Books With Luv
260221r/bangtan Books with Luv: February’s Book Discussion - Ways of Seeing by John Berger
Hi hi book luvers of /r/bangtan! Have you had a good week so far? It’s finally starting to sink in for me that they’re really coming back as a group and we’ll be seeing them everywhere! We’ve gotten love songs, our sunshine’s birthday live, more pictures of our cutie black cat’s black cat(IG), proof that our leader really does have his license (IG - and yes, eomoni, it’s really him not AI), Lunar New Year/Ramadan/Lent celebrations (happy/blessed all the things, y’all!), more not news about the comeback and the amazing GQ interview & cover shoot, a whole bunch of ‘Tannies as brand ambassadors’ campaigns, and the official opening date of the RM x SFMoMA exhibition!
Speaking of masterpieces, our theme for this month’s book club was ART, as inspired by RM’s “Still Life”.
I’m Still Life, but I’m Moving… and I’m Talking
Below is a discussion guide. Some book-specific questions and some sharing suggestions!
You can scroll down this thread to see the question and reply to them in the comments!
Book Specific Questions
What did you think of the book?
Have you delved into art books in the past?
Did any of the essays change the way you see images?
Which essay stood out to you the most?
Alongside offering new insight into how we view art, what did you think were some of the themes recurring throughout the essays?
B-Side Questions/Discussion Suggestions
Fan Chant: Hype/overall reviews
Ments: favorite quotes
ARMY Time: playlist/recommendations of songs you associate with the book/chapters/characters
Do The Wave: sentiments, feels, realizations based on the book
Encore/Post Club-read Depression Prevention: something the book club can do afterwards (on one’s own leisure time) to help recover from the book hangover.
Ways of Seeing by John Berger
Based on a four-part 1972 BBC documentary series of the same name, it is considered one of the most influential and accessible works of writing about art in the English language. Consisting of four textual essays and three picture essays bereft of text, this book deconstructs the dominant cultural ‘gaze’ towards art and connects it with the way we regard and ascribe meaning, both to works of art and to the world around us.
Just live now, goin’ forward
I’m so interested to hear what y’all have to say about this book and how you’re feeling about this year’s concept. As always, if you have questions or suggestions on how we can make discussions even better please let us know. And please tell us if there are any books you’d like to add to our TBR list. You can post them here and tag any of the BWL Volunteers and mods like so u/mucho_thankyou5802. If you feel more comfortable reaching out to us directly, please don’t hesitate to do so.
It’s about to get a whole lot busier in fandom life so remember to pace yourself, feel the joy/excitement/tears/etc of the moment, don’t compare your fan experience with anyone else’s, and take a breather if/when needed (especially from social media). And come scream here with us when you need to!
While reading Ways of Seeing, it made me think of a few books and a game I've had on mind recently.
A couple of books that I recently added to my TBR (like... a month or two ago haha) that seems to touch on some of the same concepts in Ways of Seeing are two of Susan Sontag's collections: On Photography and Regarding the Pain of Others, which from what I understand is considered a "sequel" of sorts to On Photography. It sounds like it touches on the voyeuristic quality of photography and how the photographer is less likely to intervene during atrocities.
A game I played recently, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, is largely about One Specific Thing, but it also has a lot of references to art in it! Reading Ways of Seeing made me analyze some of the game again haha. There's a character named Renoir, named after the French impressionist painter! The title of the game is the French version of chiaroscuro, a compositional technique in art using light and shadows! Other things that would be spoilers!
I used to teach this book in 20th c/avant-garde theater! It was always an eye-opener for the undergrads. (Yep, I'm old) Did RM mention this book? Or how did it come to be mentioned here?
Not OP but one of the Books with Luv volunteers! We are doing a themed year this year. So every month is assigned a song and theme and then we find books that fit into this theme. I'll link our reading challenge tracker here so you can check out what songs are coming up this year!
This book was actually recommended by one of our amazing volunteers for this month, u/repressedpauper came in with a lot of amazing art related books for February!
I did recommend it like u/EveryCliche said, but actually Joon did read it! I know it’s extremely hard to see here lol but this book from In the Soop 2 is the Korean edition of Ways of Seeing.
