A book made by

John Berger, Sven Blomberg, Chris Fox,

M ichael Dibb, Richard Hollis
 WAYS OF SEEING

based on the BBC television series with

J O H N BERGER

B ritish Broadcasting Corporation

and Penguin Books
Published by
the British Broadcasting Corporation, 35 M arylebone High Street, London W1M 4AA

ISBN 0 563 122447

and by

P E N G U IN BO O K S
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ. England
Viking Penguin, a division o f Penguin Books USA Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U SA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd. 2801 John Street. M arkham. Ontario, Canada L3R 1B4
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd. 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10. New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth. Middlesex, England

ISBN 0 14 021631 6

First published in Great Britain by the

British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books Ltd 1972
30 29 28 27
First published in the United States of America by The Viking Press (A Richard Seaver Book) 1973
Published in Penguin Books in the United States o f America 1977
Copyright in all countries of the International Copyright Union 1972 by Penguin Books Ltd
All rights reserved

Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic

Filmsel in M onophoto IJnivers

Except in the United States o f America, this book is sold subject to

the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
w.hich it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
 N ote to the reader

This book has been made by five o f us. Our

s ta rtin g point w as some o f the ideas contained in th e television
series Ways of Seeing. W e have trie d to extend and elaborate
these ideas. They have influenced not only w h a t w e say but
also h o w w e have set about tryin g to say it. The fo rm o f the
book is as much to do w ith our purpose as the argum ents
contained w ith in it.
The book consists o f seven numbered essays.
They can be read in any order. Four o f the essays use w ords
and images, three o f them use only images. These purely
picto rial essays (on w ays o f seeing w om en and on various
con tradicto ry aspects o f th e tra d itio n o f the oil p ainting) are
intended to raise as many questions as th e verbal essays.
Som etim es in the pictorial essays no in form ation a t all is given
about the images reproduced because it seemed to us th a t
such in fo rm atio n m ight d is tra c t fro m the points being made.
In all cases, how ever, th is in fo rm ation can be found in the List
of Works Reproduced w h ich is printed a t the end o f th e book.
None o f the essays pretends to deal w ith more
than certain aspects o f each subject: particularly those aspects
th ro w n into relief by a modern historical consciousness.
Our principal aim has been to s ta rt a process o f questioning.
 1

Seeing comes before w o rd s. The child looks and

recognizes before it can speak.

But there is also another sense in w hich seeing

conies before w o rd s. It is seeing w hich establishes our place
in the surrounding w o rld ; w e explain th a t w o rld w ith w ords,
but w o rd s can never undo the fa c t th a t w e are surrounded by
it. The relation b etw een w h a t w e see and w h a t w e k n o w is
never settled . Each evening w e see the sun set. W e know
th a t the earth is turning aw ay fro m it. Y e t th e know ledge, the
explanation, never q uite fits the sight. The S urrealist painter
M a g ritte com m ented on this a lw ays-p resen t gap betw een
w o rds and seeing in a painting called The Key of Dreams.
 The w ay w e see things is a ffec te d by w h a t w e
k n o w or w h a t w e believe. In the M id d le Ages w hen men
believed in th e physical existence o f Hell the sight o f fire m ust
have m eant som ething d iffe re n t fro m w h a t it means today.
Nevertheless th e ir idea o f Hell ow ed a lo t to the sight o f fire
consuming and the ashes rem aining as w e ll as to th e ir
experience o f th e pain o f burns.
W hen in love, the sig ht o f the beloved has a
com pleteness w h ich no w o rd s and no embrace can m atch :
a com pleteness w hich only th e a ct o f m aking love can
tem porarily accom m odate.
Y e t this seeing w hich comes before w o rd s, and
can never be quite covered by them , is not a question o f
m echanically reacting to stim uli. ( I t can only be tho u g h t o f in
this w ay if one isolates the small p art o f the process w hich
concerns the eye's retina.) W e only see w h a t w e look at. To
look is an act o f choice. As a result o f this act, w h a t w e see is
brought w ith in our reach - though not necessarily w ith in
arm 's reach. T o touch som ething is to situ ate oneself in
relation to it. (Close your eyes, move round the room and

8
 notice h o w th e fa c u lty o f touch is like a s tatic, lim ited fo rm o f
sight.) W e never look at ju s t one th in g ; w e are alw ays looking
at tne relation b etw een things and ourselves. Our vision is
continually active, continually moving, continually holding
things in a circle around itse lf, co n stitu tin g w h a t is present
to us as w e are.
Soon a fte r w e can see, w e are a w are th a t w e can
also be seen. The eye o f the o ther com bines w ith our ow n eye
to m ake it fu lly credible th a t w e are p art o f th e visible w o rld .
I f w e accept th a t w e can see th a t hill over there,
w e propose th a t fro m th a t hill w e can be seen. The reciprocal
nature o f vision is more fundam ental than th a t o f spoken
dialogue. And o fte n dialogue is an a tte m p t to verbalize this -
an a tte m p t to explain how , e ith er m etaphorically or literally,
Jyou see th in g s ', and an a tte m p t to discover h o w 'he sees
th in g s '.
In the sense in w hich w e use the w o rd in this
book, all im ages are m an-m ade.

An im age is a sight w hich has

been recreated or reproduced. It is an appearance, or a set of
appearances, w h ich has been detached fro m the place and tim e

9
in w hich it firs t made its appearance and preserved - fo r a fe w
m om ents or a fe w centuries. Every image embodies a w ay of
seeing. Even a photograph. For photographs are not, as is
o ften assum ed, a mechanical record. Every tim e w e look a t a
photograph, w e are aw are, h ow ever slightly, o f the
photographer selecting th a t sig ht fro m an in fin ity o f o th er
possible sights. This is true even in the m ost casual fam ily
snapshot. The photographer's w ay o f seeing is reflected in his
choice o f subject. The painter's w ay o f seeing is reco n stitu ted
by the m arks he m akes on the canvas or paper. Y et, although
every im age embodies a w ay o f seeing, our perception or
appreciation o f an image depends also upon our ow n w a y o f
seeing. ( I t may be, fo r example, th a t Sheila is one fig u re am onj
tw e n ty ; but fo r our ow n reasons she is the one w e have eyes
fo r.)

Im ages w e re firs t made to conjure up the

appearances o f som ething th a t w a s absent. Gradually it
became evident th a t an im age could o u tlast w h a t it
represented; it then showed h ow som ething or som ebody had
once looked - and thus by im plication how the subject had
once been seen by o ther people. Later still the specific vision
o f the im age-m aker w as also recognized as p art o f the record.
An im age became a record o f h o w X had seen Y. This w a s the
result o f an increasing consciousness o f individuality,
accom panying an increasing aw areness o f history. It w o u ld be
rash to try to date th is last developm ent precisely. But
certainly in Europe such consciousness has existed since the
beginning o f the Renaissance.
No o th er kind o f relic or te x t fro m the past can
o ffe r such a d irect testim o ny about the w o rld w hich
surrounded other people at o th er tim es. In this respect
images are more precise and richer than lite ratu re. To say this
is not to deny the expressive or im aginative quality o f art,
treatin g it as mere docum entary evidence; the more imaginati%
the w o rk , the more profoundly it allo w s us to share the
a rtis t's experience o f the visible.

10
 Y e t w hen an image is presented as a w o rk o f art,
the w ay people look a t it is affected by a w h o le series o f learnt
assum ptions about art. Assum ptions concern ing :

Beauty
T ru th
Genius
Civilization
Form
Statu s
Taste, etc.

M any o f these assum ptions no longer accord w ith

the w o rld as it is. (The w o rld -a s -it-is is more than pure
objective fa c t, it includes consciousness.) O ut o f tru e w ith the
present, these assum ptions obscure the past. They m ystify
rather than clarify. The past is never there w a itin g to be
discovered, to be recognized fo r exactly w h a t it is. H istory
alw ays c o n s titu tes th e relation betw een a present and its past.
Consequently fe a r o f the present leads to m ystificatio n o f the
past. The past is not fo r living in ; it is a w e ll o f conclusions
from w hich w e d ra w in order to act. C ultural m ystificatio n o f
the past entails a double loss. W o rks o f a rt are made
unnecessarily rem ote. And the past o ffe rs us fe w e r
conclusions to com plete in action.
W hen w e 'see' a landscape, w e situ ate ourselves
in it. If w e 's a w ' th e a rt o f th e past, w e w o u ld situate
ourselves in history. W hen w e are prevented fro m seeing it,
w e are being deprived o f the history w h ic h belongs to us.
W ho b en efits fro m th is deprivation? In th e end, the a rt o f the
past is being m y stified because a privileged m inority is
striving to invent a history w h ich can retrospectively ju s tify
the role o f the ruling classes, and such a ju s tific a tio n can
no longer m ake sense in modern term s. And so, inevitably, it
m ystifies.

Let us consider a typical exam ple o f such

m ystificatio n. A tw o -v o lu m e study w as recently published on
Frans Hals.* It is the a u th o ritativ e w o rk to date on this painter.
As a book o f specialized a rt history it is no b e tte r and no
w orse than th e average.
 The last tw o g reat paintings by Frans Hals p o rtn
the Governors and the Governesses o f an Alm s House fo r old
paupers in the Dutch seventeenth-century city o f Haarlem .
They w e re o ffic ia lly com m issioned p o rtraits. Hals, an old mail

12
o f over eighty, w as d estitu te. M o s t o f his life he had been in
debt. During th e w in te r o f 1664, the year he began painting
these pictures, he obtained three loads o f peat on public
charity, o th e rw is e he w o u ld have frozen to death. Those w h o
now sat fo r him w e re adm inistrators o f such public charity.
T he author records these fa c ts and then exp licitly
says th a t it w o u ld be incorrect to read into the paintings any
criticism o f th e s itte rs. There is no evidence, he says, th a t
Hals painted them in a s pirit o f b ittern ess. The author
considers them , how ever, rem arkable w o rk s o f a rt and
explains w h y. Here he w rite s o f the R egentesses:

Each woman speaks to us of the human condition with

equal importance. Each woman stands out with equal
clarity against the enormous dark surface, yet they are
linked by a firm rhythmical arrangement and the subdued
diagonal pattern formed by their heads and hands.
Subtle modulations of the deep, glowing blacks
contribute to the harmonious fusion of the whole and
form an unforgettable contrast with the powerful whites
and vivid flesh tones where the detached strokes reach
a peak of breadth and strength, (our italics)

The com positional unity o f a painting

contributes fundam entally to the p o w er o f its image. It is
reasonable to consider a painting's com position. But here the
com position is w ritte n about as though it w e re in its e lf the
em otional charge o f the painting. Term s like harmonious fusion,
unforgettable contrast, reaching a peak of breadth and strength
tran s fe r th e em otion provoked by the image fro m the plane
of lived experience, to th a t of disinterested Jart
a p p r e c ia t io n A ll c o n flic t disappears. One is le ft w ith the
unchanging 'h u m an c o n d itio n ', and th e painting considered as
a m arvellously made object.
Very little is know n about Hals or the Regents
w ho com m issioned him. It is not possible to produce
circum stantial evidence to establish w h a t th e ir relations w ere.
But there is the evidence o f the paintings them selves: the
evidence o f a group o f men and a group o f w om en as seen by
another man, the painter. Study th is evidence and judge fo r
yourself.

13
 The a rt historian fears such d irect ju d g em en t:

As in so many other pictures by Hals, the penetrating

characterizations almost seduce us into believing that we
know the personality traits and even the habits of the
men and women portrayed.

W h a t is th is 's e d u c tio n ' he w rite s o f? It is

nothing less than the paintings w o rk in g upon*us. They w o rk
upon us because w e accept the w a y Hals saw his s itte rs . W e
do n o t accept this innocently. W e accept it in so fa r as it
corresponds to our ow n observation o f people, gestures, faces,
in s titu tio n s . This is possible because w e still live in a society
o f com parable social relations and moral values. And it is
precisely this w hich gives th e paintings th e ir psychological and
social urgency. It is this - not the painter's skill as a 's e d u c e r'
- w hich convinces us th a t w e can k n o w the people portrayed.
The author continues:

In the case of some critics the seduction has been a

total success. It has, for example, been asserted that
the Regent in the tipped slouch hat, which hardly covers
any of his long, lank hair, and whose curiously set
eyes do not focus, was shown in a drunken state.

14
 This, he suggests, is a libel. He argues th a t it w as
a fashion a t th a t tim e to w e ar hats on the side o f the head.
He cites medical opinion to prove th a t the Regent's expression
could w e ll be the result o f a facial paralysis. He insists th a t th e
painting w o uld have been unacceptable to the Regents if one
o f them had been portrayed drunk. One m ight go on
discussing each o f these points fo r pages. (M e n in
seventeenth-century Holland w o re th e ir hats on the side o f
th e ir heads in order to be tho u g ht o f as adventurous and
pleasure-loving. Heavy drinking w a s an approved practice.
Etcetera.) But such a discussion w o u ld tak e us even fa rth e r
aw ay fro m th e only confron tatio n w h ich m atters and w h ich the
author is determ ined to evade.
In th is confro n tatio n the Regents and
Regentesses stare a t Hals, a d e s titu te old painter w h o has lost
his rep utatio n and lives o ff public c harity; he examines them
through th e eyes o f a pauper w h o m ust nevertheless try to be
objective, i.e., m ust try to surm ount th e w ay he sees as a
pauper. T his is the drama o f these paintings. A drama o f an
'u n fo rg e tta b le c o n tra s t'.
M y s tific a tio n has little to do w ith the
vocabulary used. M y s tific a tio n is the process o f explaining

15
aw ay w h a t m ight o th e rw is e be evident. Hals w as the firs t
p o rtra itis t to paint the n ew characters and expressions
created by capitalism . He did in p icto rial term s w h a t Balzac
did tw o centuries la te r in lite ratu re. Y e t the author o f the
a u th o ritativ e w o rk on these paintings sums up th e a rtis t's
achievem ent by referring to

Hals's unwavering commitment to his personal vision,

which enriches our consciousness of our fellow men
and heightens our awe for the ever-increasing power of
the mighty impulses that enabled him to give us a close
view of life's vital forces.

T h at is m ystificatio n .
In order to avoid m ystifying the past (w h ic h can
equally w e ll s u ffe r p se u d o -M arx is t m y stifica tio n ) let us no w
exam ine the p articular relation w h ich no w exists, so fa r as
p icto rial images are concerned, betw een the present and the
past. If w e can see the present clearly enough, w e shall ask
the rig h t questions o f the past.

Today w e see th e a rt o f the past as nobody saw

it before. W e actually perceive it in a d iffe re n t w ay.
This d ifference can be illu strated in term s o f w h a t
w as th o u g h t of as perspective. The convention of
perspective, w hich is unique to European a rt and w h ich w as
firs t established in the early Renaissance, centres
everything on the eye o f the beholder. It is like a beam fro m a
lighthouse - only instead o f lig h t travelling o u tw ard s,
appearances travel in. The conventions called those
appearances reality. Perspective m akes the single eye the
centre o f the visible w o rld . Everything converges on to the
eye as to the vanishing point o f in fin ity. The visible w o rld is
arranged fo r the spectator as th e universe w as once th o u g h t
to be arranged fo r God.
According to the convention o f perspective there
is no visual reciprocity. There is no need fo r God to situ ate
him self in relation to oth ers: he is him self the s itu ation .
The inherent contradiction in perspective w as th a t it
structured all images o f reality to address a single spectato r
w h o , unlike God, could only be in one place at a tim e.

