Forty five years on, while Berger’s haircut and shirt might have dated, the ideas he offers and their presentation still seem remarkably bold and forward-thinking. Watching it back, it is easy to see why it still inspires such zeal. “Berger’s Ways of Seeing is an art series that sets out not to present the viewer with some nice Open University art-history narrative, but instead questions the very foundations of art history” While the painting is, of course, a reproduction, it’s an arresting, irreverent start to a series that remains seminal to many art lovers, to judge by the stream of tributes to it, and people sharing YouTube videos of it, over the past week. So begins Ways of Seeing, the four-part BBC series made in 1972 by the art critic and writer John Berger, who died on Monday aged 90.
Suddenly, there he is, cutting out Venus’s face in a few swift moves. A man approaches a Botticelli masterpiece with a scalpel.
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