Art-Language Vol. 4 No. 3

Art-Language Vol. 4 No. 3
Publication	Art-Language
Date	October 1978
Volume	4
Number	3
Publisher
Editor	Michael Baldwin, Charles Harrison, Sandra Harrison, Lynn Lemaster, Philip Pilkington, Mel Ramsden

Contents

Title	pg.	Notes	Reprinted in
A Note to the Reader	1-2
Ways of Seeing	3-123	Excerpt (73-88)	Excerpt in Art & Language (1980)

Background

• A critique of John Berger's 1972 book Ways of Seeing (based on the 1972 TV series)
• The cover image is a parody of the cover of Ways of Seeing which features René Magritte's 1935 painting "La Clef des songes (The Key to Dreams)." Art & Language's reproduction features "the modern historical consciousness," "the camera," "the Walter Benjamin," and "the contradiction." Their version of the painting appears in Index: The Studio at 3 Wesley Place (1982)
• The Fox 2 (1975) also contains a review of Ways of Seeing by Eunice Lipton

Art & Language

Art-Language, Volume 4, Number 3 is an attempt to produce a guide to 'Ways of Seeing' by John Berger et al. It might be argued that 'Ways of Seeing' has already been dispensed with, that it is obvious to anyone worth talking to that it is a bad book, etc. But it is a paradigm of sorts. It pricks the liberal conscience from the Left and enlightens the inert mass from above. It is widely recommended to art students and to others studying the arts. It suffers from an almost incredible number and variety of defects. Some of them were pointed out long ago, others are made explicit here for the first time. An adequate criticism of 'Ways of Seeing' will be in part the criticism of a paradigm. It will be clear to many readers that this is more than just a criticism stuck to the text. It is a detailed examination of a broad range of attempts at mystification and the conditions of their occurrence.

Reviews

University of Nottingham Centre for Research in Visual Culture

February 2023

Stephen Moonie

'It is obvious to anyone worth talking to that it is a bad book etc.' Berger's Ways of Seeing was dismissed with these stern words in the anonymously penned issue of Art-Language in October 1978. The cover mimicked Berger's reproduction of René Magritte's The Key of Dreams (1935). Art-Language borrowed the image but altered the text beneath. (For instance, the jug at bottom left is captioned 'the Walter Benjamin,' another bugbear of the Art & Language collective).

The whole issue, consisting of one extensive text, was devoted to a critique of Ways of Seeing. Despite its 'almost incredible number and variety of defects,' Art-Language conceded that the book was 'a paradigm of sorts.' As such, it was ripe for 'de-mystification,' its cultural influences conducive to a broad-ranging analysis of 'the conditions of their occurrence.' As Ways of Seeing recedes from us historically, so too does Art-Language's critique. As Peter Osborne has remarked, early issues of the journal appear to us as relics from a lost civilisation. How might we consider Ways of Seeing from our current vantage point alongside its critique and the attendant promises of 'theory'?