16
 A fte r th e invention o f the camera this
contradiction gradually became apparent.

I'm an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you

S o viet

a world the way only I can see it. I free myself for
w ritten

today and forever from human immobility. I'm in

Vertov, the revolutionary

constant movement. I approach and pull away from

objects. I creep under them. I move alongside a running
an article

horse's mouth. I fall and rise with the falling and rising
bodies. This is I, the machine, manoeuvring in the chaotic
is from

movements, recording one movement after another in

the most complex combinations.
' This quotation

Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I

by Dziga

co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever

director

I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation

in 1923

of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I explain in a

film

new way the world unknown to you.*

 The camera isolated
m om entary appearances and in so doing destroyed the idea
th a t im ages w e re tim eless. Or, to put it another w ay, the
camera show ed th a t the notion o f tim e passing w as
inseparable fro m the experience o f th e visual (except in
paintings). W h at you s aw depended upon w here you w e re
w hen. W h a t you saw w as relative to your position in tim e and
space. It w as no longer possible to imagine everything
converging on the human eye as on the vanishing point of
in fin ity.
This is not to say th a t before the invention o f the
camera men believed th a t everyone could see everything. But
perspective organized the visual field as though th a t w e re
indeed th e ideal. Every draw in g or painting th a t used
perspective proposed to the spectato r th a t he w as the unique
centre o f th e w o rld . The cam era - and more particularly the
movie camera - dem onstrated th a t there w as no centre.
The invention o f th e camera changed th e w a y men
saw . The visible came to mean som ething d iffe re n t to them .
This w a s im m ediately reflected in painting.
For the Im pressionists the visible no longer
presented its e lf to man in order to be seen. On the contrary,
the visible, in continual flu x, became fug itive. For the Cubists
the visible w as no longer w h a t confronted the single eye,
but th e to ta lity o f possible view s taken fro m points all round
the object (or person) being depicted.

18
 The invention o f th e camera also changed the w ay
in w hich men saw paintings painted long before the camera
w as invented. O riginally paintings w ere an integral part o f the
building fo r w hich they w e re designed. Som etim es in an early
Renaissance church or chapel one has the feeling th a t the
images on the w a ll are records o f the building's in terio r life,
th a t to g e th e r they make up the building's mem ory - so much
are they p art o f th e p articu larity o f the building.

The uniqueness of every painting w as once part

of the uniqueness o f the place w h e re it resided. Som etim es the
painting w a s transportable. But it could never be seen in tw o
places a t the same tim e. W hen th e camera reproduces a
painting, it destroys the uniqueness o f its image. As a result its
meaning changes. Or, more exactly, its meaning m ultiplies and
frag m en ts into many meanings.
This is vividly illu strated by w h a t happens w hen a
painting is show n on a television screen. The painting enters
each v iew er's house. There it is surrounded by his w allpaper,
his fu rn itu re , his m em entoes. It enters the atm osphere o f his

19
fam ily. It becomes th e ir talk in g point. It lends its meaning to
th e ir meaning. A t the same tim e it enters a m illion o ther
houses and, in each o f them , is seen in a d iffe re n t context.
Because o f the camera, the painting now travels to the
spectator rather than the spectator to the painting. In its
travels, its meaning is diversified.

One m ight argue th a t all reproductions m ore or

less d is to rt, and th a t th e re fo re th e original painting is s till in
a sense unique. Here is a reproduction o f the Virgin of the Rocks
by Leonardo da Vinci.

20
 Having seen this reproduction, one can go to the
N ational Gallery to look a t th e original and there discover w h a t
the reproduction lacks. A ltern atively one can fo rg e t about the
quality o f th e reproduction and sim ply be reminded, w hen one
sees th e original, th a t it is a fam ous painting o f w hich
som ew here one has already seen a reproduction. But in eith er
case the uniqueness o f the original no w lies in it being the
original of a reproduction. It is no longer w h a t its image show s
th a t strike s one as unique; its firs t meaning is no longer to be
found in w h a t it says, but in w h a t it is.
This new status o f the original w o rk is the
p erfectly rational consequence o f the new means o f
reproduction. But it is a t this point th a t a process o f
m y stifica tio n again enters. The meaning o f the original w o rk
no longer lies in w h a t it uniquely says but in w h a t it uniquely
is. H o w is its unique existence evaluated and defined in our
present culture? It is defined as an object w hose value
depends upon its rarity. This value is affirm e d and gauged by
the price it fetches on the m arket. But because it is
nevertheless 'a w o rk o f a r t ' - and a rt is tho u g h t to be greater
than com m erce - its m arket price is said to be a reflectio n o f
its spiritual value. Y e t the spiritual value o f an object, as
d is tin c t fro m a message or an example, can only be explained
in term s o f magic or religion. And since in modern society
neither o f these is a living force, the a rt object, the 'w o rk o f
a rt', is enveloped in an atm osphere of entirely bogus religiosity.
W o rks o f a rt are discussed and presented as though they w ere
holy relics: relics w hich are firs t and fo rem o st evidence o f
th e ir ow n survival. The past in w h ich they originated is
studied in order to prove th e ir survival genuine. They
are declared a rt w hen th e ir line o f descent can be
c ertified .
Before the Virgin of the Rocks the visito r to the
N ational Gallery w o u ld be encouraged by nearly everything
he m igh t have heard and read about the painting to feel
som ething like th is : ' I am in fro n t o f it. I can see it. This
painting by Leonardo is unlike any o th er in the w o rld . The
N ational Gallery has the real one. If I look at this painting hard
enough, I should som ehow be able to feel its auth en ticity.
The Virgin of the Rocks by Leonardo da V inci: it is auth en tic and
therefo re it is b eau tifu l.'

21
 To dism iss such feelings as naive w o u ld be quite
w ro ng . They accord perfectly w ith the sophisticated culture of
a rt experts fo r w h o m the N ational Gallery catalogue is
w ritte n . The entry on the Virgin of the Rocks is one o f the
longest entries. It consists o f fourteen closely printed pages.
They do not deal w ith the meaning o f the image. They deal
w ith w h o com m issioned the painting, legal squabbles, w h o
ow ned it, its likely date, the fam ilies o f its o w ners. Behind this
in fo rm atio n lie years o f research. The aim o f the research is to
prove beyond any shadow of doubt th a t the painting is a
genuine Leonardo. The secondary aim is to prove th a t an
alm o st identical painting in th e Louvre is a replica o f the
N ational Gallery version.

French a rt historians try to prove the opposite.

THE VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST ANNE AND ST JOHN THE BAPTIST
BY LEONARDO DAVlNCl 1452-1519

The N ational Gallery sells more reproductions of

Leonardo's cartoon o f The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St
John the Baptist than any o th e r picture in th e ir collection. A fe w
years ago it w as kno w n only to scholars. It became fam ous
because an Am erican w a n te d to buy it fo r tw o and a half
m illion pounds.
N o w it hangs in a room by itse lf. The room is like
a chapel. The d raw ing is behind b u llet-p ro o f perspex. It has
acquired a new kind o f im pressiveness. N ot because o f w h a t it
show s - not because o f th e meaning o f its image. It has
become im pressive, m ysterious, because o f its m arke t value.

The bogus religiosity w hich no w surrounds

original w o rk s o f art, and w hich is u ltim ately dependent upon
th e ir m arket value, has become the sub stitu te fo r w h a t
paintings lost w hen the camera macfe them reproducible. Its
fun ction is nostalgic. It is th e final em pty claim fo r the
continuing values o f an oligarchic, undem ocratic culture. If the
image is no longer unique and exclusive, the a rt object, the
thing, m ust be made m ysteriously so. I I d i(jL f~ )

23
 The m ajority o f the population do not v isit a rt
m useums. The fo llo w in g table show s h o w closely an
in tere st in a rt is related to privileged education.
N a tio n al p ro p o rtio n o f a rt m useum v is ito rs according to level o f ed u catio n :
Percentage o f each educational categ o ry w h o v is it a r t m useum s

Greece Poland France Holland Greece Poland France Holland

With no Only
educational
qualification 0.02 0.12 0.15 __ secondary
education 10.5 10.4 10 20

Only Further and

primary higher
education 0.30 1.50 0.45 0.50 education 11.5 11.7 12.5 17.3

Source: Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Darbel, L Am our de I'Art, Editions de Minuit, Paris 1969, Appendix 5, table 4

The m ajo rity ta k e it as axiom atic th a t th e

m useums are full o f holy relics w hich refer to a m ystery
w h ich excludes th e m : th e m ystery o f unaccountable w e alth .
Or, to p u t th is another w a y, they believe th a t original
m asterpieces belong to th e preserve (both m aterially and
s piritually) o f the rich. A nother table indicates w h a t the idea
o f an a rt gallery suggests to each social class.

O f th e places listed b e lo w w h ic h does a m useum rem ind you

o f m ost 7

Skilled and Professional

Manual
white collar and upper
workers
workers managerial

% % %

Church 66 45 30.5
Library 9 34 28
Lecture hall - 4 4.5
Department store or
entrance hall in public
building 7 2
Church and library 9 2 4.5
Church and lecture hall 4 2 -
Library and lecture hall - _ 2
None of these 4 2 19.5
No reply 8 4 9

100 ( n - 53) 100 (n = 98) 100 (n - 99)

Source: as above, appendix 4. table 8

In the age o f p ictorial reproduction th e meaning

o f paintings is no longer attached to th e m ; th e ir meaning
becomes tra n s m itta b le : th a t is to say it becomes in fo rm atio n
o f a sort, and, like all in fo rm atio n , it is eith er p u t to use or
ignored; in fo rm ation carries no special au th o rity w ith in itself.
W hen a painting is put to use, its meaning is eith er m odified or
to ta lly changed. One should be quite clear about w h a t this
involves. It is not a question o f reproduction failin g to

24
 reproduce certain aspects o f an im age fa ith fu lly ; it is a
question o f reproduction m aking it possible, even inevitable,
th a t an image w ill be used fo r many d iffe re n t purposes and
th a t th e reproduced image, unlike an original w o rk , can lend
its e lf to them all. Let us exam ine some o f the w ays in w h ich
the reproduced image lends its e lf to such usage.
S'dVlAJ C1Nj V S fl M i ,A-
o M - ^ u iu - j j in u y au

Reproduction isolates a detail o f a painting fro m

the w h o le. The detail is tran sfo rm ed . An allegorical fig u re
becomes a p o rtra it o f a girl.

25
 W hen a painting is reproduced by a film camera
it inevitably becomes m aterial fo r th e film -m a k e r's argum ent.
A film w h ich reproduces images o f a painting leads
the spectato r, through the painting, to the film -m a k e r's ow n
conclusions. The painting lends au th o rity to the film -m a k e r.

Th is is because a film unfolds in tim e and a painting does not.

In a painting all its elem ents are there to be seen

sim ultaneously. The spectator may need tim e to examine each
elem ent o f th e painting b ut w henever he reaches a conclusion,
th e sim u ltan eity o f the w h o le painting is there to reverse or
q ualify his conclusion. The painting m aintains its ow n
a uth o rity.

26
 PROCISSIQN
1O CAI VARY
BY BRl UGHEL 1525-1569

Paintings are often reproduced w ith w o rd s around them .

This is a landscape o f a cornfield w ith birds flying

out o f it. Look at it fo r a m om ent. Then turn th e page.
WHEATFiEl D WITH CROWS
BY VAN GOGH 1853-1890

27
W HEATFIELD WITH CRO W 'S
BY VAN GOGH 1853-1890

is ih c pi'cLu/t -ffysh Von p&ntooL

before h Ict'lUd husnseJf.

It is hard to define exactly ho w the w o rd s have

changed the image but undoubtedly they have. The image now
illu strates the sentence.
In th is essay each image reproduced has become
p art o f an argum ent w h ich has little or nothing to do w ith the
painting's original independent meaning. The w o rd s have
quoted the paintings to confirm the ir ow n verbal auth o rity.
(The essays w ith o u t w ord s in this book may m ake th a t
distin ctio n clearer.)

Reproduced paintings, like all in fo rm atio n , have to

hold th e ir ow n against all the other in fo rm atio n being
continually tran s m itte d .

28
 Consequently a reproduction, as w e ll as m aking
its ow n references to the image o f its original, becomes
itse lf the reference po int fo r other images. The meaning o f
an image is changed according to w h a t one sees im m ediately
beside it or w h a t comes im m ediately a fte r it. Such au th o rity
as it retains, is distribu ted over the w h o le con text in w hich

If women knew then... what they know now.

Because w o rk s o f a rt are reproducible, they can,

theoretically, be used by anybody. Y e t m ostly - in a rt books,
magazines, film s or w ith in g ilt fram es in living-room s -
reproductions are s till used to bolster the illusion th a t
nothing has changed, th a t art, w ith its unique undim inished
authority, ju s tifie s m ost o th er form s o f auth o rity, th a t a rt
makes inequality seem noble and hierarchies seem thrilling .
For example, the w h ole concept o f the N ational C ultural
H eritage exploits the au th o rity o f a rt to g lo rify th e present
social system and its p rio rities.

29
 The means o f reproduction are used politically
and com m ercially to disguise or deny w h a t th e ir existence
m akes possible. But som etim es individuals use them
d iffe re ntly .

A dults and children som etim es have boards in

th e ir bedrooms or living-room s on w hich they pin pieces of
paper: le tte rs, snapshots, reproductions o f paintings,
new spaivtr cuttin g s, original d raw ings, postcards. On each
board all the images belong to the same language and all are
more or less equal w ith in it, because they have been chosen in
a highly personal w ay to m atch and express the experience o f
the room 's inhabitant. Logically, these boards should replace
museums.
W h a t are w e saying by th a t? Let us firs t be sure
about w h a t w e are not saying.
W e are not saying th a t there is nothing le ft to
experience before original w o rk s of a rt except a sense o f aw e
because they have survived. The w ay original w o rk s o f a rt are
usually approached - through museum catalogues, guides,
hired cassettes, etc. - is not the only w ay they m ight be
approached. W hen th e a rt o f the past ceases to be view ed
nostalgically, the w o rk s w ill cease to be holy relics - although
they w ill never re-becom e w h a t they w e re before the age of
reproduction. W e are not saying original w o rk s o f a rt are now
useless.

30
 Original paintings are silent and s till in a sense
th a t in fo rm atio n never is. Even a reproduction hung on a w a ll
is not com parable in this respect fo r in the original th e silence
and stillness perm eate the actual m aterial, th e paint, in w hich
one fo llo w s the traces o f the painter's im m ediate gestures.
This has the e ffe c t o f closing the distance in tim e betw een the
painting o f the picture and one's ow n act o f looking a t it. In
this special sense all paintings are contem porary. Hence the
im m ediacy o f th e ir testim o ny. T h eir historical m om ent is
literally there before our eyes. Cezanne made a sim ilar
observation fro m th e painter's point o f view . 'A m inute in the
w o rld 's life p asses! To paint it in its reality, and fo rg e t
everything fo r t h a t ! T o become th a t m inute, to be the
sensitive plate . . . give the image of w h a t w e see, fo rg e ttin g
everything th a t has appeared before our tim e . . .' W h a t w e
make o f th a t painted m om ent w hen it is before our eyes
depends upon w h a t w e expect o f art, and th a t in turn depends
today upon ho w w e have already experienced the meaning o f
paintings through reproductions.
 Nor are w e saying th a t all a rt can be understood
spontaneously. W e are not claim ing th a t to cut out a magazine
reproduction o f an archaic Greek head, because it is reminiscent
o f some personal experience, and to pin it on to a board
beside other d isparate images, is to com e to term s w ith the
fu ll meaning o f th a t head.

