Ways Of Seeing

Berger’s first argument in this chapter is that “seeing comes before words” (7). In one sense, a child looks and sees before they can speak. In another sense, “seeing…establishes our place in the surrounding world” (7). Although we eventually grow to be able to describe and explain our surrounding world using words, words will never supersede our visual experience of the world. Also, words will never quite resolve or fully explain the visual phenomena that we experience—for example, although we use words to logically explain a sunset, words can never fully account for our visual experience of a sunset. At this point, Berger refers to the Surrealist painter René Magritte. He states that Magritte commented on this “always-present gap between words and seeing in a painting called The Key of Dreams” (7). The painting is reproduced in the text.

The way we see things is influenced by what we know or what we believe. In turn, our knowledge and beliefs are shaped by the culture and society that surrounds us. For example, in the Middle Ages, when a belief in Hell was more widespread, the sight of fire must have meant something different from what it means when we see fire today. Conversely, the sight of fire—as a consuming flame that leaves ashes in its wake—influenced a medieval conception of hell, and also influenced the medieval perception of the pain of burns. In another example, Berger points out that the sight of the one a person is in love with has a “completeness which no words and no embrace can match: a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate” (8).

Berger then asserts that 1) seeing comes before words, and 2) visual experience, which can never fully be explained by words, is not merely “mechanically reacting to stimuli” (8). If we were to consider seeing as only the mechanism of the eye’s retina, then we could consider it as wholly and merely mechanical. However, to look at something is an act of choice. This launches us into a territory beyond solely the mechanical. Too, “we never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves” (8). He asserts that our vision is perpetually active and mobile—it mentally constitutes our surroundings while simultaneously confirming our own presence and ability to use our sensation of sight.

Berger also points out the reciprocal nature of vision. Soon after we begin to use our sense of sight, we become aware that we can also be seen: “If we accept that we can see that hill over there, we propose that from that hill we can be seen” (9). Too, he asserts that this reciprocal nature of vision “is more fundamental than that of spoken dialogue” (9). Indeed, he asserts that spoken dialogue is often an attempt to explain how each interlocutor “sees things”—either literally or metaphorically.

Berger then asserts that, in the context of this book, all images are man-made. He defines an image as “a sight which has been recreated or reproduced…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 or a few centuries” (9-10).

He points out that every image exemplifies a particular manner of seeing. Even photographs, which are often erroneously regarded as purely mechanical records, embody an individual photographer’s choice to select and frame one particular sight and/or subject—out of an infinite number of possible sights and/or subjects. In a similar fashion, a painter’s manner of seeing is duplicated by the marks he makes on a piece of canvas or paper. However, while every image embodies its creator’s manner of seeing, the perception or appreciation of an image also depends upon the spectator: an image may contain twenty human subjects in it, but one spectator may only truly see one of those subjects.

Berger claims that images were first made to invoke the appearance of something that was absent. Gradually, it became apparent that an image could outlast that which it represented, and that an image would then become a record of how something once looked, or of how that thing was once seen by other people. Later, as a result of an increasing consciousness of individuality, the image-maker became a part of the record, and an image came to be regarded as the record of one particular image-maker’s visual perception. Berger asserts that, while it would be folly to try to pinpoint this historical development with a specific date, in Europe, the consciousness of the individual has existed since at least the beginning of the Renaissance.

Berger asserts that images are unlike any other kinds of relics or texts from the past because only images can offer “such a direct testimony about the world which surrounded other people at other times” (10). He argues that, in this sense, images are more precise and richer than literature. This is not to deny the expressive or imaginary quality of visual art or photographic art, nor to say that visual art can be solely reduced to documentary evidence. On the contrary, he asserts that, the more imaginative a work of visual art is, the more profound its testimony about both the world as it once was—and the artist’s experience of the visible—is.

At this point in the text, Berger lays out his extended definition of cultural mystification, as it relates to ways of seeing. Firstly, Berger argues that, when an image is presented as a work of art, the way people look at and receive it is affected by a complex system of learnt assumptions about art. These assumptions concern such issues as beauty, truth, genius, civilization, form, status, and taste—among other things. As these assumptions change over time, they cannot be uniformly applied to a work of visual art. Gradually, with the evolution of culture, these assumptions become out of line with the world as it is, and “the world as-it-is is more than pure objective fact, it includes consciousness” (11).

