Berger never mentions this skull (and now we discuss why and whether the skull is important or not…) Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors (one of the paintings, which he uses to illustrate this tendency) has a massive skull hidden in it – a symbol of the vanity of all earthly possessions. He suggests that the entire tradition of oil-painting was created as a way to flaunt one’s material wealth.

He seems to be encouraging pinning reproductions of famous paintings on corkboards next to childrens ’ drawings.

He features some absolutely bizarre 70s adverts, as examples of the dreams that advertising is selling….

He emphasizes the importance of context on how you perceive a painting– and illustrates this by making you watch an execution of political prisoners before showing you Goya’s 3rd of May.

He wears an incredibly 70s shirt and says some incredibly 70s things….

He finds the treatment of the female nude in Western art inherently problematic and invites a panel of women to talk to him about how they feel about it.

He encourages you to be as childlike as you can in your encounter with art.

So here’s why you should watch John Berger’s Ways of Seeing I started watching this hoping that it would count as reading the accompanying book, but I think I will probably add it to my reading list anyway… You may or may not agree with what it suggests, but you’ve definitely started thinking. The really important thing about this documentary, however, (which relates it to all the best documentaries) is that it makes you challenge the preconceptions that you have. So the evening was spent with me chatting back to John Berger. It is a very 70s style documentary, and there are some things I would definitely disagree with. This evening I realized that the entire documentary is available to watch for free on youtube. The book that accompanies it is required reading in a number of universities worldwide. John Berger’s BBC documentary Ways of Seeing (1972) is one of the most influential art documentaries ever made.

John berger ways of seeing bbc