The idea o f innocence faces tw o w ays. By refusi lg

to enter a conspiracy, one remains innocent o f th a t conspiracy.
But to remain innocent may also be to remain ignorant. The
issue is not b etw een innocence and know ledge (or betw een the
natural and the c u ltu ral) but betw een a to ta l approach to a rt
w hich a tte m p ts to relate it to every aspect o f experience and
the esoteric approach o f a fe w specialized experts w h o are the
clerks o f the nostalgia o f a ruling class in decline. (In decline,
not before th e p ro le ta ria t, but before th e n ew p o w er o f the
corporation and the s ta te .) The real question is: to w hom does
the meaning o f the a rt o f the past properly belong? To those
w h o can apply it to th e ir ow n lives, or to a cultural hierarchy
o f relic specialists?
The visual arts have alw ays existed w ith in a
certain preserve; originally this preserve w as magical or
sacred. But it w as also physical: it w as the place, the cave, the
building, in w h ich , or fo r w hich, the w o rk w as made. The
experience o f a rt, w h ich a t firs t w as the experience o f ritual,
w as set apart fro m the rest o f life - precisely in order to be
able to exercise p o w er over it. Later the preserve o f a rt became
a social one. It entered the culture o f the ruling class, w h ils t
physically it w as set apart and isolated in th e ir palaces and
houses. During all this history the a u th o rity o f a rt w as
inseparable fro m th e particular a uth ority o f th e preserve.
W h a t the modern means o f reproduction have
done is to destroy th e auth o rity o f a rt and to remove it - or,
rather, to remove its images w hich they reproduce - fro m any
preserve. For the firs t tim e ever, images o f a rt have become
ephem eral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free.
They surround us in the same w ay as a language surrounds us.
They have entered the m ainstream o f life over w h ich they no
longer, in them selves, have pow er.
Y e t very fe w people are aw are o f w h a t has
happened because the means o f reproduction are used nearly

32
all the tim e to prom ote the illusion th a t nothing has changed
except th a t the masses, thanks to reproductions, can now
begin to appreciate a rt as the cultured m inority once did.
Understandably, the masses remain uninterested and sceptical.
If the new language of images w ere used
differently, it w ould, through its use, confer a new kind o f
power. W ith in it w e could begin to define our experiences more
precisely in areas w h ere w o rd s are inadequate. (Seeing comes
before w o rd s.) N ot only personal experience, but also the
essential historical experience o f our relation to th e past: th a t
is to say the experience o f seeking to give meaning to our lives,
of trying to understand the history o f w hich w e can become
the active agents.
The a rt o f the past no longer exists as it once did.
Its auth ority is lost. In its place there is a language o f images.
W hat m atters no w is w h o uses th a t language fo r w h a t
purpose. This touches upon questions o f copyright fo r
reproduction, the ow nership o f a rt presses and publishers, the
total policy o f public a rt galleries and museums. As usually
presented, these are n arro w professional m atters. One o f the
aims o f this essay has been to show th a t w h a t is really at
stake is much larger. A people or a class w hich is cut o ff fro m
its ow n past is fa r less free to choose and to act as a people or
class than one th a t has been able to situ ate its e lf in history.
This is w h y - and this is the only reason w hy - th e entire a rt
o f the past has n ow become a political issue.
M an y o f the ideas in the preceding essay have been taken froi
another, w ritte n over fo rty years ago by the German c ritic ant
philosopher W a lte r Benjamin.

His essay w as entitled The Work of Art in the Age of

Mechanical Reproduction. This essay is available in English in a
collection called Illuminations (Cape, London 1970).
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42
43
 According to usage and conventions w hich are a t
last being questioned b u t have by no means been overcom e,
the social presence o f a w om an is d iffe re n t in kind fro m th a t o f
a man. A m an's presence is dependent upon the prom ise o f
pow er w h ich he em bodies. I f the prom ise is large and
credible his presence is strikin g . If it is small or incredible, he
is found to have little presence. The prom ised p o w er may be
m oral, physical, tem p eram ental, econom ic, social, sexual - b ut
its object is alw ays e xterio r to th e man. A m an's presence

45
suggests w h a t he is capable o f doing to you or fo r you. His
presence may be fab ricated, in the sense th a t he pretends to b
capable o f w h a t he is not. But the pretence is alw ays tow ard s
a p o w er w hich he exercises on others.
By con trast, a w o m an 's presence expresses her
ow n a ttitu d e to herself, and defines w h a t can and cannot be
done to her. Her presence is m anifest in her gestures, voice,
opinions, expressions, clothes, chosen surroundings, tas te -
indeed there is nothing she can do w hich does not contribute
to her presence. Presence fo r a w om an is so in trin sic to her
person th a t men tend to thin k o f it as an alm ost physical
em anation, a kind o f heat or smell or aura.
To be born a w om an has been to be born, w ith in
an a llo tted and confined space, into the keeping o f men. The
social presence o f w om en has developed as a result o f th e ir
ingenuity in living under such tutelag e w ith in such a lim ited
space. But this has been a t the cost o f a w o m an 's self being
s plit into tw o . A w om an m ust continually w a tc h herself. She
is alm o st continually accom panied by her ow n image o f
herself. W h ils t she is w alkin g across a room or w h ils t she is
w eeping a t th e death o f her fath er, she can scarcely avoid
envisaging herself w alkin g or w eeping. From earliest childhoo
she has been tau g h t and persuaded to survey herself
continually.
And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the
surveyed w ith in her as the tw o c on stitu ent yet alw ays d istin ct
elem ents o f her id entity as a w om an.
She has to survey everything she is and everythin
she does because h o w she appears to others, and u ltim a te ly
how she appears to men, is o f crucial im portance fo r w h a t is
norm ally thou g h t o f as the success o f her life. Her ow n sense
o f being in herself is supplanted by a sense o f being
appreciated as herself by another.
M en survey w om en before trea tin g them .
Consequently ho w a w om an appears to a man can determ ine
how she w ill be treated . To acquire some control over this
process, w om en m ust contain it and in teriorize it. T h a t part o1
a w om an's self w h ich is the surveyor tre a ts the part w hich is
the surveyed so as to dem onstrate to others h o w her w hole
self w ou ld like to be treated . And this exem plary tre a tm e n t of
herself by herself c on stitu tes her presence. Every w om an's

46
 presence regulates w h a t is and is not 'p e rm is s ib le ' w ith in her
presence. Every one o f her actions - w h atever its d irect
purpose or m otivation - is also read as an indication o f how
she w ould like to be treated . If a w om an th ro w s a glass on the
floor, this is an exam ple o f h o w she tre a ts her ow n em otion o f
anger and so o f ho w she w o u ld w ish it to be trea te d by others.
If a man does the same, his action is only read as an
expression o f his anger. If a w om an m akes a good joke this is
an example o f h o w she tre a ts the jo k e r in herself and
accordingly o f h o w she as a jo k er-w o m a n w ould like to be
treated by others. Only a man can m ake a good jo ke fo r its ow n
sake.
One m ight sim plify this by saying: men act and
women appear. M en look a t w om en. W om en w a tc h them selves
being looked at. This determ ines not only m ost relations
between men and w om en b ut also the relation o f w om en to
themselves. The surveyor o f w om an in herself is m ale: the
surveyed fem ale. Thus she turns herself into an object - and
most particularly an object o f vision: a sight.

In one category o f European oil painting w om en

w ere the principal, ever-recurring subject. T h at category is the
nude. In the nudes o f European painting w e can discover some
o f the c riteria and conventions by w h ich w om en have been
seen and judged as sights.

The firs t nudes in the trad itio n depicted Adam

and Eve. It is w o rth referring to th e story as told in Genesis:

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for
food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the
tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the
fruit thereof and did eat; and she gave also unto her
husband with her, and he did eat.

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew
tharthey were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves
together and made themselves aprons. . . . And the

47
 Lord God called unto the man and said unto him,
'Where are thou?' And he said, 'I heard thy voice in the
garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid
myself. . . .
Unto the woman God said, 'I will greatly multiply thy
sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring
forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband and
he shall rule over thee'.

W h a t is s trikin g about this story? They becam e

aw are o f being naked because, as a result o f eating th e apple,
each s aw the o th er d iffe re n tly . Nakedness w as created in the
mind o f the beholder.

The second s triking fa c t is th a t the w om an is

blamed and is punished by being made subservient to the man
In relation to the w om an, the man becomes the agent o f God.

In the medieval trad itio n the story w as often

illustrated, scene fo llo w in g scene, as in a strip cartoon.

48
 During the Renaissance the narrative sequence
disappeared, and the single m om ent depicted became the
m om ent o f shame. The couple w e ar fig-leaves or make a
modest gesture w ith th e ir hands. But now th e ir shame is not
so much in relation to one another as to the spectator.

Later the shame becomes a kind of display.

W hen the trad itio n o f painting became more

secular, other them es also offered the opportunity o f painting
nudes. But in them all there remains the im plication th a t the
subject (a w o m an) is aw are o f being seen by a spectator.

49
 She is not naked as she is.
She is naked as the spectator sees her.

O ften - as w ith the favo u rite subject o f Susannah

and the Elders this is the actual them e o f the picture. W e
join the Elders to spy on Susannah taking her bath. She looks
back at us looking at her.
SUSANNAH
AND THE ELDERS
BY TINTORETTO

In another version o f the subject by T in to re tto ,

Susannah is looking at herself in a m irror. Thus she joins the
spectators o f herself.
SUSANNAH
AND THE ELDERS BY TINTORETTO
1518-1594

50
 The m irror w as often used as a symbol o f the
vanity o f w om an. The m oralizing, how ever, w as m ostly
hypocritical.

You painted a naked w om an because you enjoyed looking at

her, you put a m irro r in her hand and you called the painting
Vanity, thus m orally condemning the w om an w hose nakedness
you had depicted fo r your ow n pleasure.
The real fun ctio n o f the m irror w as o th erw ise. It
w as to m ake the w om an connive in treatin g herself as, firs t
and fo rem o st, a sight.

The Judgem ent o f Paris w as another them e w ith

the same in w ritte n idea of a man or men looking at naked
w om en.

51
 But a fu rth e r elem ent is no w added. The
elem ent o f judgem ent. Paris aw ards the apple to the wom an
he finds m ost beau tifu l. Thus Beauty becomes com petitive.
(Today The Jud gem en t of Paris has become the Beauty
C ontest.) Those w h o are not judged beautiful are not beautiful.
Those w h o are, are given the prize.

The prize is to be ow ned by a judge - th a t is to say

to be available fo r him. Charles the Second com m issioned a
secret painting fro m Lely. It is a highly typical image o f the
trad itio n . N om inally it m ight be a Venus and Cupid. In fa c t it is
a p o rtra it of one of the King's m istresses, Nell Gwynne.
It shows her passively looking at the spectator staring at
her naked.

This nakedness is not, how ever, an expression of

her ow n feelin g s; it is a sign o f her submission to the ow n er's
feelings or demands. (The ow n er o f both w om an and painting.)
The painting, w hen the King showed it to others, dem onstrated
this submission and his guests envied him.

52
 It is w o rth noticing th a t in other non-European
trad itio n s - in Indian art, Persian art, A frican art, Pre-
Columbian art - nakedness is never supine in this w ay. And if,
in these trad itio n s, the them e of a w o rk is sexual
a ttrac tio n , it is likely to show active sexual love as betw een
tw o people, the w om an as active as the man, the actions of
each absorbing the other.
RAJASTHAN
I8TH CENTURY

W e can n o w begin to see the difference betw een

nakedness and nudity in the European trad itio n . In his book on
The Nude Kenneth C lark m aintains th a t to be naked is sim ply to
be w ith o u t clothes, w hereas the nude is a form of art.
According to him, a nude is not the startin g point of a
painting, but a w ay o f seeing w hich the painting achieves. To
some degree, this is tru e - although the w ay o f seeing 'a n ude'
is not necessarily confined to a rt: there are also nude
photographs, nude poses, nude gestures. W h a t is tru e is th a t
the nude is alw ays conventionalized - and the au th o rity fo r its
conventions derives fro m a certain trad itio n o f art.

W h a t do these conventions mean ? W h at does a

nude signify? It is not s u fficien t to answ er these questions
merely in term s o f the a rt-fo rm , fo r it is quite clear th a t the
nude also relates to lived sexuality.

53
 To be naked is to be oneself.
To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet
not recognized fo r oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an
object in order to become a nude. (The sight of it as an object
stim ulates the use o f it as an object.) Nakedness reveals
itself. N udity is placed on display.
To be naked is to be w ith o u t disguise.
To be on display is to have the surface o f one's
ow n skin, the hairs of one's own body, turned into a disguise
w hich, in th a t situation , can never be discarded. The nude is
condemned to never being naked. N udity is a form o f dress.
In the average European oil painting o f the nude
the principal p rotagonist is never painted. He is the spectator
in fro n t o f the picture and he is presumed to be a man.
Everything is addressed to him. Everything m ust appear to be
the result o f his being there. It is fo r him th a t the figures have
assumed th e ir nudity. But he, by defin itio n , is a stranger -
w ith his clothes still on.
Consider the Allegory of Time and Love by Bronzino.

The com plicated sym bolism w hich lies behind th is painting

need not concern us now because it does not a ffe c t its sexual
appeal a t the firs t degree. Before it is anything else, this is a
painting o f sexual provocation.

54
 The painting w as sent as a present fro m the Grand
Duke o f Florence to the King o f France. The boy kneeling on
the cushion and kissing the w om an is Cupid. She is Venus.
But the w a y her body is arranged has nothing to do w ith th e ir
kissing. Her body is arranged in the w ay it is, to display it to
the man looking a t the picture. This picture is made to appeal
to his sexuality. It has nothing to do w ith her sexuality. (H ere
and in the European trad itio n generally, the convention o f not
painting the hair on a w o m an 's body helps to w ard s the same
end. Hair is associated w ith sexual pow er, w ith passion. The
w o m an 's sexual passion needs to be minim ized so th a t the
spectator may feel th a t he has the monopoly o f such passion.)
W om en are there to feed an appetite, not to have any o f th e ir
ow n.
Com pare the expressions of these tw o w o m e n :

one the model fo r a fam ous painting by Ingres and the other a
model fo r a photograph in a girlie magazine.

Is not the expression rem arkably sim ilar in each

case? It is the expression o f a w om an responding w ith
calculated charm to the man w hom she imagines looking at
her although she doesn't kn o w him. She is o fferin g up her
fem ininity as the surveyed.

55
 It is tru e th a t som etim es a painting includes a
male lover.

But the w om an's a tten tio n is very rarely directed

to w ard s him. O ften she looks aw ay fro m him or she looks out
o f the picture to w ard s the one w ho considers him self her
true lover - the spectato r-o w n er.

There w as a special category o f private

pornographic paintings (especially in the eighteenth century)
in w hich couples making love make an appearance. But even in
fro n t o f these it is clear th a t the s p e cta to r-o w n er w ill in
fantasy oust the other man, or else id entify w ith him. By
contrast the image o f the couple in non-European trad itio n s
provokes the notion o f many couples m aking love. 'W e all have
a thousand hands, a thousand fe e t and w ill never go alone.'

A lm ost all post-Renaissance European sexual

imagery is fro n ta l either literally or m etaphorically because
the sexual pro tago n ist is the s p e cta to r-o w n er looking a t it.
 The absurdity o f this male fla tte ry reached its
peak in the public academic a rt o f the nineteenth century.
</)

M en o f s tate, o f business, discussed under paintings like this.

W hen one o f them fe lt he had been o u tw itte d , he looked up fo r
consolation. W h a t he saw reminded him th a t he w as a man.

There are a fe w exceptional nudes in the

European trad itio n of oil painting to w hich very little o f w h a t
has been said above applies. Indeed they are no longer nudes -
they break the norms o f the a rt-fo rm ; they are paintings o f
loved w om en, more or less naked. Among the hundreds of
thousands of nudes w hich make up the trad itio n there are
perhaps a hundred o f these exceptions. In each case the
p ainter's personal vision of the particular w om en he is
painting is so strong th a t it makes no allow ance fo r the
spectator. The p ainter's vision binds the w om an to him so th a t
they become as inseparable as couples in stone. The spectator
can w itn ess th e ir relationship - but he can do no m ore: he is
forced to recognize him self as the outsider he is. He cannot
deceive him self into believing th a t she is naked fo r him. He
cannot turn her into a nude. The w ay the painter has painted
her includes her w ill and her intentions in the very stru ctu re of
the image, in the very expression o f her body and her face.

The typical and the exceptional in the trad itio n

can be defined by the simple naked/nude antinom y, but the
problem of painting nakedness is not as sim ple as it m ight
at firs t appear.

