1. Consider this famous painting The Key to Dreams (1930) by the Surrealist Rene Magritte.
The painter sought to emphasise that images can take on unusual symbolic values in the
minds of different people. However, Berger draws upon it to make a related but more basic
point about the relationship between words and images. He says, “Magritte commented on
This always-present gap between words and seeing [...]. The way we see things is affected
By what we know or what we see. In the middle ages when men believed in the physical
existence of hell the sight of fire must have meant something different to what it means today.”
What links can you draw between the painting and the quote?

2. ADZ4999 12/13 - Study Skills Session
Aims
1) To consider how John Berger examines the way in which seeing is socially structured
2) To examine the ways that Berger thinks the act of interpreting visual images depends upon
Convention, by giving close attention to what he calls “learnt assumptions”.
3) To link Berger's discussion to Roland Barthes' examination of visual culture Mythologies

3. Link these quotes from pages 8 and 9 of Ways of Seeing to the images above
Peter A. Juley, Barnett Newman and an unidentified Robert Frank, Drive-in movie—Detroit,1955
viewer with Cathedra in Newman's studio, 1958.
1) We only see what we are looking at. To look is an act of choice.

4. Antoine Coypel, The Error, 1702
2) [...] what we see is brought within our reach – though not necessarily within
arm's reach. To touch something is to situate oneself in relation to it.

5. Lola Guerrera, Smoke Signals, 2012 Auguste Renoir, Gabrielles with Renoir's Children, 1892-94
3) Soon after we can see, we are also aware that we can be seen.
4) If we accept that we can see that hill over there, we propose that from that
hill we can also be seen.

6. Palmolive Soap, Magazine, advert, 1944 Edouard Manet, Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère, 1881-82
5) The reciprocal nature of vision is more fundamental than that of spoken
dialogue. And often spoken dialogue is an attempt to verbalise this – an
attempt to explain how, either metaphorically or literally, 'you see things'.

7. Ways of Seeing – On Frans Hals
Watch the clip from Ways of Seeing where Berger discusses the work
of Frans Hals. Read the questions watch the film and review the questions in
your groups. Part three 7mins to end.
On Frans Hals
1) What is the assumption in art historical writing that Berger criticises
in his analysis of Hal’s work?
2) What is the historical problem being mystified in the discussion of
Hal’s ‘personal vision’? How is an understanding of 17th and 18th
century Dutch history integral to de-mystifying this argument?
Frans Hals, Regentesses of the Old Men’s Alms House, Haarlem, 1664.

8. Ways of Seeing – Art’s Contextualisation
Read the questions watch the film and review the questions in your
groups. (Part two 4mins or 7 mins – Part Three 3 mins)
On Van Gogh
1) How does your experience of the Van Gogh work differ when Berger
gives additional biographical information about the work.
2) How does this relate to Berger’s statement ‘... The meaning of an
image is changed according to what one sees immediately beside it
or [by] what comes immediately after it’?
Art’s contextualisation
1) How do the different kinds of music and camera work change how
you respond to the Caravaggio?
2) How do the examples set around the Goya painting emphasise this
point?

9. Consider the array of images we have laid out.
In your groups choose a learnt assumption
from Berger's list. Firstly, in your group try to
define the term. Secondly, choose images to
which you think the term is applicable.
Finally, stick your images on the wall and use
the post-its to rationalise your choices.

10. Ways of Seeing
Jeff wall, Mimic, 1982
Look at this picture by Jeff Wall. What does it depict? What do you think about the
different people in the photograph? How do you think the image was produced?
Did these events really happen, or are these people actors? Is Wall drawing our
attention to a social issue or is he also making a statement the status of
photographic images? What learnt assumptions is the image exposing, or how
does it embody a way of seeing? Think about your own reaction to the image, what
ways of seeing are you exhibiting?

11. Let us see what Jeff Wall himself has to say of the work.
“When I was doing dramatic pictures like Mimic, for example, I was interested in a certain type of
picture, one I identified with painters like Caravaggio, Manet, and Velasquez. In that kind of thing
the figures are in the foreground, they are life-size, they are close to the picture surface, and the
tension between them is what is central. Behind them there is a lot of space, a background. That
is a very traditional type of picture I think. (Jeff Wall, Interview, 1993)
“Mimic was made in 1982, and it was a picture in which I concentrated a lot on a typical kind of
gesture, perhaps a micro gesture, but certainly a small gesture of race hatred. The question of
gesture relates to another problem that I am tied up with the notion of typology or typicality.
These people are identifiable or not identifiable depending on many, many things through
typology, which is sociological, racial and national.
Caravaggio The Incredulity of Edouard Manet, The Balcony, Diego Velazquez, Old Woman Cooking
Saint Thomas oil on canvas 1868-69 Eggs,
1601-02; Oil on canvas oil on canvas (1618)

12. In his book Mythologies Roland Barthes extends Berger's engagement with the history of Art to
consider how learnt assumptions, or what he calls myths are communicated through many
different forms of image production. Consider this quote from the book's preface. What do you
think Barthes is saying here, and how does it relate to Berger's analysis.
The starting point for these reflections was usually a feeling of impatience at the sight of the
Naturalness' with which newspapers, art and common sense constantly dress up reality, which
Even though it is the one we live in is undoubtedly determined by history. [...] I wanted to track
Down, in the decorative display of what-goes-without-saying, the ideological abuse which, in my
View, is hidden there.

13. Roland Barthes – Myth Today
Ideology is not just generated by what cultural
products say, it is produced and communicated by
how they say it. Attending to the structure of these
messages can reveal the cultural assumptions that
Underpin cultural products. By introducing the term
myth Barthes provided an analytical tool that
enables us to consider how the form of cultural
products communicates ideology. Roland Barthes
argues that careful and close attention to form
should help the reader/spectator better understand
the social constitution, and historical characteristics
of cultural products. Consider Barthes's comments
on The front cover of Paris Match (p. 115)
illustrated below.
Work in groups and examine the image.
What does the image represent. What is it a picture
of?
What additional meanings does it suggest to you?
How do these correlate with wider social
political issues in France?

14. Further Reading
John Berger Ways of Seeing (Penguin, 1972/90), especially chapters 2, 3, 5 & 7.
Rolsand Barthes, Mythologies, (Vintage, 1972 / 93) Focus on the essay
Myth Today. Offers a full semiotic analysis of how the connotations of images
the kinds of learnt assumptions Berger discusses.
Walter Benjamin, Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, reprinted in
Art in Theory: 1900 – 2000, eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Oxford: Blackwells
2003).
Raymond Williams, Key Words, (London: Fontana, 1976), entries on Beauty, Truth,
Genius, Civilisation, Formalist, Status and Taste.