Secondly, Berger asserts that, as these assumptions morph, they obscure the past: “They mystify rather than clarify” (11). The past is never a static, decontextualized, fully-preserved item, waiting to be discovered and understood, because the conception of history always necessarily constitutes a relation between the present and the past. Therefore, fear of the present leads to mystification of the past. When we mystify the past, historical works of art are made unnecessarily remote, and we become less able to draw conclusions from the past in order to act.

Thirdly, Berger asserts that the dominant and commonly-accepted methods of looking at art promote a kind of mystification that prevents many people from fully engaging with the historical context in which art is/was produced. He uses the act of looking at an image of a landscape as an example. He asserts that when spectators look at an image of a landscape, they situate themselves in it—as solely a visual phenomenon. However, if spectators instead situated themselves in history, they would come into a fuller seeing of the image. Berger contends that the privileged minority of the ruling class creates cultural conditions that encourage spectators to simply situate themselves within the visual phenomena of works of art, rather than encouraging spectators to see themselves—and the works of art—within surrounding historical contexts. He asserts that the ruling class creates these conditions of historical mystification in order to retroactively justify their own role and render that role unimpeachable. In other words, Berger asserts that the ruling class perpetuates a mode of looking at art that divorces works of art from their historical and cultural contexts in order to censor any subversive class critique that may occur within any given work of art. He then asserts that this dominant mode of viewing art, created in order to insulate the ruling class from criticism and promote that class’s continued oppressive existence, no longer makes sense in modern times.

In order to illustrate his assertions regarding the historical mystification of images, Berger cites a two-volume study of the painter Frans Hals, and undertakes a detailed case study which systematically critiques the book’s author. Firstly, he asserts that the book is no better and no worse than the average book of specialized art history. In so doing, he asserts that the mystifying tendencies of the book’s author are widespread.

Berger gives us some historical background on Hals. The last two of his great paintings depicted the Governors and the Governesses of an Alms House for old paupers in the Dutch seventeenth-century city of Haarlem. These paintings were officially commissioned. Hals, having spent most of his life in debt, was over eighty years old, and destitute, at the time of the commissions. He began work on the two paintings during the winter of 1664, and was given three loads of peat on public charity—without which he would have frozen to death. The subjects of his two paintings were the administrators (also called Governors and Governesses) of the public charity who allotted the peat to him.

Berger then observes that the author of the art historical text records the historical facts surrounding the creation of the two paintings, but then immediately dismisses them—stating instead that “it would be incorrect to read into the paintings any criticism of the [subjects]” (13). Berger observes that the author asserts that there is no evidence that Hals painted the Governors and Governesses in a spirit of bitterness. Instead, in an act of mystification, the author asserts that each of the Governesses are painted in a manner which depicts the human condition. Berger quotes the book’s author at length, with his own italicizations for emphasis: “Each woman speaks to us of the human condition with equal importance. Each woman stands out with equal clarity against the enormous dark surface, yet they are linked by a firm rhythmical arrangement and the subdued diagonal pattern formed by their heads and hands. Subtle modulations of the deep, glowing blacks contribute to the harmonious fusion of the whole and form an unforgettable contrast with the powerful whites and vivid flesh tones where the detached strokes reach a peak of breadth and strength” (13).

Berger then strongly critiques the selected quote. While he concedes that an analysis of a painting’s composition is reasonable and legitimate, he takes issue with the way that the author regards the composition “as though it were in itself the emotional charge of the painting” (13). He points out that the phrases that he italicized in his citation “transfer the emotion provoked by the image from the plane of lived experience, to that of disinterested ‘art appreciation’” (13). He asserts that this tunnel-vision focus on solely composition is an act of mystification: it disappears conflict and posits the painting as merely a wondrously-made object and a depiction of a static and decontextualized “human condition,” rather than a historical and cultural artifact. 

Berger then concedes that, while little is known about Hals or the Regents who commissioned him, the paintings themselves serve as evidence of their relationship: they record the manner in which Hals saw the Regents. Berger’s own analysis of the paintings thus contrasts sharply with the author of the book about Hals, because Berger seeks to demystify the paintings, and invites the reader to do so as well.