W h a t is the sexual function o f nakedness in

reality? Clothes encum ber con tact and m ovem ent. But it w ould
seem th a t nakedness has a positive visual value in its ow n
rig h t: w e w a n t to see the other naked: the o ther delivers to us
the sight o f them selves and w e seize upon it - som etim es
quite regardless o f w h e th e r it is fo r the firs t tim e or the
hundredth. W h a t does this sight o f the other mean to us, how
does it, at th a t instant o f to ta l disclosure, a ffe c t our desire?
 T h eir nakedness acts as a confirm ation and
provokes a very strong sense o f relief. She is a w om an like any
o th er: or he is a man like any o th e r: w e are overw helm ed by
the m arvellous sim p licity o f the fam ilia r sexual mechanism.
W e did not, o f course, consciously expect th is to
be o th e rw is e : unconscious homosexual desires (or
unconscious heterosexual desires if the couple concerned are
hom osexual) may have led each to half expect som ething
d iffe re n t. But the 'r e lie f ' can be explained w ith o u t recourse to
the unconscious.
W e did not expect them to be o th erw ise, but the
urgency and com plexity o f our feelings bred a sense o f
uniqueness w hich the sight o f the other, as she is or as he is,
now dispels. They are more like the rest of their sex than they
are d iffe re n t. In th is revelatibn lies the w arm and friend ly - as
opposed to cold and impersonal - anonym ity o f nakedness.
One could express th is d iffe re n tly : at the m om ent
o f nakedness firs t perceived, an elem ent o f banality enters: an
elem ent th a t exists only because w e need it.
Up to th a t in stan t the o ther w as more or less
m ysterious. E tiq u ettes o f m odesty are not m erely puritan or
sen tim en tal: it is reasonable to recognize a loss o f m ystery.
And the explanation of this loss o f m ystery may be largely
visual. The focus o f perception s h ifts fro m eyes, m outh,
shoulders, hands - all o f w h ich are capable o f such
subtleties o f expression th a t the personality expressed by th em
is m anifold - it shifts fro m these to the sexual parts, w hose
form atio n suggests an u tte rly com pelling but single process.
The o ther is reduced or elevated w hichever you p refer - to
th e ir prim ary sexual category: male or fem ale. Our re lie f is the
relief o f finding an unquestionable reality to w hose d irect
demands our earlier highly complex awareness m ust now yield.
W e need the banality w hich w e find in the firs t
in stant o f disclosure because it grounds us in reality. But it
does more than th a t. This reality, by prom ising the fam iliar,
proverbial m echanism o f sex, o ffe rs, a t the same tim e, the
possibility o f the shared subjectivity o f sex.
The loss o f m ystery occurs sim ultaneously w ith
the o ffe rin g o f the means fo r creating a shared m ystery. The
sequence is : subjective - objective - subjective to the p o w er
of tw o .
 W e can now understand the d iffic u lty of creating
a sta tic image of sexual nakedness. In lived sexual experience
nakedness is a process rather than a state. If one m om ent of
th a t process is isolated, its image w ill seem banal and its
banality, instead of serving as a bridge betw een tw o intense
im aginative states, w ill be chilling. This is one reason w hy
expressive photographs o f the naked are even rarer than
paintings. The easy solution fo r the photographer is to turn the
fig ure into a nude w hich, by generalizing both sight and view er
and m aking sexuality unspecific, turns desire into fantasy.

Let us examine an exceptional painted image o f nakedness. It

is a painting by Rubens o f his young second w ife w hom he
married w hen he him self was relatively old.
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W e see her in the act of turning, her fu r about to

slip o ff her shoulders. Clearly she w ill not remain as she is fo r
more than a second. In a superficial sense her image is as
instantaneous as a photograph's. But, in a more profound
sense, the painting 'contains' tim e and its experience. It is
easy to im agine th a t a m om ent ago before she pulled the fu r
round her shoulders, she w as entirely naked. The consecutive
stages up to and aw ay fro m the m om ent o f to ta l disclosure
have been transcended. She can belong to any or all o f them
sim ultaneously.
Her body confronts us, not as an im m ediate sight,
but as experience - the p ainter's experience. W hy ? There are
superficial anecdotal reasons: her dishevelled hair, the
expression o f her eyes directed to w a rd s him, the tenderness
w ith w h ich the exaggerated suscep tib ility o f her skin has been
painted. But the profound reason is a form al one. Her
appearance has been literally re-cast by the p ainter's
subjectivity. Beneath th e fu r th a t she holds across herself, the
upper p art o f her body and her legs can never m eet. There is
a displacem ent sidew ays o f about nine inches: her thighs, in
order to join on to her hips, are a t least nine inches to o fa r to
th e le ft.
Rubens probably did not plan th is: the spectator
may not consciously notice it. In its e lf it is unim portant. W h a t
m atters is w h a t it perm its. It perm its the body to become
im possibly dynam ic. Its coherence is no longer w ith in its e lf
but w ith in the experience o f the painter. M ore precisely, it
p erm its th e upper and lo w e r halves o f the body to ro tate
separately, and in opposite directions, round th e sexual centre
w hich is hidden: th e torso turnin g to the right, the legs to the
le ft. A t the same tim e this hidden sexual centre is connected
by means o f the dark fu r coat to all the surrounding darkness
in the picture, so th a t she is turning both around and w ith in
the dark w h ich has been made a m etaphor fo r her sex.
A p art from th e necessity o f transcending the
single in s ta n t and o f a dm ittin g subjectivity, there is, as w e
have seen, one fu rth e r elem ent w h ich is essential fo r any great
sexual im age o f the naked. This is the elem ent o f banality
w hich m ust be undisguised but not chilling. It is th is w hich
distinguishes betw een voyeur and lover. Here such banality
is to be found in Rubens's com pulsive painting o f the fa t
softness o f H6ldne Fourm ent's flesh w hich continually breaks
every ideal convention o f fo rm and (to him ) continually o ffe rs
the prom ise o f her extraordinary particu larity.
 The nude in European oil painting is usually
presented as an adm irable expression o f the European
hum anist s p irit. This spirit w as inseparable fro m individualism .
And w ith o u t the developm ent o f a highly conscious
individualism the exceptions to the trad itio n (extrem ely
personal images o f the naked), w ould never have been painted.
Y e t the trad itio n contained a contradiction w hich it could not
its e lf resolve. A fe w individual a rtists in tuitively recognized
this and resolved the contradiction in th e ir ow n term s, but
th e ir solutions could never enter the tra d itio n 's cultural term s.
The contradiction can be stated simply. On the
one hand the individualism o f the a rtis t, the thin ker, the
patron, the o w n er: on the o ther hand, the person w h o is the
object o f th e ir activities - the w om an - treated as a thing or an
abstraction.

CD

D iirer believed th a t the ideal nude ought to be

constructed by takin g the face o f one body, the breasts of
another, the legs o f a th ird , the shoulders o f a fo u rth , the
hands o f a fifth - and so on.

The result w ould g lorify M an. But the exercise

presumed a rem arkable indifference to w h o any one person
really w as.
 In the a rt-fo rm o f the European nude the painters
and s p e cta to r-o w n ers w ere usually men and the persons
treated as objects, usually w om en. This unequal relationship is
so deeply embedded in our culture th a t it still structures the
consciousness o f many w om en. They do to them selves w h a t
men do to them . They survey, like men, th e ir ow n fem in in ity .
In modern a rt the category o f the nude has
become less im p o rtan t. A rtists them selves began to question
it. In this, as in many other respects, M an et represented a
turnin g point. If one compares his Olympia w ith T itian 's
original, one sees a w om an, cast in the trad itio n al role,
beginning to question th a t role, som ew h at defiantly.

The ideal w as broken. But there w as little to

replace it except the 're a lis m ' o f the p ro stitu te - w h o became
the quintessential w om an of early avant-garde tw e n tie th -
century painting. (Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Rouault, German
Expressionism, etc.) In academ ic painting the trad itio n
continued.

Today the a ttitu d e s and values w hich inform ed

th a t tra d itio n are expressed through o ther more w idely
diffu sed media - advertising, journalism , television.
 But the essential w ay o f seeing w om en, the
essential use to w hich th e ir images are put, has not changed.
W om en are depicted in a quite d iffe re n t w ay fro m men - not
because the fem inine is d iffe re n t fro m the masculine - but
because the 'ideal' spectator is alw ays assumed to be male
and the image o f the w om an is designed to fla tte r him. If you
have any doubt th a t this is so, make the fo llo w in g experim ent.
Choose fro m th is book an image o f a trad itio n al nude.
T ransform the w om an into a man. Either in your m ind's eye or
by d raw ing on the reproduction. Then notice the violence
w hich th a t tran s fo rm a tio n does. N o t to the image, but to the
assum ptions o f a likely view er.
 67
FORD MADOX BROWN 1821-1893
PIETER BREUGHEL 1525-1569
EDOUARD MANET 1832-1883
A ROMAN FEAST I9TH CENTURY
PAN AND SYRINX I8TH CENTURY
78
79
80
81
 5

Oil paintings o fte n depict things. Things w hich in

reality are buyable. To have a thing painted and put on a canvas
is not unlike buying it and p utting it in your house. If you buy
a painting you buy also the look o f the thing it represents.
DUTCH SCHOOL C. 1665
PASTON TREASURES AT OXNEAD
HALL

This analogy betw een possessing and the w ay of

seeing w hich is incorporated in oil painting, is a fa c to r usually
'Snored by a rt experts and historians. S ignificantly enough it
,s an anthropologist w ho has come closest to recognizing it.

83
 Levi-Strauss w rite s *:
It is this avid and ambitious desire to take possession of
the object for the benefit of the owner or even of the
spectator which seems to me to constitute one of the
outstandingly original features of the art of Western
civilization.

If this is tru e - though the historical span of

Levi-Strauss's generalization may be too large - th e tendency
reached its peak during the period o f the trad itio n al oil
painting.

The term oil painting refers to more than a

technique. It defines an a rt fo rm . The technique o f mixing
pigm ents w ith oil had existed since the ancient w o rld . But the
oil painting as an a rt fo rm w as not born until there w as a need
to develop and p erfect th is technique (w h ich soon involved
using canvas instead o f w ooden panels) in order to express a
p articular v iew o f life fo r w hich the techniques o f tem pera or
fresco w e re inadequate. W hen oil paint w as fir s t used - a t the
beginning o f the fifte e n th century in N orthern Europe - fo r
painting pictures o f a new character, this character w as
som ew h at inhibited by the survival o f various m edieval a rtis tic
conventions. The oil painting did not fu lly establish its ow n
E ditions

norm s, its ow n w ay o f seeing, until the sixteenth century.

Nor can the end o f the period o f the oil painting
C harbonnier, Cape

be dated exactly. Oil paintings are still being painted today. Y e t

the basis o f its trad itio n al w ay o f seeing w as underm ined by
Im pressionism and o verth ro w n by Cubism. A t about the same
tim e the photograph to o k th e place o f the oil painting as the
principal source o f visual imagery. For these reasons the period
Charles

o f th e trad itio n al oil painting may be roughly set as betw een

1500 and 1900.
The tra d itio n , how ever, still form s many o f our
with

cultural assum ptions. It defines w h a t w e mean by pictorial

* Conversations

likeness. Its norms still a ffe c t the w ay w e see such subjects as

landscape, w om en, food, dignitaries, m ythology. It supplies us
w ith our archetypes o f 'a rtis tic geniu s'. And th e history o f the
tra d itio n , as it is usually tau g h t, teaches us th a t a rt prospers if
enough individuals in society have a love o f art.
W h at is a love o f a rt ?

84
 Let us consider a painting w hich belongs to the
tradition w hose subject is an art lover.

ARCHDUKE LEOPOLD WILHELM IN HIS PRIVATE PICTURE

GALLERY BY TENIERS 1582-1649

W h at does it show ?
The sort o f man in the seventeenth century fo r
w hom painters painted th e ir paintings.

W h at are these paintings?

Before they are anything else, they are them selves
objects w hich can be bought and ow ned. Unique objects. A
patron cannot be surrounded by music or poems in the same
WaY as he is surrounded by his pictures.
It is as though the collector lives in a house b uilt
f Paintings. W h a t is th e ir advantage over w alls o f stone or
wood?
They show him sights: sights o f w h a t he may
Possess.

85
 Again, Levi-Strauss com m ents on how a collection
o f paintings can confirm the pride and am our-propre o f the
collector.

For Renaissance artists, painting was perhaps an

instrument of knowledge but it was also an instrument
of possession, and we must not forget, when we are
dealing with Renaissance painting, that it was only
possible because of the immense fortunes which were
being amassed in Florence and elsewhere, and that rich
Italian merchants looked upon painters as agents, who
allowed them to confirm their possession of all that was
beautiful and desirable in the world. The pictures in a
Florentine palace represented a kind of microcosm in
which the proprietor, thanks to his artists, had recreated
within easy reach and in as real a form as possible, all
those features of the world to which he was attached.
PICTURE GALLERY OF CARDINAL VALENTI GONZAGA
BY PANINI 1692-1765/8

The a rt of any period tends to serve the

ideological interests o f the ruling class. If w e w ere sim ply
saying th a t European a rt betw een 1500 and 1900 served the
interests o f the successive ruling classes, all o f w h o m
depended in d iffe re n t w ays on the new pow er o f capital, w e
should not be saying anything very new . W h a t is being

86
 proposed is a little more precise; th a t a w ay o f seeing the
w orld, w hich w as ultim ately determ ined by new a ttitu d e s to
property and exchange, found its visual expression in the oil
painting, and could not have found it in any other visual art
form .
INTERIOR
OF AN ART GALLERY. FLEMISH
I7TH CENTURY

Oil painting did to appearances w h a t capital did

to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality o f
objects. Everything became exchangeable because everything
became a com m odity. All reality w as mechanically
measured by its m ateriality. The soul, thanks to the C artesian
system, w as saved in a category apart. A painting could speak
to the soul by w ay o f w h a t it referred to, but never by the
w ay it envisaged. Oil painting conveyed a vision o f to ta l
exteriority.
Pictures im m ediately spring to mind to con tradict
this assertion. W orks by Rem brandt, El Greco, Giorgione,
Verm eer, Turner, etc. Y e t if one studies these w o rk s in
relation to the trad itio n as a w h ole, one discovers th a t they
Were exceptions of a very special kind.
The trad itio n consisted o f many hundreds o f
thousands o f canvases and easel pictures distributed
throughout Europe. A great num ber have not survived. Of
those w hich have survived only a small fractio n are seriously

87
trea te d today as w o rk s o f fin e a rt, and o f this frac tio n another
sm all frac tio n com prises the actual pictures repeatedly
reproduced and presented as th e w o rk o f 'th e m a sters'.

V isito rs to a rt museums are often overw helm ed

by th e num ber o f w o rk s on display, and by w h a t they ta k e to
be th e ir ow n culpable inability to concentrate on m ore than a
fe w o f these w o rk s. In fa c t such a reaction is alto g eth er
reasonable. A rt history has to ta lly failed to come to term s w ith
the problem o f the relationship betw een the outstanding w o rk
and the average w o rk of the European trad itio n . The notion of
Genius is not in its e lf an adequate answ er. C onsequently the
confusion rem ains on the w a lls o f the galleries. T h ird -ra te
w o rk s surround an outstanding w o rk w ith o u t any recognition
- let alone explanation o f w h a t fundam entally d iffe re n tia te s
them .
The a rt o f any culture w ill sho w a w id e d ifferen tial
o f tale n t. But in no o th er culture is the d ifference betw een
'm a s te rp ie c e ' and average w o rk so large as in the trad itio n of
the oil painting. In th is tra d itio n the difference is n ot ju s t a
question o f skill or im agination, b ut also o f morale. The
average w o rk - and increasingly a fte r the seventeenth century
w as a w o rk produced more or less cynically: th a t is to say
the values it w as nom inally expressing w ere less m eaningful
to the painter than the finishing o f the com m ission or the
selling o f his product. Hack w o rk is not the result o f eith er
clum siness or provincialism ; it is the result o f the m arket
m aking m ore in sistent dem ands than the a rt. The period o f the
oil painting corresponds w ith the rise of th e open a rt
m arket. And it is in this contradiction betw een a rt and m arket
th a t the explanations m ust be sought fo r w h a t am ounts to the
c ontrast, th e antagonism existing betw een the exceptional
w o rk and th e average.
W h ils t acknow ledging the existence o f the
exceptional w o rk s, to w hich w e shall return later, let us firs t
look broadly at the trad itio n .

W h a t distinguishes oil painting fro m any o ther

fo rm o f painting is its special ab ility to render th e tan g ib ility ,
th e tex tu re , the lustre, th e solid ity o f w h a t it depicts. It
defines th e real as th a t w h ich you can put your hands on.

88
 Although its painted images are tw o -d im en sio nal, its potential
of illusionism is fa r greater than th a t o f sculpture, fo r it can
suggest objects possessing colour, textu re and tem p eratu re,
filling a space and, by im plication, fillin g the entire w o rld .

