![]() She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself. The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product. Rather, its function is to highlight what a consumer putatively lacks, in order to create a sense of shortcoming or inadequacy, which in turn creates desire for a product and all it seems to promise: The purpose of product publicity, though, is not to merely to demonstrate and consolidate what somebody already has, as with a landowner depicted in an oil painting, surveying his estate. What’s more, he says, similar themes to these can be identified in a lot of advertising and marketing material. ![]() ![]() He is also much influenced by the cultural anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009).īerger presents an analysis of our cultural relationship to art and advertising, arguing that high art is characterized by subliminal themes of male dominance, female objectification, personal property, landowning, and social power. ![]() In Ways of Seeing, Berger, who died earlier this year at the age of 90, draws on another famous essay, “The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, by cultural critic and Frankfurt School philosopher, Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). John Berger was an English artist, writer, novelist, and critic whose 1972 TV series and accompanying essay, both entitled Ways of Seeing, became essential reading for students of art and art history. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |