Ways of Seeing

And what's scary for me is the feeling that this cannot last.

I once interviewed John Berger, this genius who wrote Ways of Seeing.

I don't know if you know the book, but if you don't know the book, you should check it out because it completely changed the way we look at art.

And I interviewed him when he was very, very old and he talked about happiness and he said, you know, if we were happy all the time, we couldn't talk about happiness because there'd be nothing to discuss.

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in his 1972 book Ways of Seeing.

Okay.

Will you read the short quote from Ways of Seeing for us?

What if I said no?

I'm, I'm so ready for you to just say no one day.

And even if you're not sure who he is, you live in a visual world that is shaped by his ideas.

That clip is from his landmark 1972 four-part television series, Ways of Seeing.

The show and the book dismantle the traditional way that we were told to look at fine art, stripping away the elitism.

It revealed exactly how images are tied to wealth, power and crucially the male gaze.

You're welcome.

Will you remind us, Tom, of John Berger, who he was and why he's such an important person when we think about our relationship to art of all eras, really?

Well, I think he did a really good job there in... starting with Ways of Seeing and, gee, the novel he won the Booker Prize for, because that's certainly the thing he's most famous for in 1972.

But he started...