Holbein's painting o f The Ambassadors (1533)

stands at the beginning o f the trad itio n and, as often happens
w ith a w o rk at the opening o f a new period, its character is
undisguised. The w ay it is painted show s w h a t it is about.
H ow is it painted?
THE AMBASSADORS
BY HOLBEIN
I497/S -I543

89
 It is painted w ith great skill to create the illusion
in the spectator th a t he is looking at real objects and m aterials.
W e pointed out in the firs t essay th a t the sense o f touch w as
like a restricted, s ta tic sense o f sight. Every square inch o f the
surface of this painting, w h ils t remaining purely visual, appeals
to, im portunes, the sense o f touch. The eye moves fro m fu r to
silk to m etal to w ood to velvet to m arble to paper to fe lt, and
each tim e w h a t the eye perceives is already tran slated, w ith in
the painting itse lf, into the language o f tac tile sensation.
The tw o men have a certain presence and there are many
objects w h ich sym bolize ideas, but it is the m aterials, the
s tu ff, by w hich the men are surrounded and clothed w hich
dom inate the painting.

Except fo r the faces and hands, there is not a

surface in this picture w h ich does not make one aw are o f how
it has been elaborately w o rked over - by w eavers,
em broiderers, carpet-m akers, goldsm iths, leather w o rkers,
m osaic-m akers, fu rriers, tailo rs, jew ellers and o f h o w this
w o rk in g -o v er and the resulting richness of each surface has
been fin ally w o rk ed -o ve r and reproduced by Holbein the
painter.
This emphasis and the skill th a t lay behind it w as
to remain a constant o f the tra d itio n of oil painting.
W o rks o f a rt in earlier tradition s celebrated
w e alth . But w e alth w as then a symbol of a fixed social or
divine order. Oil painting celebrated a new kind o f w e alth -
w hich w as dynamic and w hich found its only sanction in the
supreme buying pow er o f money. Thus painting its e lf had to
be able to dem onstrate the desirability o f w h a t money could
buy. And the visual desirability o f w h a t can be bought lies in
its tan g ib ility , in how it w ill rew ard the touch, the hand, o f the
ow ner.

90
 In the foreground of Holbein's Ambassadors there
is a m ysterious, slanting, oval form . This represents; a highly
distorted sku ll: a skull as it m ight be seen in a d isto rtin g
m irror. There are several theories about how it w as painted
and w h y the ambassadors w an ted it put there. But all agree
that it was a kind of m em ento m ori: a play on the medieval idea
of using a skull as a continual rem inder of the presence of
death. W h a t is significant fo r our argum ent is th a t the skull is
painted in a (litera lly ) q uite d iffe re n t optic fro m everything
else in the picture. If the skull had been painted like the rest,
its m etaphysical im plication w o u ld have disappeared; it w ould
have become an object like everything else, a mere part o f a
mere skeleton o f a man w h o happened to be dead.
This w as a problem w hich persisted th rou g h o u t
the trad itio n . W hen m etaphysical symbols are introduced (and
later there w ere painters w h o , fo r instance, introduced
realistic skulls as symbols o f d eath), th e ir sym bolism is usually
made unconvincing or unnatural by the unequivocal, s ta tic
m aterialism o f the paintin g -m etho d.

91
 It is the same contradiction w hich m akes the
average religious painting o f the trad itio n appear hypocritical.
The claim o f the them e is made em pty by the w ay the subject
is painted. The paint cannot free its e lf o f its original
propensity to procure the tangible fo r the im m ediate pleasure
o f the ow n er. Here, fo r example, are three paintings o f M ary
M agdalene.
AMBROSIUS BENSON. ACTIVE 1519-1550
THE MAGDALEN READING STUDIO OF

The point o f her story is th a t she so loved C hrist

th a t she repented o f her past and came to accept the m o rtality
o f flesh and the im m o rta lity o f the soul. Y e t the w ay the
pictures are painted contradicts the essence o f th is story. It is
as though the tran sfo rm atio n o f her life brought about by her
repentance has not taken place. The m ethod o f painting is
incapable o f m aking the renunciation she is m eant to have
made. She is painted as being, before she is anything else, a
takeable and desirable w om an. She is still the com pliant object
o f the p aintin g -m etho d's seduction.

92
 It is interesting to note here the exceptional case
>f W illiam Blake. As a draughtsm an and engraver Blake learnt
iccording to the rules o f the trad itio n . But w hen he cam e to
nake paintings, he very seldom used oil paint and, although
ie still relied upon the trad itio n al conventions of d raw ing,
ie did everything he could to m ake his figures lose substance,
o become transparent and indeterm inate one fro m the other,
0 defy gravity, to be present but intangible, to g lo w w ith o u t
1 definable surface, not to be reducible to objects.

This w ish o f Blake's to transcend the 's u b s ta n tia lity ' o f oil
>aint derived fro m a deep insight into the meaning and
im itation s o f the trad itio n .

93
 Let us now return to the tw o am bassadors, to
th e ir presence as men. This w ill mean reading the painting
d iffe re n tly : not at the level o f w h a t it show s w ith in its fram e,
but at the level o f w h a t it refers to outside it.

The tw o men are confident and fo rm a l; as

b etw een each other they are relaxed. But ho w do they look at
the painter or at us ? There is in th e ir gaze and th e ir stance a
curious lack o f expectation o f any recognition. It is as though
in principle th e ir w o rth cannot be recognized by others. They
look as though they are looking at som ething o f w hich they are
not part. A t som ething w hich surrounds them but fro m w hich
they w ish to exclude them selves. A t the best it may be a
crow d honouring th e m ; at the w o rs t, intruders.
W h at w e re the relations o f such men w ith the r e s t
o f the w o rld ?
The painted objects on the shelves betw een them
w e re intended to supply to the fe w w h o could read the
allusions - a certain am ount o f inform ation about th e ir position
in the w o rld . Four centuries later w e can in terp re t this
inform ation according to our ow n perspective.

94
 T h e s c ie n tific in s tru m e n ts on th e to p s h e lf w e re
fo r n a v ig a tio n . T h is w a s th e tim e w h e n th e ocean tra d e ro u te s
w e re being o pened up fo r th e slave tra d e and fo r th e tr a ffic
w h ic h w a s to sip h o n th e rich es fro m o th e r c o n tin e n ts in to
Europe, and la te r s u p p ly th e c a p ita l fo r th e ta k e - o f f o f th e
In d u s tria l R e v o lu tio n .
In 1519 M agellan had set out, w ith the backing of
Charles V, to sail round the w o rld . He and an astronom er
friend, w ith w hom he had planned the voyage, arranged w ith
the Spanish court th a t they personally w ere to keep tw e n ty
per cent o f the p ro fits made, and the right to run the
governm ent o f any land they conquered.
The globe on the bottom shelf is a new one w hich
charts this recent voyage o f M agellan's. Holbein has added to
the globe the name o f the estate in France w h ich belonged to
the ambassador on the le ft. Beside the globe are a book of
arithm etic, a hymn book and a lute. To colonize a land it w as
necessary to convert its people to C hristian ity and accounting,
and thus to prove to them th a t European civilization w as the
most advanced in the w o rld . Its a rt included.
ADMIRAL DE RUYTER IN THE CASTLE OF ELMINA
BY DE WITTE 1617-1692

The A frican kneels to hold up an oil painting to his

f a s te r . The painting depicts the castle above one o f the
Principal centres o f the W e s t A frican slave trade.

95
 H o w directly or not the tw o ambassadors w ere
involved in the firs t colonizing ventures is not p articularly
im po rtant, fo r w h a t w e are concerned w ith here is a stance
to w a rd s the w o rld ; and this w as general to a w h o le class. The
tw o ambassadors belonged to a class w h o w ere convinced that
the w o rld w as there to furnish th e ir residence in it. In its
extrem e form this conviction w as confirm ed by the relations
being set up betw een colonial conqueror and the colonized.

These relations betw een conqueror and colonized

tended to be self-p erp etu atin g . The sight o f the o ther
confirm ed each in his inhuman estim ate of him self. The
circularity o f the relationship can be seen in the fo llo w in g
diagram - as also the m utual solitude. The w ay in w h ich each
sees the other confirm s his o w n v iew o f him self.

96
 The gaze o f the ambassadors is both aloof and
wary. They expect no reciprocity. They w ish the image of their
presence to impress others w ith th e ir vigilance and their
distance. The presence o f kings and emperors had once
impressed in a sim ilar w ay, but th e ir images had been
com paratively impersonal. W h a t is new and disconcerting
here is the individualized presence w hich needs to suggest
distance. Individualism fin ally posits equality. Y e t equality must
be made inconceivable.
The co n flict again emerges in the painting-
method. The surface verisim ilitu de of oil painting tends to
make the view er assume th a t he is close to - w ith in touching
distance o f - any object in the foreground of the picture. If the
object is a person such p roxim ity im plies a certain intim acy.

Y et the painted public p o rtra it m ust insist upon a form al

distance. It is this - and not technical inability on the
part of the painter - w h ich makes the average p o rtra it o f
the trad itio n appear s tiff and rigid. The a rtific ia lity is deep
w ith in its ow n term s o f seeing, because the subject has to be
seen sim ultaneously from clo se-to and from afar. The analogy
s w ith specimens under a microscope.

97
 They are there in all th e ir p articularity and w e can study them ,
but it is im possible to imagine them considering us in a
sim ilar w ay.

The form al p o rtrait, as distin ct fro m the self-

p o rtra it or the inform al p o rtra it o f the painter's friend never
resolved this problem . But as the trad itio n continued, the
painting o f the s itte r's face became more and more
generalized.
THE BEAUMONT
FAMILY
BY ROMNEY
1734-1802

His features became the mask w hich w e n t w ith

the costum e. Today the fin al stage of this developm ent can be
seen in the puppet tv appearance of the average politician.

98
 Let us now briefly look at some of the genres of
oil painting - categories o f painting which w ere part of its
trad ition but exist in no other.
Before the trad itio n o f oil painting, medieval
painters often used g o ld -leaf in th e ir pictures. Later gold
disappeared fro m paintings and w as only used fo r th e ir fram es.
Y et many oil paintings w ere them selves simple dem onstrations
of w h a t gold or money could buy. M erchandise became the
actual s u b je c t-m atter o f w o rk s o f art.

Here the edible is made visible. Such a painting

is a dem onstration o f more than the virtuosity o f the a rtis t.
It confirm s the o w n er's w e a lth and habitual style o f living.

Paintings o f anim als. N ot animals in th e ir natural

condition, but livestock w hose pedigree is emphasized as a
proof o f th e ir value, and w hose pedigree emphasizes the social
status o f their ow ners. (A nim als painted like pieces of
fu rn itu re w ith fo u r legs.)

99
Paintings of objects. Objects w hich, significantly enough,
became know n as objets d'art.

Paintings of buildings - buildings not considered

as ideal w o rk s o f arch itecture, as in the w o rk o f some early
Renaissance a rtis ts - but buildings as a featu re o f landed
property.

The highest category in oil painting w as the

history or m ythological picture. A painting o f Greek or ancient
figures w as autom atically m ore highly esteem ed than a s till-
life, a p o rtra it or a landscape. Except fo r certain exceptional
w o rks in w hich the p ainter's ow n personal lyricism w as
expressed, these m ythological paintings s trike us today as the
m ost vacuous of all. They are like tired tableaux in w ax th a t
w o n 't m elt. Y e t th e ir prestige and th e ir em ptiness w e re
d irectly connected.

100
MR TOWNELEY
AND
FRIENDS BY ZOFFANY
1734/51810

U ntil very recently - and in certain m ilieux even

today a certain moral value w as ascribed to the study o f the
classics. This w as because the classic texts, w h a te ve r th e ir
intrinsic w o rth , supplied th e higher s trata of th e ruling class
w ith a system o f references fo r the form s o f th e ir ow n
idealized behaviour. As w e ll as poetry, logic and philosophy,
the classics offered a system o f etiq uette. They o ffered
examples o f how the heightened m om ents o f life - to be found
in heroic action, the dignified exercise of pow er, passion,
courageous death, the noble pursuit of pleasure - should be
lived, or, at least, should be seen to be lived.
Y e t w hy are these pictures so vacuous and so
perfunctory in th e ir evocation of the scenes they are m eant to
recreate? They did not need to stim ulate the im agination. If
they had, they w o u ld have served their purpose less w e ll. Their
purpose w as not to tran s p o rt th e ir spectato r-o w n ers into new
experience, but to em bellish such experience as they already
possessed. Before these canvases the s p e cta to r-o w n er hoped
to see the classic face o f his ow n passion or g rie f or
generosity. The idealized appearances he found in the painting
w ere an aid, a support, to his ow n view o f him self. In those
appearances he found the guise o f his ow n (or his w ife 's or his
daughters') nobility.
101
 Som etim es the borrow ing o f the classic guise was
simple, as in Reynolds's painting of the daughters o f the fam ily
dressed up as Graces decorating Hymen.

Som etim es the w hole m ythological scene

functions like a garm ent held out fo r the spe cta to r-o w n er to
put his arms into and w ear. The fa c t th a t the scene is
substantial, and yet, behind its sub stantiality, em pty,
fac ilita te s the 'w ea rin g ' of it.

102
 The so-called 'genre' picture - the picture of 'lo w
life' - w as thou g h t of as the opposite of the m ythological
picture. It w as vulgar instead of noble. The purpose o f the
'genre' picture w as to prove - either positively or negatively -
that virtue in this w o rld w as rew arded by social and financial
success. Thus, those w ho could affo rd to buy these pictures -
cheap as they w ere had th e ir ow n virtue confirm ed. Such
pictures w ere particularly popular w ith the new ly arrived
bourgeoisie w ho id entified them selves not w ith the
characters painted but w ith the moral which the scene
illustrated. Again, the facu lty of oil paint to create the illusion
of substantiality lent p lausibility to a sentim ental lie: namely
th a t it was the honest and hard-w o rking w ho prospered, and
th a t the g o o d-for-n o thing s deservedly had nothing.
TAVERN
SCENE BY BROUWER
1605-1638

Adriaen B rouw er w as the only exceptional 'genre'

painter. His pictures o f cheap taverns and those w h o ended up
in them , are painted w ith a b itte r and direct realism w hich
precludes sentim ental m oralizing. As a result his pictures w ere
never bought - except by a fe w other painters such as
Rem brandt and Rubens.
The average 'genre' painting even w hen painted
by a 'm aster' like Hals - w as very d iffe re n t.

103
 These people belong to the poor. The poor can be
seen in the stre et outside or in the countryside. Pictures o f the
poor inside the house, how ever, are reassuring. Here the
painted poor smile as they o ffe r w h a t they have fo r sale. (They
sm ile show ing th e ir teeth , w hich the rich in pictures never do.)
They sm ile at the b e tte r-o ff - to ingratiate them selves, but
also at the prospect of a sale or a job. Such pictures assert tw o
things: th a t the poor are happy, and th a t the b e tte r-o ff are a
source o f hope fo r the w o rld .

Landscape, o f all the categories o f oil painting, is

the one to w hich our argum ent applies least.

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104
prior to the recent interest in ecology, nature w as not tho u g h t
of as the object of the activities o f capitalism ; rather it w as
thought of as the arena in w hich capitalism and social life and
each individual life had its being. Aspects of nature w ere
objects of scien tific study, but n atu re-as-a-w h o le defied
possession.

One m ight put this even more simply. The sky has
no surface and is intangible; the sky cannot be turned into a
thing or given a quantity. And landscape painting begins w ith
the problem o f painting sky and distance.
The firs t pure landscapes - painted in Holland in
the seventeenth century answ ered no direct social need. (As
a result Ruysdael starved and Hobbema had to give up.)
Landscape painting w as, fro m its inception, a relatively
independent activity. Its painters naturally inherited and so, to
a large extent, w e re forced to continue the m ethods and norms
of the trad itio n . But each tim e the trad ition of oil painting w as
significantly m odified, the firs t in itia tive came fro m landscape
painting. From the seventeenth century onw ards the
exceptional innovators in term s o f vision and therefo re
technique w ere Ruysdael, Rem brandt (the use of light in his
later w o rk derived from his landscape studies). C onstable (in
his sketches). Turner and, at the end of the period, M o n e t and
the Im pressionists. Furtherm ore, th e ir innovations led
Progressively aw ay fro m the substantial and tangible to w ard s
the indeterm inate and intangible.

