Instead, for him, the nude normalizes the sexist, patriarchal reduction of female humans to the status of sex objects to be used and looked at by men. He judiciously distinguishes the nude, as an art form with its own distinct set of conventions, as entirely different from the human experience of nakedness and lived sexuality.
In Chapter Three, Berger carefully elucidates the visual codes of the nude, using several oil paintings that demonstrate and validate his argument. Each chapter composed of reproductions seems to serve a thematic aim which matches either the chapter that precedes or proceeds it. Berger’s textual chapters alternate with chapters entirely composed of reproductions of works of art or pieces of visual media, including reproductions of oil paintings, editorial photography, and advertisements. The rest of the book is spent analyzing three different genres of visual material: the nude (Chapter Three), oil painting (Chapter Five), and ‘publicity images,’ or advertisements (Chapter Seven).
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