| BASED ON THE BBC television
series of the same title, this book explores the historical development
of oil painting and publicity and the ways our perceptions of works of
art and of advertising are mystified, obscuring the political and
economic agendas that underlie their production. Berger argues, after Benjamin,
that in an age of mechanical reproduction, art has lost its "aura." "The
art of the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost.
In its place there is a language of images. What matters now is who uses
that language for what purpose" (33). An influential chapter examines the
place of the (female) nude in oil painting and contemporary publicity photos.
He remarks that the imagined gaze of the spectator is always male, and
that consequently, a female spectator is "almost continually accompanied
by her own image of herself" (46), thereby causing a split in her perception
of herself: an idea of herself, shadowed by an idea of herself as a social
construct of patriarchy. The conventionalization of the nude female body,
painted in postures of submission that offer access to the viewer, reinforces
the power of the male-as-gazer in contemporary society. The final chapter
of the book closely examines the images of publicity and advertising, and
the mechanisms they employ as they simultaneously feed on and perpetuate
capitalist desire for consumption. Interspersed throughout the book are
photo-essays with no accompanying text, which play upon the reader's habit
of constructing a narrative out of the juxtaposition of images, even where
language is silent. (Rebecca Scherr.) |