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Theory Video: John Berger Radical Art Theory (Patreon)

Published:
2018-09-03 19:28:07
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Hope everyone is enjoying their Labor Day. We bring back the Theory Video series with John Berger's indispensable contribution to art criticism and understanding. John Berger was a radical, a Marxist, and a storyteller. Berger hoped to preserve the perspective and wonder felt by the many and the way that we all relate with each other and the world around us. A writer and storyteller, John Berger wrote both theoretical pieces (a former Theory Reading can be found here) and novels. John Berger won the Man Booker prize for his masterpiece G and infuriated the bourgeois literary community by donating half of his winnings to the London Black Panther Party in protest of the namesake of the prize the Booker McConnell Corporation's participation in the enslavement and colonization of the people of the West Indies. 

In addition to his work as a writer, Berger was a renowned art critic. His series Ways Of Seeing aimed to bring art to the people, snatching it from the rich who hope to keep the cultural achievements of society to themselves. Not only did he bring these works to the people, he advocated for the radical and unique perspectives that were brought from seeing these works in a different light. He also sought to construct a theory of the way that context, setting, and framing affect the way we interact with a work of art.

John Berger recently passed away, a loss for all those who fight and hope for a better, kinder world. 

-David Griscom 

Files

Previews only

John Berger / Ways of Seeing , Episode 1 (1972)

A BAFTA award-winning BBC series with John Berger, which rapidly became regarded as one of the most influential art programmes ever made. In the first programme, Berger examines the impact of photography on our appreciation of art from the past. Ways of Seeing is a 1972 BBC four-part television series of 30-minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. Berger's scripts were adapted into a book of the same name. The series and book criticize traditional Western cultural aesthetics by raising questions about hidden ideologies in visual images. The series is partially a response to Kenneth Clark's Civilisation series, which represents a more traditionalist view of the Western artistic and cultural canon.

Comments

James Speranza

Uhh, perspective is not unique to European art...look up the Tale of Genji scrolls and tell me that Japanese artists in the 1100s didn’t have their own ideas about perspective. They only showed faces at certain angles and they used techniques like the ”blown-off roof” to show architectural spaces in a non-linear way.

Kiel Cone

I was too high to tell what this does with Marxism. Then again Marxism is actually something that’s relatable on a wide scale so maybe that’s why I didn’t pick it up.

Thomas Butler

Another interesting source of critical analysis, thanks again for broadening my understanding. Supporting you on patreon has become a valuable resourse for my own personal knowledge base, not just a strategic investment towards a much broader political project. Keep it going, comrades.