Ways Of Seeing (series 2)

    In the second series of Ways Of Seeing, the John Berger talks about the nude women paintings.
          
                                    

   The John Berger answered many questions in this series, related to the nude women figures.
    The woman, form her childhood is taught to live in a particular way, with a particular style. As the woman wants herself to be seen by man and man wants to see her.
     According to Berger, conventions have established the social presence of a woman as different from that of a man. A man’s presence is dependent on the power that he embodies, while a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself and defines what can and cannot be done to her. A woman’s presence is a manifestation of her gestures, voice, opinions, expressions, clothes, chosen surroundings, and taste. A woman is forced to be self-conscious, eventually resulting in conceitedness and vanity.
     In that era, many nude women paintings were made. John is of the opinion that the painted women, are painted in the way the painter wanted them to see.
   

    John further said that the nude woman were painted because the painter or man enjoy looking at them. And such paintings are made for the pleasure.
                                               

                                   

    Some paintings were made in such a way that they were depicting some sort of story. Like a woman was punished for being naked. As a punishment, by the god, she became pregnant and given the ability to reproduce.
  

    Some paintings are made as the men are looking at the women they found most attractive. In some paintings, the men are shown giving apple to the women they think is most beautiful or attractive. It was like a beauty contest. So the women were judged by their beauty and looks. That was the main purpose of painting the nude women.
   The nakedness usual portrays mutual sexual attraction amongst a couple and the woman is shown to be just as active as the man.
   Berger then goes on to distinguish between nudity and nakedness.  Defining nakedness as being seen as oneself, while nudity is being seen by others and recognized as an object instead of oneself. Looking at photographs and paintings distinguishing a nude from naked portrait gets tricky.  In the traditional European oil painting, the nude, the principal protagonist (the painter) is never painted, but what does gets painted is a result of what appeals to him sexually.  Therefore a woman’s body hair and fat dimples is never painted, since it is not sexually appealing to the painter. Moreover, when a woman is depicted with her lover, her attention is rarely painted as directed towards the male lover if one is present instead it is directed toward the spectator—the painter. Most Post-Renaissance European oil paintings with sexual imagery are frontal, literally or metaphorically. Of course there are exceptions, let’s not dwell.  The oil-paintings of this era feature stark nakedness.

                               

 

       In photographs women are depicted in the following ways: serene mother, busy secretary, perfect hostess, or sexual object.  Advertisements make very use of sexuality and suggestive false product outcomes. Lastly, Berger makes a fine distinction between black and white photography and colored photography.