In the preliminary part of his analysis, he points out that the author of the book asserts that Hals seduces spectators into “believing that [they] know the personality traits and even the habits of the men and women portrayed” (14). Berger takes issue with this assertion. He contends that spectators are not merely “seduced” by the painter’s skill, and thus invited into full understanding of the painting. Instead, he asserts that modern spectators can readily understand the paintings because they “still live in a society of comparable social relations and moral values”, and that “it is precisely [that fact] which gives the paintings their psychological and social urgency”—and not, as the book’s author asserts, Hals’ skills as a “seducer” (14).

Berger then observes that the book’s author absolves Hals of any wrongdoing or subversive intent within the painting’s depiction of one Governor in particular, who appears in the painting with his hat on the side of his face and an expression that many have understood to be a drunken one. Berger observes that the book’s author asserts that any assertion that Hals depicted the Regent in a drunken state is libelous. Berger then argues that, in so doing, the author is decisively evading a material analysis of the social relations between the Regents and Hals—an analysis which would take the class differences between Hals and the Regents, and the power that the Regents wielded over Hals, into account. Berger then contends that the real drama of the paintings lies not in their composition nor in their use of darkness, but in the fact that Hals, a destitute old painter who had to live off of the public charity that the Regents themselves administered, was forced to nevertheless try to render an objective portrait of his oppressive benefactors.

Berger then asserts that mystification, as exemplified by the willful blind spots of the author’s observations, “is the process of explaining away what might otherwise be evident” (15-16). In contrast to the book’s author, who insists on limiting his observations of Hals to pronouncements about the human condition and “life’s vital forces,” Berger then propounds that Hals was “the first portraitist to paint the new characters and expressions created by capitalism” (16). He then decries the book’s author’s decision to focus solely on the human condition vis a vis Hals and his paintings as an act of deliberate mystification which obscures the material and class relations between the Regents and Hals. `   

Berger then admits that pseudo-Marxist mystification is just as possible as the elitist, class-blind mystification that he has just pointed out in the book’s author. He then moves on to examining the “particular relation which now exists, so far as pictorial images are concerned, between the present and the past” (16). He asserts that a careful viewer of art can ask the right questions of art, rather than mystifying ones.

Berger then states that the art spectators of his day see the art of the past as no one saw it before—that they actually perceive it in a wholly distinct way. He uses the concept of perspective to illustrate his point. The concept of perspective, unique to European art and first established in the early Renaissance, centers everything on the eye of the spectator. Renaissance conventions thus established the spectator as the arbiter of reality, the center of the visible world, and the vanishing point of infinity. Berger asserts that this convention firmly established the spectator—and thereby the human subject—as the center of the visual world and the figure for whom the visual world arranges itself, “as the universe was once thought to be arranged for God” (16). Berger then points out that, according to the schema that this concept of perspective erects, there is no visual reciprocity: “There is no need for God to situate himself in relation to others: he himself is the situation” (16). However, he contends that this condition laid the groundwork for an inherent contradiction within the concept of perspective, because it “structured all images of reality to address a single spectator who, unlike God, could only be in one place at a time” (16). In Berger’s estimation, this concept of perspective is thus flawed by the simple fact that reality contains multitudes and cannot be reduced to one human’s singular vantage point.

He then claims that the advent of photography laid this contradiction bare. Berger cites a quote from Dziga Vertov, the revolutionary Soviet film director, in order to emphasize his contention that photography isolated and depicted momentary appearances—which were liable and likely to change at any given moment—and thus destroyed the idea that images were timeless. Because photographs record and depict the photographer’s position in relation to both his or her subjects, and the photographer’s momentary and changeable position in time and space, it is no longer possible to imagine everything converging on the human eye, and no longer possible to conceptualize the human spectator as the center of the universe—as the concept of perspective once purported. Therefore, Berger asserts that photography revolutionized the act of seeing, and made the idea of the visible mean something completely different than what it previously meant.

Berger asserts that the Impressionists immediately understood and seized upon this revolution in our perceptions of the visible. Operating from the perception that the visual world does not, in fact, arrange itself to man in order to be seen, the Impressionists thus regarded the visual, in continual flux, as fugitive. For the Cubists, the visual was no longer understood as the organized and ordered perception of a single eye, but as “the totality of possible views taken from points all round the object (or person) being depicted” (18). Berger cites a reproduction of Picasso’s 1881 “Still Life with Wicker Chair” as an illustration of the Impressionists’ revolutionized manner of seeing.

