While this may now seem obvious, it was an extremely radical proposition at the time, directly challenging the conventional narrative from art history that a work's meaning was unchangeable and resided within the piece itself, rather than its context or the conditions of its viewing. "The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled," he continues, setting the stage for the book's later analysis of how seeing is a subjective act, influenced by the relationship between us and whatever we're looking at. This quote is followed by an explanation that vision inevitably precedes language, because we are constantly in the world, necessarily surrounded by objects before we can ever name them. He also hints towards the notion that looking is a relational act, a point that he will later develop in greater depth. In this, the very first line of the book, Berger already sets forth a radical premise: looking at art is an experience that can't be bound by words, because the act of looking predates the knowledge of language itself. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak." Ways of Seeing, p.7
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