105
 Nevertheless the special relation betw een oil
painting and property did play a certain role even in the
developm ent of landscape painting. Consider the w e ll-k n o w n
dlAi example of Gainsborough's Mr and Mrs Andrews.
A9
WL\~LIL\ HOnObOQSNlVD
SHI/ni QNV
SMBdGNV

Kenneth Clark* has w ritte n about Gainsborough

and this canvas:
At the very beginning of his career his pleasure in what
he saw inspired him to put into his pictures backgrounds
as sensitively observed as the corn-field in which are
M urray, London)

seated Mr and Mrs Andrews. This enchanting work

is painted with such love and mastery that we should
have expected Gainsborough to go further in the
same direction; but he gave up direct painting, and
evolved the melodious style of picture-making by which
into Art (John

he is best known. His recent biographers have thought

that the business of portrait painting left him no time to
make studies from nature, and they have quoted his
famous letter about being 'sick of portraits and wishing
Clark, Landscape

to take his Viol de Gamba and walk off to some sweet

village where he can paint landscips', to support the
view that he would have been a naturalistic landscape
painter if he had had the opportunity. But the Viol de
Gamba letter is only part of Gainsborough's
Kenneth

Rousseauism. His real opinions on the subject are

contained in a letter to a patron who had been so

106
 simple as to ask him for a painting of his park: ' Mr
Gainsborough presents his humble respects to Lord
Hardwicke, and shall always think it an honour to be
employed in anything for His Lordship; but with regard
to real views from Nature in this country, he has never
seen any place that affords a subject equal to the poorest
imitations of Gaspar or Claude.'

W hy did Lord H ardw icke w a n t a picture o f his

park? W hy did M r and M rs A ndrew s com mission a p o rtra it of
themselves w ith a recognizable landscape o f th e ir ow n land as
background?
They are not a couple in Nature as Rousseau
imagined nature. They are landow ners and th e ir proprietary
attitu d e tow ard s w h a t surrounds them is visible in th e ir stance
and th e ir expressions.

Professor Law rence Gow ing has protested

indignantly against the im plication th a t M r and M rs A ndrew s
w ere interested in p roperty:
Before John Berger manages to interpose himself again
between us and the visible meaning of a good picture,
may I point out that there is evidence to confirm ihat
Gainsborough's Mr and Mrs Andrews were doing
something more with their stretch of country than merely
owning it. The explicit theme of a contemporary and
precisely analogous design by Gainsborough's mentor
Francis Hayman suggests that the people in such pictures
were engaged in philosophic enjoyment of 'the great
Principle . . . the genuine Light of uncorrupted and
un perverted Nature.'
 The professor's argum ent is w o rth quoting
because it is so s trikin g an illu stratio n o f th e disingenuousness
th a t bedevils the subject o f art history. O f course it is very
possible th a t M r and M rs A ndrew s w e re engaged in the
philosophic enjoym ent o f unperverted N ature. But this in no w ay
precludes them fro m being at the same tim e proud landowners.
In m ost cases the possession o f private land w as the
precondition fo r such philosophic enjoym ent - w hich w as not
uncommon among the landed gentry. Their enjoym ent o f
' uncorrupted and unperverted n atu re ' did not, how ever, usually
include the nature o f o ther men. The sentence o f poaching at
th a t tim e w as d ep ortation. If a man stole a p o tato he risked a
public w hipping ordered by the m agistrate w h o w ould be a
landow ner. There w e re very s tric t property lim its to w h a t w as
considered natural.
The point being made is th a t, among the pleasures
th e ir p o rtra it gave to M r and M rs A ndrew s, w as the pleasure
o f seeing them selves depicted as landow ners and th is pleasure
w as enhanced by th e ab ility o f oil paint to render th e ir land in
all its sub stan tiality. And this is an observation w hich needs to
be made, precisely because the cultural history w e are
norm ally tau g h t pretends th a t it is an u n w orthy one.

108
 Our survey o f the European oil painting has been
very brief and th e re fo re very crude. It really am ounts to
no more than a project fo r study - to be undertaken perhaps by
others. But the s tartin g point o f the p roject should be clear.
The special qualities o f oil painting lent them selves to a special
system o f conventions fo r representing th e visible. The sum
to tal o f these conventions is th e w ay o f seeing invented by oil
painting. I t is usually said th a t the oil painting in its fram e is
like an im aginary w in d o w open on to the w o rld . This is roughly
the trad itio n 's ow n image o f its e lf - even allo w in g fo r all the
stylistic changes (M a n n e ris t, Baroque, N eo-C lassic, Realist,
etc.) w hich too k place during fo u r centuries. W e are arguing
th a t if one studies the culture o f the European oil painting as a
w hole, and if one leaves aside its ow n claim s fo r its e lf, its
model is not so much a fram ed w in d o w open on to the w o rld
as a safe let into the w a ll, a safe in w hich th e visible has been
deposited.
W e are accused o f being obsessed by property.
The tru th is the o th er w ay round. It is th e society and culture
in question w hich is so obsessed. Y e t to an obsessive his
obsession alw ays seems to be o f the nature o f things and so
is not recognized fo r w h a t it is. The relation betw een property
and a rt in European culture appears natural to th a t culture, and
consequently if som ebody dem onstrates the exten t o f the
property in tere st in a given cultural field, it is said to be a
dem onstration o f his obsession. And this allo w s the C ultural
Establishm ent to project fo r a little longer its false rationalized
image o f itse lf.
The essential character o f oil painting has been
obscured by an alm o st universal misreading o f the
relationship betw een its 'tra d itio n ' and its 'm a s te rs '. Certain
exceptional a rtis ts in exceptional circum stances broke free o f
the norms o f the tra d itio n and produced w o rk th a t w as
diam etrically opposed to its values; yet these a rtis ts are
acclaimed as the tra d itio n 's supreme representatives: a claim
w hich is made easier by the fa c t th a t a fte r th e ir death, the
trad ition closed around th e ir w o rk , incorporating m inor
technical innovations, and continuing as though nothing of
principle had been disturbed. This is w h y Rem brandt or
Verm eer or Poussin or Chardin or Goya or T u rn er had no
follo w ers but only superficial im itators.

109
 From the trad itio n a kind of stereotype o f 'th e
great a r tis t' has emerged. This great a rtis t is a man whose
life -tim e is consumed by struggle: partly against m aterial
circum stances, partly against incom prehension, partly against
him self. He is imagined as a kind o f Jacob w re stlin g w ith an
Angel. (The examples extend fro m M ichelangelo to Van Gogh.)
In no other culture has the a rtis t been thought o f in this w ay.
W hy then in this culture? W e have already referred to the
exigencies o f the open a rt m arket. But the struggle w as not
only to live. Each tim e a painter realized th a t he w as
d issatisfied w ith the lim ited role of painting as a celebration of
m aterial property and o f the status th a t accompanied it, he
inevitably found him self struggling w ith the very language of
his ow n a rt as understood by the trad itio n o f his calling.

The tw o categories of exceptional w o rk s and

average (typ ical) w o rk s are essential to our argum ent. But they
cannot be applied mechanically as critical criteria. The critic
m ust understand the term s o f the antagonism . Every
exceptional w o rk w as the result of a prolonged successful
struggle. Innum erable w o rk s involved no struggle. There w ere
also prolonged yet unsuccessful struggles.
To be an exception a painter w hose vision had
been form ed by the trad itio n , and w ho had probably studied as
an apprentice or stud en t from the age of sixteen, needed to
recognize his vision fo r w h a t it w as, and then to separate it
fro m the usage fo r w hich it had been developed. Single-handed
he had to contest the norms of the a rt th a t had form ed him.
He had to see him self as a painter in a w ay th a t denied the
seeing o f a painter. This m eant th a t he saw him self doing
som ething th a t nobody else could foresee. The degree o f e ffo rt
required is suggested in tw o s e lf-p o rtra its by Rem brandt.

110
 The firs t w as painted in 1634 when he w as
tw e n ty -e ig h t; the second th irty years later. But the difference
betw een them am ounts to som ething more than the fa c t th a t
age has changed the painter's appearance and character.

The firs t painting occupies a special place in, as it

w ere, the film o f Rem brandt's life. He painted it in the year o f
his firs t m arriage. In it he is show ing o ff Saskia his bride.
W ithin six years she w ill be dead. The painting is cited to sum
up the so-called happy period of the a rtis t's life. Y e t if one
approaches it now w ith o u t sen tim en tality, one sees th a t its
happiness is both form al and u n felt. Rem brandt is here using
the trad itio n al m ethods fo r th e ir trad itio n al purposes. His
individual style may be becoming recognizable. But it is no
more than the style o f a n ew perform er playing a trad itio n al
role. The painting as a w h o le remains an advertisem ent fo r the
sitte r's good fortu n e, prestige and w e alth . (In this case
R em brandt's o w n .) And like all such advertisem ents it is
heartless.
111
 In the later painting he has turned the trad itio n
against itse lf. He has w rested its language aw ay fro m it. He is
an old man. All has gone except a sense o f the question o f
existence, o f existence as a question. And the painter in him
w ho is both more and less than the old man has found the
means to express ju s t th a t, using a medium w hich had been
trad itio n ally developed to exclude any such question.

112
PITY
114
m il d e w b l i g h t in g e a r s o f CORN

115
SALE OF PICTURES AND SLAVES IN THE ROTUNDA, NEW ORLEANS. 1842

116
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 127
WITCHES SABBATH PSYCHE'S BATH
 7

In the cities in w h ich w e live, all o f us see

hundreds of publicity images every day o f our lives.
No o ther kind o f image con fro n ts us so frequently.
In no o ther form o f society in history has there
been such a concentration o f images, such a density o f visual
messages.
One may rem em ber or fo rg e t these messages but
briefly one takes them in, and fo r a m om ent they stim ulate the
im agination by w ay o f either m em ory or expectation. The
publicity image belongs to the m om ent. W e see it as w e turn
129
a page, as w e turn a corner, as a vehicle passes us. Or w e see
it on a television screen w h ils t w a itin g fo r the com m ercial
break to end. Publicity images also belong to the m om ent in
the sense th a t they m ust be continually renewed and made
u p -to -d a te . Y e t they never speak of the present. O ften they
refer to the past and always they speak of the fu tu re.

W e are no w so accustom ed to being addressed by

these images th a t w e scarcely notice th e ir to ta l im pact. A
person may notice a p articular image or piece o f in fo rm atio n
because it corresponds to some p articular in terest he has. But
w e accept the to ta l system o f publicity images as w e accept
an elem ent o f clim ate. For example, the fa c t th a t these images
belong to the m om ent but speak o f the fu tu re produces a
strange e ffe c t w h ich has become so fam ilia r th a t w e scarcely
notice it. Usually it is we w ho pass the image - w alkin g,
travelling, turning a page; on the tv screen it is som ew h at
d iffe re n t but even then w e are theo retically the active agent -
w e can look aw ay, turn dow n the sound, make some coffee.
Y e t despite this, one has the im pression th a t publicity images
are continually passing us, like express trains on th e ir w ay to
some distan t term inus. W e are s ta tic ; they are dynam ic - until
the new spaper is th ro w n aw ay, the television program m e
continues or the poster is posted over.
Publicity is usually explained and ju s tifie d as a
com petitive medium w hich ultim ately benefits the public (the

130
consumer) and the m ost e ffic ie n t m anufacturers - and thus the
national economy. It is closely related to certain ideas about
freedom : freedom o f choice fo r the purchaser: freedom o f
enterprise fo r the m anufacturer. The great hoardings and the
publicity neons of the cities o f capitalism are the im m ediate
visible sign o f 'T h e Free W o rld '.

For many in Eastern Europe such images in the

W est sum up w h a t they in the East lack. Publicity, it is
thought, o ffers a free choice.
It is tru e th a t in publicity one brand of
m anufacture, one firm , com petes w ith another; but it is also
true th a t every publicity im age confirm s and enhances every
other. Publicity is not m erely an assembly o f com peting
messages: it is a language in its e lf w h ich is alw ays being used
to m ake the same general proposal. W ith in publicity, choices
are offered betw een this cream and th a t cream, th a t car and
this car, but publicity as a system only makes a single
proposal.
It proposes to each o f us th a t w e tran s fo rm
ourselves, or our lives, by buying som ething more.
This more, it proposes, w ill m ake us in some
way richer even though w e w ill be poorer by having spent our
money.
Publicity persuades us o f such a tran sfo rm atio n
by showing us people w ho have apparently been transform ed
and are, as a result, enviable. The s tate o f being envied is w h a t
con stitu tes glam our. And publicity is the process o f
m anufacturing glam our.

131
 It is im p o rtan t here not to confuse publicity
w ith the pleasure or benefits to be enjoyed fro m the things it
advertises. Publicity is effec tive precisely because it feeds
upon the real. Clothes, food, cars, cosm etics, baths, sunshine
are real things to be enjoyed in them selves. Publicity begins by
w o rkin g on a natural app etite fo r pleasure. But it cannot o ffe r
the real object o f pleasure and there is no convincing
s ub stitu te fo r a pleasure in th a t pleasure's o w n term s. The
more convincingly publicity conveys the pleasure o f bathing
in a w arm , d istan t sea, the more the spectator-buyer w ill
become a w are th a t he is hundreds o f miles aw ay from th a t
sea and the more rem ote the chance o f bathing in it w ill seem
to him. This is w h y publicity can never really a ffo rd to be about
the product or opportun ity it is proposing to the buyer w h o is
not yet enjoying it. Publicity is never a celebration o f a
p le as u re-in -its elf. Publicity is alw ays about the fu tu re buyer.
It o ffe rs him an image o f him self made glam orous by the
product or o p p ortu nity it is trying to sell. The image then
makes him envious o f him self as he m ight be. Y e t w h a t makes
this s e lf-w h ic h -h e -m ig h t-b e enviable? The envy o f others.
Publicity is about social relations, not objects. Its prom ise is
not of pleasure, but of happiness: happiness as judged fro m the
outside by others. The happiness o f being envied is glam our.

132
 Think of it as an exclusive club
fi x"which most nicn will be ineligible

The Skopes Swedish Detection

Suit* frum jusr under forty ptimtktnovarWtv

Being envied is a solitary form o f reassurance. It

depends precisely upon not sharing your experience w ith those
w ho envy you. You are observed w ith in terest but you do not
observe w ith in terest - if you do, you w ill become less enviable.
In this respect the envied are like bureaucrats; the more
impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (fo r them selves
and fo r others) o f th e ir pow er. The p ow er o f the glam orous
resides in th e ir supposed happiness: the p o w er o f the
bureaucrat in his supposed auth ority. It is th is w hich explains
the absent, unfocused look o f so many glam our images. They
look out over the looks o f envy w hich sustain them .

Intn x lu rit^
Skirt Cr.jlil! Hi'
N o rm a liz e

Slvin Balam*
Helena Rubinstein

133
 The spectator-buyer is m eant to envy herself as
she w ill become if she buys the product. She is m eant to
imagine herself transform ed by the product into an object of
envy fo r others, an envy w hich w ill then ju s tify her loving
herself. One could put this another w a y: the publicity image
steals her love o f herself as she is, and o ffe rs it back to her
fo r the price of the product.

Does the language o f publicity have anything in

common w ith th a t of oil painting w hich, until the invention of
the camera, dom inated the European w ay of seeing during
fou r centuries?
It is one o f those questions w hich sim ply needs
to be asked fo r the answ er to become clear. There is a direct
continuity. Only interests o f cultural prestige have obscured
it. A t the same tim e , despite the continuity, there is a profound
difference w h ich it is no less im p o rtan t to examine.
There are many d irect references in publicity to
w o rk s of a rt fro m the past. Som etim es a w h o le image is a
fran k pastiche o f a w e ll-k n o w n painting.
BY MANET 1832-1883
DEJEUNER SUR L HERBE

WV <uuki all us*e a Utile romance

' Hocord 2 r
Keeord:<
134
 Publicity images often use sculptures or paintings
to lend allure or auth ority to th e ir ow n message. Framed oil
paintings often hang in shop w in d o w s as part o f th e ir display.
Any w o rk o f art 'quoted' by publicity serves tw o
purposes. A rt is a sign o f afflu en ce; it belongs to the good
life; it is part of the furnishing w hich the w o rld gives to the
rich and the beautiful.

