In 1972, John Berger’s revelatory TV series and subsequent book, Ways of Seeing, began by discussing the changing ways we experience art via the then recent innovation of colour televisions in homes. Berger argued that “we see these paintings as nobody saw them before … Your wallpaper is around them, your window is opposite them, your carpet is below them. You are seeing them in the context of your own life.”
More than 50 years on, as smartphone users, we are able to access unlimited artworks in a moment. As Berger pointed out, “an image that is reproduced can be seen in a million different places at the same time”, so how can we take in the sheer amount of information available for consumption today?