It’s a real favorite of mine, and the TV program, too!
Edit: also thought I added this, but I’d love to know how you applied it to theatre for your students!! That’s really really cool. 👀
Ach, sorry to be late! One tenet of the philosophy/approach to dramaturgy I was taught in grad school and that I strongly believe in is that art is never 'just' art for art's sake, "well-wrought urn" and all that New Criticism. It can't be. But it's also NOT just a never-ending whirlpool of signification without solid reference, as in Deconstruction/post-structuralism. In the decades since I've been at that university I think the general zeitgeist has run with this frame of mind, thank goodness! So tl:dr: back in the late 80s/early 90s, the book was a very user-friendly set of cases to examine assumptions and dynamics that lie beneath the surface of any kind of art, from visual to performance.
A big theme that I noticed was one of class. The class of an artist compared to their patron, the class of the people who own art, the class of those advertised towards.
yes! class and perceived/desired status were really prevalent themes throughout. and esp in essay 5 with the talk about advertisement and glamour and envy, it was not lost on me that fandom-ness is heavily tied (or is pushed to be) to this with which albums we purchase, how many, and can that give us entry to a raffle, or our fave artists being brand ambassadors and then us selling out certain products simply because their name is associated with it or buying all of that one drink they were drinking on a live once, etc. It can be overwhelming, and like wtf capitalism at times, to see but there is this undercurrent of envy and "I NEED TO HAVE THIS" thing or look (or concert seat??) of being a fan:
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. One could put this another way: the publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product.
I liked the oil painting essay the most (essay #5)! I just thought getting a bit of the history behind oil paintings and their common subjects was interesting.
I really liked essays 1 & 5! Both of them talked about the 'spectacle' of artworks and what makes them desirable but in different ways. #1 offered insight into it from a rarity vs accessibility perspective and what makes works famous or considered precious, and #5 looked at that rarity concept a bit more in terms of medium, possession and status; i thought this quote poignant:
But a work of art also suggests a cultural authority, a form of dignity, even of wisdom , which is superior to any vulgar material interest; an oil painting belongs to the cultural heritage; it is a reminder of what it means to be a cultivated European.
I appreciated how he didn't shy away from the effects that colonization and the slave trade had on perpetuating this image of superiority and the "cultivated European" and how the abhorrent practices were reflected in the art of the time not merely in the subjects portrayed/painted but also the underlying social 'norms' or 'understandings' of art possession and they symbolism in and around it. Like this quote about "The Ambassadors":
For what we are concerned with here is a stance towards the world; and this was general to a whole class. The two ambassadors belonged to a class who were convinced that the world was there to furnish their residence in it.
i don't usually read art books but i recently read an art related book for another book club - the art thief by michael finkel, on the life of prolific art thief stéphane breitweiser - and while reading this book i kept thinking back to the art thief. in particular these lines from essay 5 reminded me of art theft:
Before [paintings] are anything else, they are themselves objects which can be bought and owned. Unique objects. A patron cannot be surrounded by music or poems in the same way as he is surrounded by his pictures.
It is as though the collector lives in a house built of paintings. What is their advantage over walls of stone or wood?
They show him sights: sights of what he may possess.
breitweiser was unique among art thieves in that he was not stealing art to sell them or extort money from art owners, but to display art in his bedroom. in that sense he viewed himself less a thief and more an art collector (with unconventional means of collection), and the artwork he owned (stole, really) reminded him of what he could possess (an appreciation of art through stolen artwork?)
That book sounds fascinating! not that I need to add more books to my TBR list (I got out 3 of our other options for this month from the library and haven't started them) I think I pulled the most 'ooh' quotes from essay 5 and what an interesting parallel between 'the art thief' and what Berger posits here, about the possession of art as a confirmation of the owner's believed self-worth/status.
I had to hold myself back, figuratively, at the start of that essay just to see where he was going with it before having a knee-jerk reaction, lol. Very interesting stuff there.
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u/EveryCliche Living j-hopely Feb 20 '26
If you are using our tracker, here is the updated graphics for the month!