The book also proclaims that the camera fundamentally changed the way in which spectators perceive paintings, including paintings that were created long before the camera was invented. Prior to the invention of the camera, paintings were singular works of art—not readily reproduced. They were also often specifically designed to be integrated into the design and architecture of singular and highly-particular buildings. For example, many paintings within early Renaissance churches or chapels functioned as records of the building’s interior life, and thus were inexorably linked to the particularities of the specific sites in which they hung. While some paintings were transportable, paintings could never be seen in two places at the same time, and were thus intractably moored to their surroundings. This circumstance predicated their meaning on their singularity as objects, within their particular contexts. Berger asserts that photography’s power to duplicate a painting disrupted the singularity of paintings and in turn disturbed this once-intractable relationship between a painting’s meaning and the place in which it is housed. Photography, in its ability to reproduce a painting, thus destroys the unique singularity of paintings, and also multiplies and fragments a painting’s possible meaning, making that meaning plural rather than singular. Berger uses the appearance of a painting on television to exemplify this process of fragmentation. He points out that, when a painting is broadcast on television, it enters countless homes and thus becomes a part of multitudes of different visual and psychological contexts. Because of this fact, that single painting is seen in multiple different contexts, simultaneously. The camera thus allows the painting to travel to the spectator, rather than vice versa. Before art was reproducible, a painting was understood as a singular object with a particular context—and its meaning was inexorably linked to those two facts. Due to the advent of photography and television, the process of extracting meaning from a singular painting and its specific contexts was forever fragmented—meaning that original paintings no longer produce meaning in the way that they once did.

Berger then recites the counterpoint that, because all reproductions distort the original, the original painting is still unique, in a sense. He provides a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin on the Rocks on page 20 of his book, and uses it as a case study in this phenomenon. He states that the reader, having seen the reproduction of the painting, can then go to the National Gallery to look at the original—and to detect the defects of the reproduction. A reader/spectator could alternately forget about the particular reproduction that the book provides altogether, and merely be reminded that they have seen a reproduction of the famous painting somewhere or other. Berger asserts, though, that in either case, the uniqueness of the original painting now lies in it being the original of a reproduction. Due to the ubiquity and omnipresence of reproductions, a painting is no longer unique in and of itself, and its meaning does not fundamentally draw primarily from its existence as a unique object. Instead, in the age of mechanical reproduction, a painting’s primary meaning is drawn not from its message as a singular and singly-contextualized object, but from its status as a reproduced and reproducible image.

Berger asserts that the new status of original works is a perfectly logical outcome of the proliferation of mechanical reproduction. However, this new status also lays the groundwork for a new kind of mystification. As detailed earlier, under these new circumstances, the meaning of an original work of art lies not in what it uniquely says—as a specific painting in a specific place, for example—but in what it uniquely is: the original of a reproduction. Consequently, in the age of reproduction, an original work of art is evaluated and defined as an object whose value depends on its rarity. This value is then affirmed and measured by the price that an original can fetch on the market. And, due to the lofty presumptions that our culture attributes to works of art, an original artwork’s market value is regarded as an indicator of its spiritual value. This cultural concept of the spiritual value of an original art object is the product of a bogus, grandiloquent religiosity that is more characteristic of medieval lore than of the secular modern age. He then laments that, under this anachronistic and mystifying schema, works of art are presented and discussed as if they are holy relics. Every part of their fabrication is studied as a means of both proving their survival as unique objects genuine, and of certifying their status as original objects.

Berger then circles back to The Virgin on the Rocks. He asserts that, when a spectator goes to view the painting at the National Gallery, he or she will have been encouraged by the culture surrounding art spectatorship to see and appreciate the painting as a unique original. He or she will be encouraged to assign a religious importance to the original painting, and to try to feel its authenticity—and to therefore see the painting as beautiful because of its authenticity. Furthermore, he asserts that the pressure on spectators to enact this narrative is far from naïve—it is indeed encouraged by “the sophisticated culture of art experts for whom the National Gallery catalogue is written” (22). He then intimates that the catalogue’s entry on The Virgin of the Rocks is one of its longest entries. The entry does not deal with the meaning of the image. Instead, it documents the details of its commission, its attendant legal squabbles, and its shifts in ownership. Berger asserts that the entry delves into all of this information in order to do two things: 1) to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the painting is an original Da Vinci, and 2) to prove that an almost identical painting, housed at the Louvre, is a reproduction of the one that hangs in the National Gallery.

