In 1972, amid the social and political chaos occurring in Britain, one softly-spoken man with an affinity for loud shirts transformed the very way that we looked at art. 

 

John Berger, a renowned writer, presented a series of short films on art in an attempt to challenge perspectives on art, drawing in on the multi-faceted functions of mediums such as oil paint and colour photography, as well as the visual conceptualisation of the body. Indeed, Berger achieved what had seldom been attempted by art historians: he made art accessible. Suddenly, people no longer only saw Michelangelo’s ‘David’ as a big chunk of stone with a face carved into it, but an expression of anticipation, a figure of hope. Yes, art became a new and exciting thing, no longer an entity of the past that was only understandable with the appropriate cultural capital, but an ever-present and tangible interest. 

 

Throughout the series, Berger remarked upon the influence of the camera in bringing art to the forefront of society. He saw it as a method of revolutionising the visibility of art: no longer merely seen in expensive galleries, art was now everywhere: on street posters, album covers, even tea towels. It has become a feature of our reality, or, as Berger eloquently puts it, ‘you are seeing [artworks] in the context of your own life.’ His theory on the camera is perhaps more prominent in the advent of social media. At the risk of sounding like an pseudo-philosophical outsider commenting on the perils of phone-wielding mortals, can we not see a comparison with the way in which our personal lives have become artistic commodities on platforms such as Instagram?