Summary
Chapter 4 is another series of photos unaccompanied by text. The first two-page spread shows seven representations of Mary with the baby Jesus, spanning the 12th through 17th centuries. In some, Mary and Jesus are surrounded by others, whereas in others, like a painting from 1523 by David, the two are alone. Their surroundings change as the years progress: the settings shift from relatively empty backgrounds early on to more extensive mise-en-scene, shifting to reflect the fashionable painting styles of each era.
The next two pages depict scenes of chaos and death. On the left-hand page, two paintings show communities gathered around dead bodies, with figures scattered throughout the paintings in relative disarray. The opposite page focuses on images with fewer figures: a Gericault scene with two distressed-looking heads, a Manet painting depicting a single man lying alone on the ground, and a painting of two women being guided by a sinister-looking male stranger—likely an allegory for death—by Hans Baldung Grein.
These images are followed, on the next two pages, by a series of still-life oil paintings. The page on the left features a painting of a glass, a bottle of wine, a loaf of bread, and a pen sitting atop a table; below that, a painting of several slabs of meat. The page on the right offers a couple of more complex scenes: two paintings that depict their subjects—tables replete with food and wine—from further away. None of the paintings on this page are captioned or credited.
Next, a painting of two nude figures: a sleeping woman who reclines, and a man, awake and sitting upright, watching her. There's no caption, but it appears to be from the Renaissance. On the opposite page, a painting of two nude figures looking at one another (Venus and Mars) is situated above a packed scene where a kinglike male figure sits in the center of the image, surrounded by acolytes including a nude woman, looking down at a reclining male figure bound in chains at his feet.
On the next page, a painting of a nude woman who is chained to a rock dominates the upper left-hand side of the page. To her left is a figure cloaked in armor, fighting off a beast that recedes down the bottom of the image, ostensibly rescuing her. Below that, a painting entitled A Roman Feast, where a nude woman, her face turned away from the viewer, clings to a man who appears to be mid-feast as the title suggests. Opposite that, we see Pan and Syrinx, an image of two reclining nude figures watching another, smaller figure falling into the arms of a river god. Then, below that, a painting of four figures in a procession, partially clothed, cryptically-titled Love Seducing Innocence, Pleasure Leading her On, Remorse Following.
On the following page, a photograph of an ornate interior stands alone. In it, five oil paintings hang on the wall amidst the luxurious furniture, though their subject matter is difficult to resolve. On the opposite page are three images of commanding male figures, posed like generals mid-conquest. They all appear to be cropped from their original paintings, though Berger does not provide us the information to discern whether this is really the case.
The next spread begins with two oil paintings of stately-looking men, depicted from the chest-up, stacked directly on top of one another (as opposed to the more freeform collage-like format that Berger employed in the previous photo essay). On the page across from that, paintings of two women in expnesive but not necessarily ornate-looking dress take up the top half of the page, and another painting of a man, also cut off at the chest, is situated below them.
The first image on the following page is a man pictured from the bust up, and below him, a painting of another man looking distraught as he gazes directly at the spectator. Across from that, another painting of a man, similarly situated in the frame, but looking serious and intelligent as he regards the viewer with an incredulous expression. Below that, the final image in the essay: a painting of a man framed from the chest up, much like the previous images, except that he is turned away from the viewer. He faces a mirror, which reproduces his figure, offering a slightly smaller but nearly identical figure in the reflection.
Analysis
The first painting in this chapter, Cimabue's Madonna, is also the earliest. Painted in 1285, it signaled a departure from the earlier norms of Byzantine mosaic, inaugurating a new tradition of oil painting. In a break with earlier Byzantine art, there's a clear sense of depth and an attempt to create three-dimensional space visible in the superimposed figures. These shifts all indicate a move towards the representational codes of "realist" painting, attempting to represent physical space as it exists in the world. Recall, however, Berger's critique of perspective in Chapter 1: it centers the entire world on the eye of the spectator, figuring them as a godlike entity, but, paradoxically, they can only be godlike from this one fixed point. (For a more in-depth critique of perspective, consider checking out Erwin Panofsky's Perspective as a Symbolic Form). Following Cimabue's Madonna, we see a selection of other renderings of the "madonna and child" motif, arranged chronologically across the rest of the two-page spread. Looking at them in order, we can see the conventions that dominate oil painting beginning to be elaborated: the illusion of depth is rendered more convincingly, human figures appear more realistic, and the backgrounds become increasingly complex and enveloping. In this progression, a drive towards the realist tradition in oil painting is visible; Berger will discuss this tradition—and, of course, its ideological implications—in greater detail in Chapter 5.
The next two pages contain five vastly different images, unified by their common theme: death. It's difficult to know exactly what message Berger hoped to get across here, but looking at five different images of five distinct artistic styles, all united by the shared presence of human suffering, is harrowing. In the two images on the left-hand page, chaos abounds. In the top picture, well-wishers crowd around the dying (or perhaps just ill?) body, deep in prayer, making the frame feel claustrophobic. The bottom image is a scene of complete chaos, with reanimated skeletons coming to life as they take their revenge on the living. The scene's action is cut off at the edges of the pictorial frame, carrying the uneasy implication that this type of chaos extends out of the painting's world and into our own. Then, on the opposite page, we see three images of death that deal with fewer subjects: two figures in the Gericault painting, three in the Grein, and only one in the Manet. The connection between these two pages is left open-ended by the lack of text, so the reader is free to interpret their relationship however they see fit. One possible reading could be that the paintings on the right denote a more individualistic world view, where one person's pain and suffering warrant representation, whereas those on the left imply collective chaos. Neither is particularly optimistic.
