WAYS OF SEEING (first episode) 3/4

[todtubetod]

oh yeah 4:38 !......

[FlashFire20]

Man...I wanna find the full video of that song at 4:38.

[dizzyink85]

Woah, were those dancers really what was on "one of the other two channels" all the time in the seventies?

[acmilan10italia]

can anyone tell me the name of the italian opera? at 2:03

[rrrorkk]

can anyone shed some light on the live footage of the mass execution?

[Gaius8666a]

Thanks for posting this. Wonderful series.

[Whip0fAlchemy]

4:38

Did I just get rickrolled? xD

[sexykatie90]

sexykatie90  any more videos like this? WAYS OF SEEING (first episode) 3/4

[DeniseMatteau]

Plaid bell-bottoms! I used to have some of those! *LOL*

[DeniseMatteau]

This is an incredible study, in the brueghels section, of time & eternity, but then he gets into the VanGogh death crap: God save every artist who tries to do a study with black from that old canard!!!!  *rolleyes*

[sunshiine969]

im a art student and i dont get one bit what he is going on about

[silqecat]

@sunshiine969 it's his theory on how art is used as a text rather than a remote expression conjured by the artist. it's a language. the pieces of art mean something and aren't just eye candy. they're political biases and more critical of society than we are conditioned to take them for. like the Goya painting in comparison to the girls singing/dancing, no apparent correlation. but the execution of blacks in comparison is a direct relation and now the Goya painting has a political bias attached

[netfinder30]

@sunshiine969 that's because you're an art student.

[DeniseMatteau]

@netfinder30 *LOL*

[Kelseyjaclyn]

@sunshiine969 That's unfortunate. You should start exercising your brain.

[beopanacea]

Does anyone have any information about the live footage (not Goya's painting) of the men being executed? I have no idea about the history behind that footage and am unable to identify the time or place of the event, which seems disrespectful on my part considering how whatever is going on is obviously very important. I really appreciate any information you have. Thanks very much.

[bcom11]

@beopanacea i agree i would also like to know about the background of the live footage.

[Goji73]

4:38

lol

[SolusWanderer]

that was quite strange

[mrpeachy]

what is the song of the italian opera?

[YourRoadToHell]

haha we have to watch exactly this video for an exam in our AP literature class, although I do not see the relevancy, this might be acceptable for an art or even film class, but English literatue?

[Jennysbasement]

i find that man strangely attractive

[peckerdecker]

image and text are strong but MUSIC is more powerful. (unless you are deaf)

when you watch a film with no sound - it is flat. With sound and music. the film has an edge

[kwooknewin]

Polymath, i wont call you pompous...or pseudo-intellectual....ill call you a virgin. VIRGIN. GO GET LAID!

[irish1209]

those girls that come in at 4:38! ha!

[throwntomato]

very interesting facts and information, here.

[polymath7]

"How often do you consciously notice the music played over paintings on television?"

Uhm, absolutely always. Berger continues to state the obvious.

Does anyone really need to be told this stuff?

[subjectiverealities]

but you must take into consideration the time at which this was made - 1972, that makes it almost 40 years old. and by that same token, berger doesn't 'continue' to state the obvious, this is an old recording, you just have continued access to it. also, i genuinely think people do need to be told this stuff, due to the oversaturation of manipulated works, we have begun to ignore the construct of the moving image to the point where we are less aware of the manipulation.

[polymath7]

I.

When it was made is entirely irrelevant.

I watched the entire series (in the interest of being able to speak from an informed position when I mock my adversaries)

and never at any point does Berger come anywhere near to saying a single thing that did not occur to me independently by the age of twelve.

The manipulations he elucidates are -to absolutely anyone above a certain level of intelligence- utterly transparent and self-evident, and any adult who needs his hand held and...

[polymath7]

II.

...his gaze conducted in this fashion is forever neurochemically debarred any real comprehension of art anyway.

Sorry, but John Berger is a first-order pinhead.

[sevvren]

You are pompous.

And exactly why John Berger made this series.

durrrrrhurrrr "real comprehension" of art exists durrrrrrrf

[polymath7]

I.

You are an insect.

Of exactly the species whose thorax I love to step on, whose face I love to grind into the dust. "

"Pompus"

Ooooh, that word yet again!

With the same reliability as Godwin's law, it will surely be no time at all before you 'll be calling me "pseudo-intellectual".

Ah, yes, "pseudo" -that prefix so much more easily affixed than adduced- the first refuge of otiose incompetence.

Just for fun, why don't you tell me just *why* Berger made this series?

[polymath7]

II.

I understand this will be a good deal more difficult than simply turning the faucet to spew trite expressions available on tap -and of course I'm well aware that any reply sufficiently detailed to be coherent leaves you vulnerable to an actual rebuttal.

