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Comment by trimethylpurine | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, you're right, but there is much literature that does, largely stemming from the supposition that we can divine such knowledge from a painting. And that supposition is Berger's.

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If I had to simplify Berger's thesis, I would say that there cannot be a complete objective interpretation of the image, "what it means" is context-dependent, where what's displayed, who's looking at it, what they experienced in life, and what mood they're in can change what they "see" in the image. Traditionally, image locations were relatively stable, so at least that aspect of "seeing" was controlled, but with the advance of technology, we can replicate images and embed them in different contexts with different purposes, and so art criticism and analysis should focus not only on the image in isolation but also on who and how distributes it, because that part of art (where it's displayed, by whom, to whom) carries meaning in itself. As I said, he was an art critic, so he focused on the methodology of how art can be analyzed.

I really don't know where you got the idea that he was saying that one can divine some knowledge from a painting or that paintings and culture influence our sexuality.

Edit: Spelling and punctuation. God, I really should enable a spellchecker. I'm a terrible speller, I apologize.

Tea leaves

You can apply a scientific method for the analysis itself if you wish to. It doesn't conflict with Berger's ideas from these essays.

I think you've overlooked some of Berger's claims.

I didn't. Berger himself was a Marxist and his analysis was often political (he wrote a lot but none of it made the impact as the Ways of Seeing which did become influencial in media and art criticism), but the Ways of Seeing largely talks about the methodology. He cites studies in the first essay to demonstrate how the context of a visual piece changes based on where the person sees it. His analyses didn't become mainstream and stayed confined mostly to Marxist circles (and he still didn't make claims about sexual preferences being formed by the culture), his methodology did though.

Where can I buy a contextometer?

I'm reaching way back here so correct me if I'm wrong.

Berger discussed the nude as a convention that tells you about ownership, power, and who the picture was made for.

Claude says that's chapters 3 and 5, so I'm fairly sure my memory serves.

That said, your summary is accurate. These claims aren't the primary topic of his work, so maybe I am being overly harsh on Berger.

Still, the claims have been influential. They do belong to him. And they've led to all manner of supposition about art, history, feminism, and human behavior.

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