Since these chapters don't discuss art history, I'm going to mostly ignore them.
But they do deserve some attention because, actually, Berger is far more interested in self than art, and the 20th C. produced a great deal of literature about self - as well as several cultic practices that range from the prestigious academics of Freudian psychoanalysis to the frankly entrepreneurial (Scientology, Landmark Forum, and other self-help enterprises) Berger devotes an entire chapter to Lacan and the "Narcissicim of orthopsychic desire" - with extensive quotes and discussion from Lacanians like Joan Copjec and Slavoj Zizek. He distances himself from the cult by declaring "I have little interest in trying to justify or be faithful to Lacanian psychoanalysis" because "I would have to take into account the wry, allusive, conspicuously cryptic, and comically competitive discourse that by representing itself as the performance of "the one who is supposed to know" mocks both the performer and the establishment in a sustained act of orthopsychic mimicry" But, still, he's using the same tactics to pursue the same agenda: the presentation of himself as "one who is supposed to know", ameliorated by self-mocking. Which does not involve an interest in art, except to aggrandize his own self image that is preened in hundreds of pages of dense, meandering prose that offers nothing but his own cleverness. Berger imagines that Rembrandt made those self portraits for the same reason, which allows him to dedicate so much of this book to the philosophical and psychological issues of self representation. But that's only because Berger cannot see what Rembrandt actually achieved. Expressing the self and analyzing the self can be two very different -- and non-complementary - activitees. ____________________________________________________________ Small Business Tools Click here for to find products that will help grow your small business. http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/c?cp=h_5L_dU90NoS-_WiuJeefQAAJz6c l_zTaptgNR5c8Mer1v9kAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARMQAAAAA=
