How to Be Both: When Ali Smith Meets John Berger

Abstract

In How to Be Both, Ali Smith follows John Berger’s philosophical and political conceptions of art. Understanding the world through ways of seeing may be a factor of change. Furthermore, Berger advocates the refusal of hierarchy, authority and binary ways of thinking. Dividing the novel into two parts, both titled ONE, sets them on a par. Hence the various publishers chose one or the other for a start. The multiplying of ways of seeing in the novel is reflected by the constant transgression of frontiers between the genres of writing on art, as well as gender issues. The massive use of ekphrasis dedicated to the Ferarra Palazzo Schifanoia’s wonderful frescoes, and painter F. Del Cossa’s rebellion against the duke’s authority, are embodied in the recurring figure of the ‘man in white’ in Del Cossa’s fresco and his afterlife on the inside cover page. Defined as a migrant slave, he straddles the book frontier. The fragile ekphrastic oscillation reflects the characters’ hesitation between genders as well as the changing pictorial techniques of the emerging Renaissance revolution and our own 20th century ‘new’ technologies. ‘What we see and what we know is never settled’ for J. Berger and the issues of knowledge and of the gaze are of primary importance in How to Be Both. The mother figure represents the importance of seeing which rebel adolescent George/ia tries to refuse. Pictures migrate from painted walls to books, from the camera to the teenager’s room walls, from a newspaper to the book cover and its famous J-M. Perrier’s photograph. alternative choices, art history, Del Cossa, duality, ekphrasis, frescoes, hierarchy, gender issues, photography, Renaissance, ways of seeing

Keywords

• choix alternatifs
• Del Cossa
• dualité
• ekphrasis
• façons de voir
• fresques