Ways of Seeing (Chapter 3, pp: 39-47)

RECLINING BACCHANTE BY TRUTAT 1824–1848

According to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome, the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man. A man’s presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies. If the promise is large and credible his presence is striking. If it is small or incredible, he is found to have little presence. The promised power may be moral, physical, temperamental, economic, social, sexual – but its object is always exterior to the man. A man’s presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. His presence may be fabricated, in the sense that he pretends to be capable of what he is not. But the pretence is always towards a power which he exercises on others.

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

John Berger: a life in writing (The Guardian, Saturday 23 April 2011)

'I wanted to write about looking at the world, so this book is about helping people to see what is around us, both the marvellous and the terrible'

Nicholas Wroe

The Guardian, Saturday 23 April 2011

 

On Good Friday in 2008 John Berger went to the National Gallery in London to look at, and to draw, Christ Crucified by the early renaissance artist Antonello da Messina, a work he describes as "the most solitary painting of the scene that I know. The least allegorical." Berger placed his small shoulder bag on the attendant's chair in the corner of the room and began to draw with ink, wetting his index finger to smudge the lines and correct mistakes. Before long the attendant returned and asked Berger to remove his bag. Berger placed it on the floor at his feet and resumed drawing. The attendant said he couldn't leave it on the floor. Berger explained that if he held it he would be unable to draw. The dispute escalated, and at some stage Berger exclaimed "fuck". A supervisor was called who told Berger he had insulted a member of staff doing his job and had "shouted obscene words in a public institution". He was escorted from the building: "I take it you know the way out, sir."
 

Berger tells the anecdote in his new book published next month, Bento's Sketchbook (Verso), which also contains his, hastily completed, drawing of the crucifixion. In the book the episode has a palpably allegorical tinge that – with all the correcting of the drawing – hints at wider notions of human error. But at face value it is emblematic of Berger's career as combative art critic, radical writer and consistent challenger of institutional power. Here you have a snapshot not only of his relationship with art and the art world, but also of his relationship with society and authority in general.

 

Recounting the story at his home in Haute-Savoie in the French alps, Berger smiles at the comic aspects of the grand old man of British art being summarily booted out of the National Gallery. But he nevertheless displays a lingering anger at what he sees as the underlying reasons for the confrontation. "They kept saying it was a matter of security," he says, sneeringly elongating the word in the idiosyncratically French-inflected accent he has acquired after living there for almost 50 years. "Security. A word that these days seems simultaneously both to conceal so much and to reveal so much."