But a w o rk of a rt also suggests a cultural

authority, a form of dignity, even o f w isdom , w hich is superior
to any vulgar m aterial in tere st; an oil painting belongs to the
cultural heritage; it is a rem inder of w h a t it means to be a
cultivated European. And so the quoted w o rk o f a rt (and this is
why it is so useful to publicity) says tw o alm ost contradictory
things at the same tim e : it denotes w e alth and s p iritu a lity : it
implies th a t the purchase being proposed is both a luxury and a
cultural value. Publicity has in fa c t understood the trad itio n of
the oil painting more thoroughly than m ost a rt historians. It
has grasped the im plications o f the relationship betw een the
w o rk o f a rt and its spe cta to r-o w n er and w ith these it tries to
persuade and fla tte r the spectator-buyer.
The continuity, how ever, betw een oil painting and
publicity goes fa r deeper than the 'q u o tin g ' o f specific
paintings. Publicity relies to a very large exten t on the
language o f oil painting. It speaks in the same voice about the
same things. Som etim es the visual correspondences are so
close th a t it is possible to play a game o f 'S n a p !' - putting
alm ost identical images or details o f images side by side.

135
136
137
It is not, how ever, ju s t at the level o f exact pictorial
correspondence th a t the continuity is im p o rtan t: it is at the
level o f the sets o f signs used.
Compare the images o f publicity and paintings in
this book, or tak e a picture magazine, or w a lk dow n a sm art
shopping s tre e t looking at the w in d o w displays, and then turn
over the pages o f an illu strated museum catalogue, and notice
how sim ilarly messages are conveyed by the tw o media. A
system atic study needs to be made o f this. Here w e can do no
m ore than indicate a fe w areas w h ere the sim ilarity o f the
devices and aims is particularly strikin g .

The gestures o f models (m annequins) and

m ythological figures.
The rom antic use o f nature (leaves, trees, w a te r)
to create a place w h ere innocence can be refound.
The exotic and nostalgic a ttrac tio n o f the
M editerranean.
The poses taken up to denote stereotypes o f
w o m en : serene m other (m adonna),
free -w h ee lin g secretary (actress, king's m istress),
p erfect hostess (sp e ctato r-o w n e r's w ife ),
sex-object (Venus, nymph surprised), etc.
The special sexual emphasis given to w om en's
legs.
The m aterials particularly used to indicate luxury:
engraved m etal, furs, polished leather, etc.
The gestures and em braces o f lovers, arranged
fro n ta lly fo r the ben efit o f the spectator.
The sea, o fferin g a n ew life.
The physical stance o f men conveying w e alth and
v irility .
The tre a tm e n t o f distance by perspective -
o ffe rin g m ystery.
The equation o f drinking and success.
The man as knigh t (horsem an) become m o torist.

W hy does publicity depend so heavily upon the

visual language o f oil painting?

138
 Publicity is the culture of the consumer society.
It propagates through images th a t society's belief in itself.
There are several reasons w h y these images use the language
of oil painting.
Oil painting, before it w as anything else, w as a
celebration o f private property. As an a rt-fo rm it derived fro m
the principle th a t you are what you have.

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It is a m istake to th in k of publicity supplanting

the visual a rt o f post-Renaissance Europe; it is the last
moribund form o f th a t art.

t !

Is it Italian tile? Or 8 real Armstrong floor ?

Cnid pftavtootwwfth A rm st rong

Publicity is, in essence, nostalgic. It has to sell the

past to the fu tu re . It cannot its e lf supply the standards o f its
own claims. And so all its references to quality are bound to be
retrospective and trad itio n al. It w ould lack both confidence
and cred ib ility if it used a s tric tly contem porary language.

139
 Publicity needs to turn to its ow n advantage the
trad itio n al education o f the average spectator-buyer. W h at he
has learnt a t school o f history, m ythology, poetry can be used
in the m anufacturing o f glam our. Cigars can be sold in the
name o f a King, underw ear in connection w ith the Sphinx, a
new car by reference to the status of a country house.

In the language o f oil painting these vague historical

or poetic or moral references are alw ays present. The fa c t
th a t they are im precise and ultim ately meaningless is an
advantage: they should not be understandable, they should
merely be rem iniscent o f cultural lessons h alf-le arn t.
Publicity makes all history m ythical, but to do so effec tive ly
it needs a visual language w ith historical dimensions.

Lastly, a technical developm ent made it easy to

tran slate the language o f oil painting into publicity cliches.
This w as the invention, about fifte e n years ago, o f cheap
colour photography. Such photography can reproduce the
colour and tex tu re and tan g ib ility of objects as only oil paint
had been able to do before. Colour photography is to the
spectator-buyer w h a t oil paint w as to the s p ectato r-o w n er.

140
Both media use sim ilar, highly tac tile means to play upon the
spectator's sense o f acquiring the real thing w hich the image
shows. In both cases his feeling th a t he can alm ost touch
w hat is in the image reminds him how he m ight or does
possess the real thing.

Sierra . Le soleil de midi.

ancoroc *

Y et, despite this con tinu ity of language, the

function of publicity is very d iffe re n t from th a t of the oil
Painting. The spectator-buyer stands in a very d iffe re n t
relation to the w o rld fro m the s p ectato r-o w n er.

141
 The oil painting showed w h a t its ow n er w as
already enjoying among his possessions and his w ay o f life. It
consolidated his ow n sense o f his ow n value. It enhanced his
view of him self as he already w as. It began w ith facts, the
facts o f his life. The paintings embellished the in terior in which
he actually lived.

The purpose o f publicity is to make the spectator

m arginally d issatisfied w ith his present w ay o f life. N ot w ith
the w ay o f life o f society, but w ith his ow n w ith in it. It
suggests th a t if he buys w h a t it is o fferin g , his life w ill become
better. It o ffe rs him an improved altern ative to w h a t he is.

The oil painting w as addressed to those w ho made

money out o f the m arket. Publicity is addressed to those w ho
c onstitute the m arket, to the spectator-buyer w ho is also the
consum er-producer fro m w hom p ro fits are made tw ic e over
as w o rk e r and then as buyer. The only places relatively free of
publicity are the quarters o f the very rich; th e ir money is theirs
to keep.

142
 All publicity w o rks upon anxiety. The sum of
everything is money, to get money is to overcome anxiety.

New National Savings Certificates A New National Savings Certificates#

A lternatively the anxiety on w hich publicity plays is the fear

that having nothing you w ill be nothing.

M oney is life. N o t in the sense th a t w ith o u t

money you starve. N o t in the sense th a t capital gives one
class p o w er over the entire lives o f another class. But in the
sense th a t money is the token o f, and the key to, every human
capacity. The po w er to spend money is the pow er to live.
According to the legends o f publicity, those w h o lack the
pow er to spend money become literally faceless. Those w h o
have the p ow er become lovable.

143
 Publicity speaks in the fu tu re tense and yet the
achievem ent o f this fu tu re is endlessly deferred. H o w then
does publicity remain credible - or credible enough to exert the
influence it does? It remains credible because the tru th fu ln ess
o f publicity is judged, not by the real fu lfilm e n t o f its prom ises,
but by the relevance o f its fantasies to those o f the spectato r-
buyer. Its essential application is not to reality but to day
dreams.
To understand this b etter w e m ust go back to the
notion o f glamour.

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G lam our is a modern invention. In the heyday

of the oil painting it did not exist. Ideas of grace, elegance,
auth o rity am ounted to som ething apparently sim ilar but
fundam entally d iffe re n t.

146
 M rs Siddons as seen by Gainsborough is not
glamorous, because she is not presented as enviable and
therefore happy. She may be seen as w ealth y, b eautiful,
talented, lucky. But her qualities are her ow n and have been
recognized as such. W h at she is does not entirely depend upon
others w a n tin g to be like her. She is not purely the creature of
others' envy - w hich is how, fo r example, Andy W arhol
presents M arilyn M onroe.
 The entire w o rld becomes a setting fo r the
fu lfilm e n t o f publicity's promise of the good life. The w o rld
smiles at us. It o ffe rs itse lf to us. And because everywhere is
imagined as o fferin g its e lf to us, everywhere is more or less
the same.

ALITALIA'S
TWO FOR THE PRICE OF
ONE HOLIDAYS

According to publicity, to be sophisticated is to

live beyond conflict.

P .I .A . h a s t h e b e s t p la c e s : lonoow iranhm w t Paris gm va: Istanbul

BfllRUT BAGHDAD KUWAIT OHAHRAN UHRAN KARACHI OACCA KATHMANDU
CANTON SHAN(1HAI> BAHRAIN OOHA 0UBAI-JEM>AMNA\R08I
 Publicity can translate even revolution into its
ow n term s.

CHEVRONS by FINERY W

COMEJOINTHEfREEDOH-LOVERS

The con trast betw een p ublicity's in terp retatio n o f

the w o rld and the w o rld 's actual condition is a very stark one,
and this som etim es becomes evident in the colour magazines
which deal w ith new s stories. Overleaf is the contents page o f
such a magazine.

151
 Content*, June 6, |97tm am
i h e sun d ay t im e s
O tnne
Vi

1 h e P i c t u r e s q u e S l u m : ilic
U m usc o f ( k m i m o n s , h o w it
vi-rks. a n d w h y i i d o e s n t
A >'rk K t t c r , b y T o m D r i b e r g ;
n m d e K by R<gcr L a w a n d
Detrdre Am*den. Page 8
t he Koad from Bangla
Desh: the plight of thp
1jsr 1aksstan refugees (right),
photographed bv Donald
McCullm. Page 20
The Fuehrers Mistress:
ih t \angc love affair of Eva
Braun acd Adolf Hitler, by
Airtony Terry; with newly re-
teas^ photographs. Page 28
High-Speed Lib: profile of
Manc-Oaudc lieautnont, the
hrst woman for 20 years to
drive at tx Mans, by Judith
Jackson, photograph by
David Stccn. Page 40
Chess by C iT tVlX Alex
ander , Bridge by Boris
Schapiro, M ephisto Cross
word Page 41

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The shock o f such contrasts is considerable: not

only because o f the coexistence o f the tw o w o rld s show n, but
also because o f the cynicism o f the culture w hich show s them
one above the other. It can be argued th a t the juxtap ositio n of
images w as not planned. Nevertheless the te x t, the
photographs taken in Pakistan, the photographs taken fo r the
advertisem ents, the editing o f the magazine, the layout o f the
publicity, the printing o f both, the fa c t th a t advertiser's pages
and new s pages cannot be co-ordinated - all these are
produced by the same culture.

152
 It is not, how ever, the moral shock o f the con trast
which needs emphasizing. A dvertisers them selves can take
account o f the shock. The Advertisers Weekly (3 M arch 1972)
reports th a t some publicity firm s, now aw are o f the com m ercial
danger o f such unfortun ate juxtap ositio ns in news
magazines, are deciding to use less brash, more sombre
images, o ften in black and w h ite rather than colour. W h a t w e
need to realize is w h a t such contrasts reveal about the nature
of publicity.
Publicity is essentially eventless. It extends ju s t as
far as nothing else is happening. For publicity all real events
are exceptional and happen only to strangers. In the Bangla
Desh photographs, the events w e re trag ic and distan t. But the
contrast w ou ld have been no less s tark if they had been events
near a t hand in Derry or Birm ingham . Nor is the contrast
necessarily dependent upon the events being tragic. If they are
tragic, th e ir tragedy alerts our moral sense to the contrast. Y e t
if the events w ere joyous and if they w e re photographed in a
direct and unstereotyped w ay the con trast w ould be ju s t as
great.
P ublicity, situated in a fu tu re continually deferred,
excludes the present and so elim inates all becoming, all
developm ent. Experience is im possible w ith in it. All th a t
happens, happens outside it.
The fa c t th a t publicity is eventless w ould be
im m ediately obvious if it did not use a language w hich m akes
o f tan g ib ility an event in itself. Everything publicity show s is
there a w aitin g acquisition. The act o f acquiring has taken th e
place o f all o th er actions, the sense o f having has o b literated
all o th er senses.
Publicity exerts an enorm ous influence and is a
political phenomenon o f great im portance. But its o ffe r is as
narro w as its references are w id e. I t recognizes nothing except
the p o w er to acquire. All oth er human facu lties or needs are
made subsidiary to this pow er. All hopes are gathered
tog eth er, made hom ogeneous, sim plified, so th a t they become
the intense yet vague, magical yet repeatable prom ise o ffered
in every purchase. No other kind o f hope or satisfactio n or
pleasure can any longer be envisaged w ith in the culture o f
capitalism .

153
 Publicity is the life o f this culture - in so fa r as
w ith o u t publicity capitalism could not survive - and a t the
same tim e publicity is its dream.
C apitalism survives by forcing the m ajority, w hom
it exploits, to define th e ir ow n interests as n arrow ly as
possible. This w as once achieved by extensive deprivation.
Today in the developed countries it is being achieved by
imposing a false standard o f w h a t is and w h a t is not desirable.

154
 !

155
ON THE THRESHOLD OF LIBERTY
BY RENE MAGRITTE 1898-1967
 List of W orks Reproduced

8 The Key of Dreams by Rene Magritte, 1 8 9 8 -1 9 6 7 ,

private collection
1 2 Regents o f the Old M en's Alms House by Frans
Hals, 1 5 8 0 -1 6 6 6 , Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem
12 Regentesses of the Old M en's Alms House by
Frans Hals, 1 5 8 0 -1 6 6 6 , Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem
18 Still Life w ith W icker Chair by Picasso 1 8 8 1 -
20 Virgin of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci, 1 4 5 2 -1 5 1 9 ,
National Gallery, London
22 Virgin of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci, 1 4 5 2 -1 5 1 9 ,
Louvre, Paris
23 The Virgin and Child w ith St Anne and St John
the Baptist by Leonardo da Vinci, 1 4 5 2 -1 5 1 9 ,
National Gallery, London
25 Venus and M ars by Sandro Botticelli, 1 4 4 5 -1 5 1 0 ,
National Gallery, London
27 The Procession to Calvary by Pieter Breughel the
Elder, 1 5 2 5 -6 9 , Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
27 W h eatfield w ith Crows by Vincent van Gogh,
1 8 5 3 -9 0 , Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
31 W om an Pouring M ilk by Jan Vermeer, 1 6 3 2 -7 5 ,
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
38 (top left) Nude by Picasso, 1 8 8 1 -
38 (top right) Nude by Modigliani, 1 8 8 4 -1 9 2 0 , Courtauld
Institute Galleries, London
38 (bottom left) Neverm ore by Gaugin, 1 8 4 8 -1 9 0 3 ,
Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
38 (bottom right) Nude Standing Figure by Giacometti,
Tate Gallery, London
39 Bathsheba by Rembrandt van Ryn, 1 6 0 6 -6 9 , Louvre,
Paris
43 Judgem ent o f Paris by Peter Paul Rubens, 1 5 7 7 -1 6 4 0 ,
National Gallery, London

157
45 Reclining Bacchante by Felix Trutat, 1 8 2 4 -4 8 ,
Musee des Beaux Arts, Dijon
48 The Garden of Eden; the Tem ptation, the Fall and
the Expulsion Miniature from 'Les Tres Riches
Heures du Due de Berry' by Pol de Limbourg and
brothers, before 1416, Musee Conde, Chantilly
49 Adam and Eve by Jan Gossart called Mabuse,
died c.1533, Her Majesty the Queen
49 The Couple by Max Slevogt, 18681932,
50 Susannah and the Elders by Jacopo Tintoretto,
15 18 -9 4 , Louvre, Paris
50 Susannah and the Elders by Jacopo Tintoretto,
151 8 -9 4 , Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
51 V a n ity by Hans Memling, 1 4 3 5 -9 4 , Strasbourg Museum
51 The Judgem ent of Paris by Lucas Cranach the Elder,
14 7 2 -1 5 5 3 , Landesmuseum, Gotha
52 The Judgem ent o f Paris by Peter Paul Rubens,
15771640, National Gallery, London
52 Nell G wynne by Sir Peter Lely, 1 6 1 8 -8 0 ,
Denys Bower collection, Chiddingstone Castle, Kent
53 M ochica Pottery depicting sexual intercourse
Photograph by Shippee-Johnson, Lima, Peru
53 Rajasthan, 18th century, Ajit Mookerjee, New Delhi
53 Vishnu and Lakshmi, 11th century, Parsavanatha
Temple, Khajuraho
54 Venus, Cupid, Tim e and Love by Agnolo Bronzino,
15 0 3 -7 2 , National Gallery, London
55 La Grande Odalisque by J. A. D. Ingres, 1 7 8 0 -1 8 6 7 ,
Louvre, Paris (detail)
56 Bacchus, Ceres and Cupid by Hans von Aachen,
15 52 -1 6 1 5 , Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
57 Les Oreades by William Bouguereau, 1 8 2 5 -1 9 0 5 ,
private collection
58 Danae by Rembrandt van Ryn, 1 6 0 6 -6 9 , Hermitage,
Leningrad (detail)
60 Hel&ne Fourm ent in a Fur Coat by Peter Paul Rubens,
1 5 7 7 -1 6 4 0 , Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
62 M an D raw ing Reclining W om an by Albrecht Durer,
1 4 7 1 -1 5 2 8
62 Woodcut from Four Books on the Human
Proportions by Albrecht Durer, 1 4 7 1 -1 5 2 8

