The book, Ways of Seeing, has an interesting way of discovering what art can tell us besides just showing us a picture. Essays and visual essays are used as a way to get the reader to think and question what is really being said through art. The book presents different themes: women and men, nakedness vs. nudity, possession, wealthy vs. poor, and materialism.
Each chapter focuses on one of the themes and explains with visuals what the artist is really saying. In the chapter about oil paintings, chapter 5, the book reveals that the artists are illustrating procession and the importance of it with every oil painting – with a picture of a hall with paintings covering every inch or a table filled with different items. Land owners and other individuals of wealth wanted to show their wealth to people and that was accomplished with paintings. One sentence stood out to me as curious within this chapter – “mythological scenes functions like a garment” on page 102. Displaying procession can take many forms. Here the authors explain that mythological images are hollow, there is nothing inside them besides the straight forward story they are telling.
Another interesting chapter is 7 on publicity (or materialism). Here instead of artists telling us through the medium of art, companies (designers) are telling us stuff through print ads. An interesting theme here is that they are convincing people they need things because they will be more like the wealthy, happy, successful people in the pictures. As long as they look like and do what the people in the image then we will have everything too. On pages 136-137 the authors show a pairing of several images – an old painting and a new image. Within the pairings, the new image has copied the other almost to a point of plagiarism. The prints are relying on the same themes that have been around for a long time.
After reading this book, I have walked away with a little more knowledge on how to look at images and objects. There is always more then just the image. The artists is trying to say something – whether it is positive or negative.
