Review of "Ways of Seeing"
by John Berger, Sven Blomberg,Chris Fox, Michael Dibb, Richard Hollis.

Penguin - ISBN 0 14 0135154
1972. £7.99

Comments by John Southgate and Elizabeth London.

Scientists, Psychoanalysts, musicians artists and composers have often used visual thinking. Einstein imagined himself travelling at the speed of light, Freud, Lacan, and other analysts have used visual thinking. Our website above uses pictures and visuals throughout our presentations.

This pioneering and amazing book, with classic pictures on nearly every page, is unique and a must for anyone thinking and working visually.

John Southgate met John Berger in the 1960,s at the Magdala Tavern, Hampstead and he stayed overnight. At the time his present house, was a commune. John Southgate still lives there though it has long ceased to be a collective.

We think that visual thinkers are under-estimated in the world, and yet they have contributed so much.

Perhaps visual thinkers need to re-assert themselves. In the therapy scene, the contribution of art-therapists is often under estimated. They work with persons who many psychanalysts would consider un-workable -with.

It is difficult to review a visual book that contains 155 pictures so there is no substitute for reading the book itself. Below we give some key quotes to illustrate the depth of the authors' vision.

pp7. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeng which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.

pp8. When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match: a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accomodate.

pp9. We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continally moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are.

pp11. When we 'see' a landscape, we situate ourselves in it. If we 'saw' the art of the past, we would situate ourselves in history. When we are prevented from seeing it we are being deprived of the history which belongs to us. Who benefits from this deprivation? In the end, the art of the past is being mystified because a privileged miniority is striving to invent a history which can retrospectively justify the role of the ruling classes, and such a justification can no longer make sense in modern terms. And so, inevitably, it mystifies.

pp32. What the modern means of reproduction have done is to destroy the authority of art and to remove it , or rather, to remove its images which they reproduce - from any preserve.

pp33. A people or a class which is cut off rom its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or class than one that has been able to choose and to act as a people or class than one that has been unable to situate itself in history. This is why - and this is the only reason why - the entire art of the past has now become a political issue.

pp 148 .The gap between what publicity actually offers and the future it promises, corresponds with the gap between what the spectator-buyer feels himself to be and what he would like to be. The two gaps become one; and instead of this single gap being bridged by action or lived expeirience, it is filled with glamorous daydreams.

These extracts only give a glimpse of the richness of this book. It is a book to have on your shelves, to be re-read, from time to time.

So, to repeat ourselves.

Visual thinkers arise, you have nothing to lose but your in-sights.

John Southgate and Elizabeth London.

Thanks to Joe Schwartz for reminding us about this book.