Folding Corners 03

Ways of Seeing - Jon Berger

‘A woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. Her presence is manifest in her gestures, voice, opinions, expression, clothes, chosen surroundings, taste - indeed there is nothing she can do which does not contribute to her presence, Presence for a woman is so intrinsic to her person that men tend to think of it as an almost physical emanation, a kind of heat or smell or aura.’

‘She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another.’

Essay 3 - the objectification of women in oil paintings

‘..he did everything he could to make his figures lose substance, to become transparent and indeterminate one from the other, to defy gravity, to be present but in tangible, to glow without a definable surface, not to be reduced to objects’

Essay 5 - On oil paintings as a means of possessing

‘ The oil painting showed what its owner was already enjoying among his possessions and his way of life. It consolidated his own sense of his own value. It enhanced his view of himself as he already was. It began with facts, the facts of his life. The paintings embellished the interior in which he actually lived.’

‘The purpose of publicity is the make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life. Not with the way of life of society, but with his own within it. It suggests that if he buys what it is offering, his life will become better. It offers him an improved alternative to what he is.’

Essay 7 - A comparison between the purpose of oil paintings and the purpose of public imagery