Berger Responses

Before You Read
1. If I was going to draw a picture of a woman, I would not really face her in any certain way, I mean, until now I never really thought about drawing a picture of a woman. If I did draw a picture though, I don't think that I would make her the only object in the picture, I would probably draw some flowers or a tree or something to give the picture some scenery. No, she would not be nude.

2. In the classical picture, (I chose Da Vinci's Mona Lisa) the woman in the painting has a calm, yet confident expression on her face, and looks as if she is presenting herself with class. In the modern advertisement, (in this case a Dolce and Gabanna ad), the confidence is still present in the picture, however, the model was depicted to look more like an object of sex than an object of class.

Summary
In his article "Ways of Seeing", John Berger attempts to explain to the reader that in Renaissance art, women were seen and judged as sights. He argues that women are the subjects of men and that being naked means to be without disguise.

Synthesis
This reading was similar to the other readings that we have read in this class because it discusses constructs. In this case it is the construct that women are born to serve men and to be only seen as sexual objects, which is still a little bit present even in today's equal society.

Questions for discussion
1. Yes, I do think that the artists of these paintings knew what they were doing when they created them because back then there was a huge line between men and women, and they knew the norms of society were to see women only as objects, so that is how they painted them. Yes, I do think that berger would agree with me.

3. While today's society is pretty equal when it comes to gender, there are still those assumptions about women being obsessed with their image and men with their power. Women today still tend to dress to impress, while men still tend to show off in order to make an impression.

Applying and Exploring
3. I do see it a little bit, because in some advertisements the model seems to either give off an image being sexy, confident, sweet, or a fun loving person just by the way she is standing or smiling in the picture. So yes, I do see some similarities.

4. I think humor defines a person by contributing to their overall personality, but I don't really think that it nessesarily has to compensate for something else. It may fall on gender lines though, because even in today's society there are many jokes in the mainstream that illustrate the mental and sexual differences between men and women.

Meta Moment
These concepts could be connected to writing, audience, and authorship because writing, like art, is deciphered by the reader. A person's writing could mean so many different things to different people that it can be interpreted in many different ways, not always in the way that the author intended it to. This article was parallel to that because the way that the viewer takes in the art is also different from person to person.

Thoughts on the reading
I thought this was a little bit interesting once I got reading, but I'll be honest, I wouldn't normally read an article about nude art in my spare time. However, it did describe some of societies constructs when it comes to gender differences, which could be useful information.