158
63 The Venus of Urbino by Titian, 1 4 8 7 /9 0 -1 5 7 6 ,
Uffizi, Florence
63 Olympia by Edouard Manet, 183283, Louvre, Paris
66 (top left) Virgin Enthroned by Cimabue, Louvre,
Paris, c.12 4 0 -1 3 0 2 ?
66 (top right) Virgin, Child and Four Angels by Piero
della Francesca, 1 4 1 0 /2 0 -9 2 , Williamston, Clark Art
Institute
66 (bottom left) M adonna and Child by Fra Filippo Lippi,
1 4 5 7 /8 -1 5 0 4
66 (bottom right) The Rest on the Flight into Egypt by
Gerard David, d.1523, National Gallery of Art
Washington, Mellon Collection
67 (top left) The Sistine M adonna by Raphael,
1 4 8 3-1520 , Uffizi, Florence
67 (top right) Virgin and Child by Murillo, 1 6 1 7 -8 2 ,
Pitti Palace, Florence
67 (bottom) The P retty Baa Lambs by Ford Madox
Brown, 1 8 2 1 -9 3 , Birmingham City Museum
68 (top) Death of St Francis by Giotto, 1 2 6 6 /7 -1 3 3 7 ,
Sta Croce, Florence
68 (bottom) detail of Trium ph of Death by Pieter
Brueghel, 1 5 2 5 /3 0 -6 9 , Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
69 (top left) G uillotined Heads by Theodore Gericault,
1 7 91 -1 824 , National Museum, Stockholm
69 (top right) Three Ages of W om an by Hans Baldung
Grien, 1 4 8 3 -1 5 4 5 , Prado, Madrid
69 (bottom) Dead Toreador by Edouard Manet, 1 8 3 2 -8 3
70 (top) Still Life by Pierre Chardin, 1 6 9 9 -1 7 7 9 , National
Gallery, London
70 (bottom) Still Life by Francisco Goya, 1 7 4 6 -1 8 2 8 ,
Louvre, Paris
71 (top) Still Life by Jean Baptiste Oudry, 1 6 8 6 -1 7 5 5 ,
Wallace Collection, London
71 (bottom) Still Life by Jan Fyt, Wallace Collection,
London
72 Daphnis and Chloe by Bianchi Ferrari, Wallace
Collection, London
73 (top) Venus and M ars by Piero di Cosimo, 1 4 6 2 -1 5 2 1 ,
Gemaldegalerie, Berlin-Dahlen
73 (bottom) Pan by Luca Signorelli, c. 1 4 4 1 /5 0 -1 5 2 3 ,

159
 original now destroyed, formerly Kaiser Friedrich
Museum, Berlin
74 (top) Angelica saved by Ruggiero by J. A. D. Ingres,
1 7 8 0-186 7 , National Gallery, London
74 (bottom) A Roman Feast by Thomas Couture,
1 8 1 5 -7 9 , Wallace Collection, London
75 (top) Pan and Syrinx by Boucher, 1 7 0 3 -7 0 , National
Gallery, London
75 (bottom) Love seducing Innocence, Pleasure leading
her on, Remorse fo llo w in g by Pierre Paul Prud'hon,
1758-182 3 , Wallace Collection, London
76 Knole Ball Room
77 (top left) Emanuel Philibert of Savoy by Sir Anthony
van Dyck, 1 5 9 9 -1 6 4 1 , Dulwich
77 (bottom left) Endymion Porter by William Dobson,
1 6 1 0 -4 6 , Tate Gallery, London
77 (right) Norman, 22nd C hief of M acleod by Allan
Ramsay, 1 7 1 3 -8 4 , Dunvegan Castle
78 (top) Descartes by Frans Hals, 1 5 8 0 /5 -1 6 6 6 ,
Copenhagen
78 (bottom) C ourt Fool by Diego Velasquez, 1 5 9 9 -1 6 6 0 ,
Prado, Madrid
79 (top left) Dona Tadea Arias de Enriquez by Francisco
Goya, 174 6 -1 8 2 8 , Prado, Madrid
79 (top right) W om an in Kitchen by Pierre Chardin,
1 6 9 9 -1 7 7 9
79 (bottom) M ad Kidnapper by Theodore Gericault,
1 7 9 1-1824 , Springfield, Massachusetts
80 (top) S e lf-P o rtra it by Albrecht Durer, 1 4 7 1 -1 5 2 8
80 (bottom) S e lf-P o rtra it by Rembrandt van Ryn, 1 6 0 6 -6 9
81 (top) S e lf-P o rtra it by Goya, 1 7 4 6 -1 8 2 8 , Musee Castres
81 (bottom) Not to be reproduced by Rene Magritte,
1 8 9 8-1967 , Collection E. F. W. James, Sussex
83 Paston Treasures at Oxnead Hall, Dutch School,
c. 1665, City of Norwich Museum
85 The Archduke Leopold W ilhelm in His Private
Picture Gallery by David I. Teniers, 1 5 8 2 -1 6 4 9 ,
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
86 Picture Gallery of Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga
by G. P. Panini, 1 6 9 2 -1 7 6 5 /8 , Wadsworth
Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut

160
87 Interior of an A rt Gallery, Flemish, 17th century,
National Gallery, London
89 The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger,
1 4 9 7 /8 -1 5 4 3 , National Gallery, London
91 Vanitas by Willem de Poorter, 1 6 0 8 -4 8 , collection,
Baszenger, Geneva
92 The M agdalen Reading by Studio of Ambrosius
Benson (active 151950), National Gallery, London
92 M ary M agdalene by Adriaen van der Werff,
1 6 5 9 -1 7 2 2 , Dresden
92 The Penitent M agdalen by Baudry, Salon of 1859,
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Nantes
93 Water-colour illustration to Dante's Divine Comedy -
inscription Over the G ate o f Hell by William Blake,
17 5 7 -1 8 2 7 , Tate Gallery, London
95 Adm iral de R uyter in the Castle of Elmina
by Emanuel de Witte, 1 6 1 7 -9 2 , collection, Dowager
Lady Harlech, London
96 India O fferin g Her Pearls to Britannia,
painting done for the East India Company in the
late 18th century, Foreign and Commonwealth
Office
97 Ferdinand the Second of Tuscany and V itto ria della
Rovere by Justus Suttermans, 1597 -1 6 8 1 ,
National Gallery, London
98 M r and M rs W illiam A therton by Arthur Devis,
1 7 1 1 -8 7 , Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
98 The Beaumont Family by George Romney, 1 7 3 4 -1 8 0 2 ,
Tate Gallery, London
99 Still Life w ith Lobster by Jan de Heem, 1 6 0 6 -8 4 ,
Wallace collection, London
99 Lincolnshire Ox by George Stubbs, 1 7 2 4 -1 8 0 6 ,
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
100 S till Life ascribed to Pieter Claesz, 1 5 9 6 /7 1661,
National Gallery, London
100 Charles II Being Presented w ith a Pineapple by
Rose, the Royal Gardener after Hendrick Danckerts,
c. 1 6 3 0 -7 8 /9 , Ham House, Richmond
101 M r Tow neley and Friends by Johann Zoffany,
1 7 3 4 /5 1810, Towneley Hall Art Gallery and Museum,
Burnley, Lancashire

161
101 Trium ph of K now ledge by Bartholomew Spranger,
1546-1611, Vienna Gallery
102 Three Graces Decorating Hymen by Sir Joshua
Reynolds, 1 7 2 3 -9 2 , Tate Gallery, London
102 Ossian Receiving Napoleon's M arshalls in Valhalla
by A. L. Girodet de Roucy-Trioson, 1 7 6 7 -1 8 2 4 ,
Chateau de Malmaison
103 Tavern Scene by Adriaen Brouwer, 1 6 0 5 /6 38,
National Gallery, London
104 Laughing Fisherboy by Frans Hals, 1 5 8 0 -1 6 6 6 ,
Burgsteinfurt, Westphalia: collection, Prince of Bentheim
and Steinfurt
104 Fisherboy by Frans Hals, 1580-1666, National Gallery
of Ireland, Dublin
104 An Extensive Landscape w ith Ruins
by Jacob van Ruisdael, 1 6 2 8 /9 -8 2 , National Gallery,
London
105 River Scene w ith Fishermen Casting a Net
by Jan Van Goyen, 15961656, National Gallery, London *
I 06 M r and M rs A ndrew s by Thomas Gainsborough,
17 2 7 -8 8 , National Gallery, London
111 Portrait of Him self and Saskia by Rembrandt
van Ryn, 1 6 0 6 -6 9 , Pinakotek, Dresden
I I 2 S e lf-p o rtra it by Rembrandt van Ryn, 1 6 0 6 -6 9 ,
Uffizi, Florence
114 (top) Europe supported by A frica and America
by William Blake, 1 7 5 7 -1 8 2 7
114 (bottom) Pity by William Blake, 1 7 5 7 -1 8 2 7
11 5 M ild e w Blighting Ears of Corn by William Blake,
1 7 5 7 -1 8 2 7
11 6 (top) M adem oiselle de C lerm ont
by Jean Marc Nattier, 1 6 8 5 -1 7 6 6 ,
Wallace Collection, London
11 6 (bottom) Sale of Pictures and Slaves in the
Rotunda, N ew Orleans, 1842
117 (top left) Princess Rakoscki by Nicolas de Largillierre,
16 5 6 -1 7 4 6 , National Gallery, London
117 (top right) Charles, Third Duke of Richmond
by Johann Zoffany, 1 7 3 4 /5 -1 8 1 0 , private collection
117 (bottom) T w o Negroes by Rembrandt van Ryn,
1 6 0 6 -6 9 , The Hague, Mauritshuis

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 118 Sarah Burge, 1883. Dr Barnardo's Homes
by unknown photographer
119 Peasant Boy Leaning on Sill by Bartolome Murillo,
16 17-8 2 , National Gallery, London
120 (top left) A Family Group by Michael Nouts, 1656?,
National Gallery, London
120/1 (top centre) Sleeping M aid and her Mistress
by Nicholas Maes, 1 6 3 4 -9 3 , National Gallery, London
120 (bottom left) Interior, Delft School, c. 1 6 50-55? ,
National Gallery, London
1 20/1 (bottom centre) M an and a W oman in a Stableyard
by Peter Quast, 1 6 0 5 /6 -4 7 , National Gallery, London
1 21 (top right) Interior w ith W om an Cooking
by Esaias Boursse, Wallace Collection, London
1 21 (bottom right) Tavern Scene by Jan Steen, 1 6 2 6 -7 9 ,
Wallace Collection, London
1 22 (top left) The Frugal M eal by John Frederick Herring,
17 9 5 -1 8 6 5 , Tate Gallery, London
1 22 (top right) A Scene at Abbotsford
by Sir Edwin Landseer, 1 8 0 2 -7 3 , Tate Gallery, London
1 22 (centre left) W h ite Dogs by Thomas Gainsborough,
172 7 -8 8 , National Gallery, London
1 22 (centre middle) D ignity and Impudence
by Sir Edwin Landseer, 1 8 0 2 -7 3 , Tate Gallery, London
1 22 (centre right) Miss Bowles by Sir Joshua Reynolds,
17 2 3 -9 2 , Wallace collection, London
1 22 (bottom) detail: Farm C art by Thomas Gainsborough,
17 27-8 8 , Tate Gallery, London
1 23 (top) The James Family by Arthur Devis, 1711 -8 7 ,
Tate Gallery, London
1 23 (centre left) A Grey Hack w ith a W h ite Greyhound
and Blue Groom by George Stubbs, 1 7 2 4 -1 8 0 6 ,
Tate Gallery, London
1 23 (centre right) The Bay Horse by John Ferneley,
1 7 8 2-1 8 6 0 , Tate Gallery, London
123 (bottom) A Kill at Ashdown Park
by James Seymour, Tate Gallery, London
1 24 Girl in W h ite Stockings by Gustave Courbet,
1 8 1 9 -7 7
1 25 Demoiselles au bord de la Seine
by Gustave Courbet, 1 8 1 9 -7 7 ,

163
 Musee du Petit Palais, Paris
126 (centre) Le Salon photograph
1 26 (top) Les Romains de la Decadence
by Thomas Couture, 1 8 1 5 -7 9
1 26 (bottom left) M adam e Cahen d'Anvers by L. Bonnat
1 26 (bottom right) The Ondine of Nidden by E. Doerstling
1 27 (top right) The Tem ptatio n of St Anthony
by A. Morot
1 27 (top left) W itches Sabbath by Louis Falero
127 (bottom left) Psyche's Bath by Leighton
1 27 (bottom right) La Fortune by A. Maignan
129 Photograph by Sven Blomberg
1 34 D6jeuner sur I'H erbe by Edouard M an et 1 8 3 2 -8 3 ,
Louvre, Paris
1 36 (top) Jupiter and Thetis by J. A. D. Ingres, 1 7 8 0 -1 8 6 7 ,
Musee Granet, Aix-en-Provence
1 36 (bottom left) Pan Pursuing Syrinx
by Hendrick van Balen I and follower of Jan Breughel I,
17th century, National Gallery, London
1 37 (bottom left) Bacchus, Ceres and Cupid
by Bartholomew Spranger, 1546-1611
1 37 (top left) Interior of St Odulphus' Church at
Assendelft, 1649 by Pieter Saenredam, 1 5 4 7 -1 6 6 5
1 37 (top right) W ave by Hokusai, 1 7 6 0 -1 8 4 9
1 39 Carlo Lodovico di Borbone Parma w ith W ife ,
sister and Future Carlo III of Parma,
Anon, 19th century, Archducal Estate Viareggio
141 Still Life w ith Drinking Vessels by Pieter Claesz,
1 5 9 6 /7 -1 6 6 1 , National Gallery, London
147 M rs Siddons by Thomas Gainsborough, 1 7 2 7 -8 8 ,
National Gallery, London
1 47 M arilyn M onroe by Andy Warhol
1 55 On the Threshold of Liberty
by Rene Magritte, 1 8 9 8 -1 9 6 7

164
A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t is d u e t o t h e f o l l o w i n g fo r p e rm iss io n to re p ro d u c e

p i c t u r e s in t h i s b o o k :

Sven Blomberg, 129, 134; City of Birmingham, 67 (bottom); City of

Norwich Museums, 83; Chiddingstone Castle, 52; Euan Duff, 142
(bottom), 148; Evening Standard, 36 (bottom); Frans Hals Museum, 12;
Giraudon, 50, 57, 66 (top left), 68 (bottom), 70 (bottom);
Kunsthistorisches Museum, 27, 85; Mansell, 39, 60, 111, 112; Jean
Mohr, 36 (top), 43 (bottom); National Film Archive, 17; National
Gallery, 20, 23, 25 (bottom), 43 (top), 54, 70 (top), 74 (top),
75 (top), 87, 89, 92 (top left), 97, 100 (top), 103, 104, 105, 106,
117 (top left), 119, 120 (top left and bottom left), 120-1 (top and
bottom), 141, 147; National Trust (Country Life), 76; Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, 31; Tate Gallery, 98 (bottom), 102 (top), 122 (top
right and bottom), 123 (middle right and top); Wadsworth
Atheneum, Hartford, 86; Wallace Collection, 71 (top and bottom),
72, 75, 99, 116 (top), 121 (top and bottom); Walker Art Gallery,
99 (bottom).

165