Reading Response 5 (Berger)

Before You Read

On the cover of a Rolling Stone magazine, Taylor Swift is pictured with a guitar.  In this image the focus is on how attractive her face looks and the fact that she plays the guitar, two things that are essential to her career.  In Leonardo da Vinci's painting "The Mona Lisa" the focus is not of the beauty but the complexity of the woman and the artistic quality of the painting.

Robert Patterson and Jessica Simpson are both pictured on the cover of different issues of People magazine.  In his picture, Patterson is on shown from the top of his torso up, posing to look very serious and mysterious, as if there is more to him than meets the eye.  Simpson is pictured with sitting down and leaning forward with the majority of her body in the photograph.  She is looking directly at the camera and smiling widely, with the focus on her looks.  The photo is much simpler than the photo of Patterson.

Summary

In his article 'Ways of Seeing', John Berger attempts to convince the reader that there is a clear difference between naked and nude depictions of people, particularly women, in classic European art.  Nakedness in art is showing your own beauty for your own delight while nude artwork is revealing for the pleasure of the observer.  He argues that almost all classic European oil paintings that depicted women without clothing were of nude women and were painted for the delight of men.  This carries over into society today where men are the surveyors and women are the surveyed and in order to appear better women become surveyors of themselves from the point of view of men.

Synthesis

This relates to McCloud's 'Vocabulary of Comics' because both articles dive into how we view images.  McCloud focuses on low detailed drawings such as cartoons are recognizable as universal symbols while Berger writes about highly detailed classic European oil paintings.  This also relates to Greene's 'Argument as Conversation.'  The frame that most of the paintings Berger discusses were painted to be looked at through a frame of sexual desire for the woman in the painting.  These he describes as being nude, while naked paintings are to be looked at with the frame of admiring the woman for her beauty.

Personal Response

When this article was written in the 1970s it was more accurate with its statements about how women's representation in art carried on to how they are treated today.  It may still hold some truth but today women are thought of as equals of men.  It may be hard to tell how much truth his bit on the surveyor vs surveyed still holds because most people don't talk about how they view people.

Questions for Discussion and Journaling

1  I think that the artists who painted these paintings knew what they were doing because they are obviously very talented artists and have studied their subject intensely.  They would know how to paint a women to be appealing to a male onlooker (nude) or how to paint a women to show off her beauty (naked).

2  Most of the time that I see women posed in advertisements is in magazines or on television commercials.  They are often trying to sell an article of clothing or an accessory that they are wearing and they will strike a pose that shows off the product.  Women in advertisements look pretty to show that if you wear their product you will also look pretty.  This is different than the paintings discussed by Berger because in the paintings the women are the product.  They are what is meant to be looked at rather than what they are wearing.

Applying and Exploring Ideas

1  American Revolutionary war heroes, such as George Washington, have been depicted in many paintings such as "Washington Crossing the Delaware."  In these paintings they are always portrayed as being powerful.  It relates to what Berger writes on page 208 "A man's presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies."  George Washington promises lots of moral, physical, and social power and so in the painting of his crossing of the Delaware river Washington has a very strong presence.  There is a gap between these paintings and the ones that Berger viewed because the images are supposed to be representations of how strong and brave the men were.

3  Positioning is an important factor of how an image should be viewed in modern images but is not the only one.  There are other factors, such as the facial expression of the woman and her background.  I see this on magazine covers, such as the ones I described in the pre-reading exercises.

Meta Moment

The difference between nude and naked is result of how the artist portrayed what he was painting.  This relates to the tone in writing, which is the attitude with which the author writes.  These are both examples of how an author or painter could write or paint the same subject twice, but with a completely different meaning.  Also the concept of the viewer is important in literature because the author will write with a tone that they think will satisfy their suspected audience, or viewers.