The next page also seems to be guided by the theme of death, albeit in a more abstract way. Though none of the paintings are labelled, they appear to belong to the 17th-century Dutch tradition of the vanitas: paintings that include signs of decay and impermanence to remind the viewer of death's inevitability. Only the painting on the bottom left contains a human subject; the other three approach death more symbolically. Repeated imagery of plants, perishable foods, and raw meat all draw our attention to the decay that is inevitable for all natural life. On the other hand, these paintings are increasingly elaborate: the two on the right-hand side feature luxurious spreads that denote wealth as much as they denote mortality. As Berger will explain in Chapter 5, this is common of oil painting: the luscious sheen of the thick paint lends itself well to painting luxurious objects, making them look almost tactile. The looming sense of death, then, might provide a critique of materialism: we can consume all we want, but we're still going to die.
The following two pages show three different nude paintings, which, if you've been reading the chapters in order, you'll be able to analyze through the lens of Chapter 3's discussion of the female nude. In the first image, a sleeping woman reclines, nude, as a male figure sits upright and watches her. The subject of the painting—a woman being looked at—is mirrored in our relationship to it, as we, the spectator, mimic the male character's act of looking. Across the page is Venus and Mars, depicting a duo of nude women that fits Berger's description from Chapter 3 pretty perfectly: they are positioned frontally with regard to the viewer, despite the fact that this is fully impractical for their interaction with one another. Neither meets the viewer's gaze: one is asleep, eyes closed; the other looks off into the distance, her physical gesture exhibiting her femininity but her eyes modestly averted. Below that is a painting that is not labelled. Exactly what's going on in the scene is difficult to tell—a whole cast of characters surrounds a seated figure in the middle of a painting. Berger doesn't name the painting or give us any insight into how we should understand what's happening, but one fact about the scene stands out in relation to what he's told us already. Two figures are distinguished from the crowded scene as their light skin is illuminated starkly: the trumpet-playing man, and the woman on the left-hand side. Both are nude. The man's back is turned towards us as he focuses on playing his instrument; the woman doesn't seem to do much at all besides stand appealingly. Here, we see the embodiment of Berger's observation from the previous chapter that "men act" while "women appear."
On the next spread, the visual discourse regarding the female nude continues. The top painting on the left-hand page depicts a naked woman chained to a rock as a man—fully-clothed in battle armor—fights off a monster that has apparently trapped her there. Although she is shackled to the rock, the woman's body faces frontally towards the viewer, an unnatural physical position that, as Berger observes in Chapter 3, makes it appear as though her nudity exists specifically for the viewer's visual pleasure. This effect is heightened by the dramatic difference between light and dark in the image: the nude woman's white skin contrasts sharply with the dark background, further emphasizing her body and bolstering the impression that she exists to be looked at. Below that, another image, captioned A Roman Feast, 19th Century, features a similar interplay of light and dark to emphasize another female nude. Curiously, although the title tells us that the painting depicts a feast, there is no food being served--only a man drinking a glass of wine as a naked woman, her back to the viewer, clings onto him. The woman's face isn't visible, and the curvature of her body is emphasized as it contrasts against the darker background. As we consider the title and subject matter of this image, the question arises: what, exactly, is being consumed here? Perhaps one might venture to say that the woman in this image exists for our perceptual consumption, again returning to Berger's thesis from Chapter 3 that, as opposed to mere nakedness, nudity exists for the pleasure of the (ostensibly male) viewer.
On the opposite page, we see Pan and Syrinx, a scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses that depicts Pan, a satyr, pursuing Syrinx, a wood nymph. In the story, Syrinx escapes from Pan by transforming into a bundle of marsh reeds, evading his embrace as she falls into the river. This painting depicts the moment as Syrinx begs her sisters, the river nymphs, to help her evade Pan's embrace, right as Cupid encourages Pan to pursue her. This painting could be read through the lens of Chapter 3's discussion of ownership: to own a painting of a female nude is, implicitly, to "own" its subject matter, just as Pan hopes to possess Syrinx. The pursuit we see depicted in this image mirrors the viewer's position as "spectator-owner," as Berger put it in the previous chapter. This is reinforced by the paintings' composition, which places the female nudes front and center, with Syrinx addressing the viewer frontally (although her gaze is turned away) and one of the sisters with her back turned, shoulders squared to the viewer: in this construction, the naked women are the center of the narrative (and of the viewer's attention). Below that, Berger reproduces an image of Love Seducing Innocence, Pleasure Leading Her On, Remorse Following. In this allegorical painting, Innocence is figured as a young woman, being led along by Love—not the standard youthful Cupid, but a grown-up incarnation, identifiable by his quiver of arrows. Pleasure, a cherub-like figure, leads the procession, pulling Innocence's sheer dress off her body. Behind them looms Remorse, a dark figure holding his forehead in his hand. Interestingly, Love is the only nude figure in this painting, although Innocence is equally the center of attention. The moment captured in this image recalls the painting of Rubens' young wife from Chapter 3, with a fur draped over her shoulders, about to slip off. With her garment slipping precariously off her body, Innocence is captured in the moment of seduction, imbuing the painting with an almost cinematic temporality.
