About looking

Description

This successor to John Berger's <i>Ways of Seeing</i>, written over the last ten years, searches for meaning within and beyond what is looked at. Why do zoos disappoint children? Why do we take snapshots of those we love? How do the media use photographs of agony? When an animal looks us in the eyes, what does that look mean? Berger describes how a sixteenth-century masterpiece he saw in the 1960s comes to look different to him a decade later. He discusses how a forest looks to a woodcutter; how fields look to a peasant; how the world looks to a nineteenth-century barber's son; how New York looked to immigrants; and how each of these perspectives was reflected in the struggles of a particular painter. Every painting he considers, whether by Millet, Courbet, Turner, Magritte, Fasanella, or Francis Bacon, is evidence of an experience which belongs as fully to life as to art. (back cover copy)

First Sentence

The 19th century, in western Europe and North America, saw the beginning of a process, today being completed by 20th century corporate capitalism, by which every tradition which has previously mediated between man and nature was broken.

Subjects

Other Editions

• About lookingPantheon Books1980-01-01
• About lookingWriters and Readers Publishing Cooperative Ltd1980-01-01
• About looking.Writers & Readers Pub. Co.1980-01-01
• About lookingWriters and Readers1980-01-01
• About lookingWriters and Readers, 1980.1980-01-01
• About LookingRandom House USA Inc1988-11-15