Berger then moves onto another example of the fraudulent religiosity that surrounds original works of art: Da Vinci’s cartoon panels entitled, “The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist.” A few years prior to his writing, the work was known only to scholars. However, because an American wanted to buy it for two-and-a-half million pounds, the painting now hangs in a room by itself, enclosed in bullet-proof Perspex, and the National Gallery sells more reproductions of it than any other picture in its collection. He asserts that, because of the way that market value is inexorably and lamentably tied to our perceptions of the spiritual value of works of art, this artwork is now illogically venerated—not because of anything particularly special or meaningful in its message, but because of its market value. 

The book then argues that the fraudulent religiosity—predicated upon market value—that now surrounds original works of art serves as a substitute for what original paintings lost when they became reproducible. This religiosity is a function of nostalgia, and “it is the final empty claim for the continuing values of an oligarchic, undemocratic culture. If the image is no longer unique and exclusive, the art object, the thing, must be made mysteriously so” (23).

The book then provides two tables sourced from L’Amour de l’Art, published in 1969 and written by Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Darbel. The first table measures the national proportion of art museum visitors according to level of education in four countries: Greece, Poland, France, and Holland. Berger points out that the table supports the assertion that an interest in art is directly correlated to a privileged education.

The second table relays the results of a poll, broken down by the professions of the poll-takers—including manual workers, skilled and white-collar workers, and professional and upper managerial workers. In the poll, the participants were asked to choose the location (for example: a church, a library, or a department store) of which a museum most reminded them. From this table, Berger draws the conclusion that the majority of people regard museums as the repositories of holy relics—across all vocational categories, museums remind people of a church at the highest rate. He also extrapolates that this data point illustrates a common belief that original masterpieces “belong to the preserve (both materially and spiritually) of the rich” (24). He furthermore contends that this perception works in tandem with the perception that original works of art are holy relics: instead of their holiness deriving from formal religions, it derives from “the mystery of unaccountable wealth” (24).

When works of art become reproducible, the meaning of paintings no longer depends on the original work. Their meaning becomes transmittable. In direct contravention of the magical, mystifying thinking that characterizes what he views as purposefully popularized notions about the original work of art, Berger asserts that this meaning is merely information, not holy or magical knowledge. Furthermore, in contrast to a conservatism which might argue that an original work of art deserves veneration evocative of religion, Berger argues that the new and multiple meanings that a work of art acquires upon its reproduction are simply a natural outcome of its reproducibility. He asserts that we should not evaluate duplicates of works of art solely on the grounds of whether they reproduce the original adequately. Instead, we should attend to the many different and legitimate purposes that reproductions have come to serve.

One example of these new purposes is the fact that a cropped reproduction can bring new meaning to a painting—a lone girl in an allegorical painting, isolated through cropping, can become the subject of a portrait rather than an actor in a narrative. Secondly, a painting reproduced through the time-based medium of film inevitably becomes swallowed into the meaning-system of the film, and no longer functions as only a painting, whose elements are not dependent upon time. Thirdly, paintings are often reproduced with words around them, which may fundamentally alter the way they are perceived. Finally, Berger argues that his volume itself makes use of reproduced paintings and that, consequentially, they have each become embroiled in an argument that has little to nothing to do with their original meaning.

Berger then asserts that the ability to reproduce art technically means that works of art can be used by anybody. However, he states that the present uses of art reproductions—as they appear in art books, magazines, films, or within golden frames in livingrooms—bolster the rarified and classist reputation of fine art. He argues that this unchanged use of art (and reproductions of original works of art) support the oppressive notion that art has a unique and undiminished authority. He argues that this oppressive notion is, in turn, used to make “inequality seem noble and hierarchies seem thrilling” (29). In short, the veneration of the original work of art, which persists even in the age of mechanical reproduction, is a machination of the ruling commercial and political classes that keeps the hierarchies of the undemocratic societies of the past alive.