Turn the page, and you'll find the right-hand page dominated by a single image: a photograph an ornate interior with gilded walls and baroque furniture. Within this image, there are several others: five portraits hang on the wall, three large and two small. This image recalls Berger's discussion of paintings' reproducibility in Chapter 1: how do the meanings of these portraits change when they are visible outside of the (obviously elite and exclusive) space where they hang in the image? By being photographed, the paintings are reproduced, allowing them to circulate more freely and opening them to a multiplicity of meanings. The extremely ornate setting of this photograph also alludes to the connection between oil painting, wealth, and capitalism, which Berger will elaborate in Chapter 5. On the right-hand side, we see three portraits of important-looking men, painted in the tradition of the portraits hanging on the wall on the opposite page. Unlike the women we've seen earlier in the chapter, these men are all fully clothed, and typically depicted from the knees up. The impression of power that they convey derives from their confident stances—the subject of the image on the far right gestures outward, as though he were commanding an army—as well as their highly decorative clothing and uniformly unimpressed expressions. These paintings further confirm Berger's proposition that, in painting, "men act while women appear."
On the next page, we see two more portraits of men. On the top, a painting by Frans Hals that some will recognize as a portrait of Descartes; below that, a Velasquez painting entitled Court Fool. These images are difficult to situate in relation to what we've seen and read so far—their relationship to the text is uncertain. Perhaps, in this sense, they're deliberately obscure, encouraging us to wrestle with their possible meaning. One potential reading might focus on the inclusion of Descartes, whose famous credo, "I think, therefore I am," informs the conventions of perspective that Berger discussed earlier. In paintings of perspectival space, the entire world is centered on the eye of the beholder, situating them in a godlike position (although this is a paradox, because, unlike an omniscient God, they can only be in one place at one time). The "court fool" in the image below might be interpreted as precisely the opposite of the philosopher—one who stands for the "lower" values, perhaps in a rejection of Cartesian dualism. Again, the contrast between these images and the female nudes we've seen earlier is stark: the subjects of both paintings are fully-clothed, and their existence doesn't appear centered on the visual pleasure of the spectator. Sure, they're nice to look at, but neither attempts to position the viewer as the protagonist of the painting's narrative.
Opposite these, we see two paintings of women and one of a man. The women are depicted in full, and for the first time in this chapter, both are fully clothed. Like the paintings on the opposite page, their meaning in relation to the rest of the text is difficult to discern. We might hypothesize from the women's rich dresses that both are fairly well-off, alluding to the following chapter's analysis of oil painting and wealth. Both are also represented within apparently domestic spaces, suggesting that, even when women are painted clothed, the relationship between spectatorship and ownership that Berger described in female nudes is still subtly at play. The index at the end of the book reveals that the bottom painting—in which is depicted the only man on the page—is Géricault's Mad Kidnapper, further elaborating the question of spectatorship and ownership: does the owner of these paintings "possess" the women depicted within them? What about the owner of this book, who owns the paintings' reproductions? Of course, none of these questions are posed explicitly by the essay, and any other analytic that the reader finds to interpret them must be considered equally valid.
The next spread features three self-portraits: all male artists pictured from the chest-up, contrasted against a fourth image of a subject facing away. Painted by Dürer, Rembrandt, and Goya respectively, the first three portraits broach the question of artistic self-representation: in light of Berger's point in Chapter 1 that all images implicitly reflect the artist's own "way of seeing," what does it mean to look at an artist's representation of himself? In this way, these portraits could be taken as valuable documents of the artists' interior psychology, externalizing the ways they saw themselves in the world at a given place and time. Interestingly, all three of these men look out at the viewer. In contrast to many of the women we've seen in this essay, their gaze is somewhat confrontational—the spectator is brought into these images not by being cast into the narrative (as they are in the case of the female nude), but by returning the gaze of the self-depicted artist. The fourth image on the right-hand page, also the last in the chapter, seems to reverse the composition of the first three: a male subject is pictured, again from the waist up, but he faces away from the viewer and into a mirror. In the reflection, the same figure is reproduced identically: not a forward-facing reflection, as one would expect in real life. This painting, by René Magritte, is given the tongue-in-cheek title Not to be reproduced. Of course, the figure in the painting is reproduced in the mirror, much like the image itself is reproduced in this book. Here, we see Magritte alluding to the questions of art's mechanical reproducibility that Berger examined in Chapter 1: given the obvious act of reproduction within the painting itself, it appears that Magritte mocks the conservative critics who condemn art's reproducibility, aligning himself with Berger's thesis (adapted from Benjamin) that reproduction democratizes art by creating broader possibilities for interpretation.