In this you have my deepest sympathies.

But I'm really not terribly bright and -I beg you to forbear my obtuseness- I'm afraid I can glean very little meaning from "dhhuuurr".

But I'm sure the failing is mine.

[subjectiverealities]

why do you feel that when it was made is irrelevant? an understanding of its time and place is a huge part of its cultural context.

[polymath7]

B-I.

If I understood you correctly, you mentioned the year it was made as if to suggest that even if Berger's ideas might seem like platitudes today, they were at least novel and perceptive at the time he presented them -yes?

To which I respond that they most definitely were not.

Anyone to whom it is not *immediately* *glaringly*, *screamingly* obvious that setting a picture to music, or showing only a cropped section of it in isolation, can distort its context, is simply beyond hope.

[polymath7]

B-II

Observations that state the obvious are instant platitudes, they are stale from the very beginning.

Hence. to say this program was filmed nearly forty years ago is no defense at all. I say again; the year it was made is utterly irrelevant.

QED.

[subjectiverealities]

but your forgetting the audience for which it was made. this show wasn't made for you, it wasn't even made for your generation. what you speak of may be obvious now, and to some extent then, but it is still based on your social and cultural upbringing - which if i'm not mistaken corresponds directly to the time in which you live. by the age of 12, assuming you had a television and a vcr, you had experienced visual media in a way that those before you did not. the year is totally relevant.

[Bulacanos]

If you don't like it don't deal with it.

[timestate]

Polymath7; it sounds like you don't have much to say, either.

In fact you seem to be an example of a typical 'extrovert' type, in line with Jung's outline- you are verbose and talkative but the gist of what you say is weak. Ie, you talk a lot of wind.

[JamieUnicorn]

@polymath7 In the interests of balance: is there value in stating the obvious? I would suggest so. Whilst we may "know" something already, the level at which we know things can differ. So whilst I may "know" that panning around a still image with a camera will alter my perception of the image, I may never have really ruminated upon it before. Berger, like many other philosophers, gives us the chance to ruminate; sometimes, upon the (so-called) obvious. To stop, and think.

[polymath7]

In principal I quite agree with you.

But in my judgment absolutely nothing here rises above the trivially, straightforwardly obvious.

I dislike Berger for other reasons as well. He is an aesthetic ideologue, one of of the myriad, tediously familiar aesthetic lemmings who have infested and overrun the humanities over the past forty years, who use art as a mere pretext to extol Marxism, or to rail against patriarchy or imperialism.

I bitterly hate these vandals and consider them my enemies.

[JamieUnicorn]

@polymath7 I see what you mean. Yet perhaps we need to be reminded of the trivially obvious, inasmuch as it is so "trivial" that it becomes unconscious; herein lying the danger. In this sense, stating the obvious becomes a form of mindfulness; self-maintenance, or self-shaking. It keeps us liquid, prevents us from petrifying. Much Buddhist teaching, for instance, would - to our Western ears - be considered trivially obvious. But to dismiss it as so, we would be missing the point.

[JamieUnicorn]

@polymath7 That said, I'd be interested in finding out more about why it is you are so opposed to "vandals" like Berger; any reading you would recommend?

[foofkanon]

@polymath7 If only that were true now. Seeing Ways of seeing now, takes us back to a time when an alternative to consumer capitalism was at least being imagined.

[horsewolf]

thanks, i was wondering what the video footage was of the executions thats mixed in with the goya. its looks fairly real mayb from the sixties?????

[horsewolf]

anyone know anything about that footage of guys getting shot? year, location,?

[kaja214]

"The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid: the Executions on Principe Pio Hill"- Painted 1814 by Goya (Spanish). It is part of the Museo del Prado collection in Madrid!

[tb90909]

This is very much like Gilles Deleuze's Cinema books. The biggest problem is he fails to consider the impact of the awesomeness of his shirt on the Goya. What it means in theory is that an exaggerated 70s collar combined with high volume hair can be used by anyone and manipulate our desire for cat stevens and and jean jackets.

[paryshnikov]

HA!

[ellasky1980]

just reading the book based on this documentry at the moment so thanks for adding

[Bam2604]

"suppose you'd just tuned in to this channel - from one of the other two". made me laugh.

[sara0why89]

me 2!!

[crazyclive]

@Bam2604 Since there were only three channels broadcasting in Britain at the time "Ways Of Seeing" was made, what else was he meant to say? Clearly, it doesn't take much to make you laugh...

[acmilan10italia]

What's the name of the Italian opera at 2:03?

[fenoreth]

Do you know the title and the artist of the painting shown at 04:19?

[manwithaplan999]

that is Francisco De Goya's 'Execution of the Rebels of the 3rd of May, 1808'