Although these machinations often cleverly and malevolently disguise or deny the many possibilities engendered by the ability to reproduce art, sometimes individuals can subvert the dominant modes of art spectatorship. As one example of this, Berger invokes the fact that adults and children sometimes have boards in their living spaces on which they pin pieces of paper. On these boards, letters, snapshots, and newspaper clippings are displayed next to reproduced images of artworks. He argues that these boards are a highly-democratizing endeavor and should logically replace museums.

By making the above argument, Berger is not stating that original works of art have become wholly useless. He does concede that original paintings have the power to close the “distance in time between the painting of the picture and one’s own act of looking at it”, because when a spectator looks at the strokes of paint on a painting, they can follow the gestures of the painter (31). Thus, the painter’s historical moment is literally there, before a spectator’s eyes. However, Berger asserts that the spectator’s conceptions of that painted moment depend upon their expectations of art, which in turn depends upon how that spectator has already encountered the meaning of that painting, and others, through reproductions. Here, Berger again qualifies his argument. He is not asserting that all art can be understood spontaneously. For example, a magazine cut-out of a reproduced image of an archaic Greek head cannot solely be evaluated on the personal basis that any random person may assign to it. To pin it on an image board does not mean that one is reckoning with a full, ultimate, or absolute meaning of that head.

At this point in the text, Berger gives some key clarifications to his position. He argues that the opposing forces that are at stake in this debate about the meaning of art are neither innocence and knowledge, nor the natural and the cultural. Instead, for Berger, the central conflict is between “a total approach to art which attempts to relate it to every aspect of experience and the esoteric approach of a few specialized experts who are the clerks of the nostalgia of a ruling class in decline” (32). He furthermore asserts that this ruling class is not in danger of being eradicated by the proletariat, but by the new power of the corporation and the state. For Berger, the most pressing questions of today’s age are: “to whom does the meaning of the art of the past properly belong? To those who can apply it to their own lives, or to a cultural hierarchy of relic specialists?” (32).

Berger then states that the visual arts have always existed within a removed domain. Originally, this domain was simultaneously magical, sacred, and physical: this domain was the literal physical location for which art was made. He argues that the viewing of art was once ritualistic and set apart from normal life, and that later, the domain of art became a social one. It entered the culture of the ruling class and remained physically set apart, as it was housed in their palaces and houses. Thus, throughout this history, art derived its authority from its removal and isolation from everyday life. The modern convention of reproducibility destroyed this artificial authority and removed art from its isolated and rarefied domain. Because of the new ability to cheaply and easily produce reproductions, “images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, [and] free” (32). No longer housed within rarefied domains accessible only to the ruling classes, art has thus entered the mainstream, and pervades everyday life in the same manner that language itself does.

However, very few people are aware of the profound changes that reproduction ushered in, because the means of reproduction are used to promote the illusion that nothing has changed and that reproduction, rather than democratizing access to art and sowing revolutionary potential, merely allows the masses to appreciate art as the cultured few once did. Berger concedes that, understandably, many people continue to remain skeptical of fine art for this reason. However, he asserts that, if the new language of images that reproduction has inaugurated were freed from this oppressive conceit, it would engender a new kind of power. If people were awakened to the new possibilities that reproduction affords, they could begin to use images to define their experiences in areas where words are inadequate. Here, he invokes an assertion that he made at the outset of the chapter: “seeing comes before words” (33). In so doing, he asserts that this nascent new visual (versus linguistic) way of defining experiences—both personal and historical—could revolutionize the way that humans conceive our relation to the past. To Berger, this conception is synonymous with the experience of giving meaning to our lives, “of trying to understand the history of which we can become the active agents” (33).

Here, at the end of the chapter, Berger cogently and concisely states his central arguments. He asserts that, because of the ubiquity and power of reproduction, “The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images. What matters now is who uses that language for what purpose” (33). He then states that naming this new language inevitably calls forth the question of copyright for reproduction, the ownership of art presses and publishers, and the policies of public art galleries and museums. For Berger, however, these narrowly professional concerns pale in comparison to the much larger issue: the fact that reproduction lays bare the fact that “a people or class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or a class than one that has been able to situate itself in history” (33). For him, this central fact is the reason why the entirety of art history has become a political issue.

Berger closes the chapter with a note that many of the chapter’s ideas have been taken from Walter Benjamin’s essay entitled “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, which was published more than forty years prior to Ways of Seeing.