everything became exchangeable because everything became a commodity.”

Hmm. Maybe.

“But the essential way of seeing women, the essential use to which their images are put, has not changed. Women are depicted in a quite different way from men - not because the feminine is different from the masculine - but because the ’ideal" spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him.”

“Here and in the European tradition generally, the convention of not painting the hair on a woman’s body helps towards the same end. Hair is associated with sexual power, with passion. The woman’s sexual passion needs to be minimized so that the spectator may feel that he has the monopoly of such passion. Women are there to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own.”

“In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and be is presumed to be a man. Everything is addressed to him. Everything must appear to be the result of his being there, it is for him that the figures have assumed their nudity. But he, by definition, is a stranger - with his clothes still on.”

Ah now I come to task with Berger. In his second essay, he repeats the story of the Fall. He gestures to the punishment of Eve, likening it to woman’s subservience to man.

What of Adam’s punishment? Is their punishment not done together? Eve is not blamed solely, as he claims in bold text, to claim otherwise is to be ignorant of the most basic understanding of the biblical story.

We have shifted to a new essay - I presume one on femininity in art because there was no title in my copy - so I withhold judgment until it is completed.

“One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear … 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.”

Finally done the part where Benjamin gets ripped off wholesale - with credit though! I appreciate the discussion but I felt it was lacking in innovation.

“Adults and children have boards in their bedroom or living-rooms on which they pin pieces of paper … On each board all the images belong to the same language and all are more or less equal within it, because they have been chosen in a highly personal way to match and express the experience of the room’s inhabitant. Logically, these boards should replace museums.”

“The uniqueness of every painting was once part of the uniqueness of the place where it resided.”

“Because of the camera, the painting now travels to the spectator rather than the spectator to the painting. In its travels, its meaning is diversified.”

Still aping Benjamin, would like for the author to attempt original analysis.

“The past is not for living in; it is a well of conclusions from which we draw in order to act. Cultural mystification of the past entails a double loss.”

Yeah I would say I agree!

“Yet when an image is presented as a work of art, the way people look at it is affected by a whole series of learnt assumptions about art. Assumptions concerning: beauty, truth, genius, civilization, form, status, taste, etc”

Okay. Tying this to how it acts to “mystify” the past is interesting albeit not particularly new when considering how other metaphysical assumptions historically operated to do the same

“This [an image becoming a record of how x had seen y] was the result of an increasing consciousness, accompanying an increasing awareness of history. It would be rash to date this last development precisely.”

Is that so? Why is it then that Europe is granted the concession that “such consciousness [had] existed since the beginning of the Renaissance,” while the author is remiss about developments elsewhere?

“An image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced. It is an appearance, or a set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance and preserved - for a few moments…”

One can sniff the Frankfurtness perhaps.

“When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match: a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate.”