Ways of Seeing with John Berger (1972) Episode 1: Reproductions

EPISODE 1: REPRODUCTIONS
The first part of the television series drew on ideas from Walter Benjamin's 1935 essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", arguing that through reproduction an Old Master's painting's modern context is severed from that which existed at the time of its making

OVERVIEW
The series was intended as a response to Kenneth Clark's Civilisation TV series, which represents a more traditionalist view of the Western artistic and cultural canon, and the series and book criticise traditional Western cultural aesthetics by raising questions about hidden ideologies in visual images.

According to James Bridle, Berger "didn't just help us gain a new perspective on viewing art with his 1972 series Ways of Seeing – he also revealed much about the world in which we live. Whether exploring the history of the female nude or the status of oil paint, his landmark series showed how art revealed the social and political systems in which it was made. He also examined what had changed in our ways of seeing in the time between when the art was made and today."

The series has had a lasting influence, and in particular introduced the concept of the male gaze, as part of Berger's analysis of the treatment of the nude in European painting. It soon became popular among feminists, including the British film critic Laura Mulvey, who used it to critique traditional media representations of the female character in cinema.