John Berger didn’t want to be called a critic. Where there is formal analysis, his Marxist reasoning implied, there is patrolling and commodifying. He sometimes used formal analysis, but as an opening maneuver, as a means to an end. (The end was often a thought about desire and work and human dignity in relation to profit.) Anyway, no matter what he thought, criticism is wide enough to encompass him. To some degree he made it so: he expanded the practice.
In the September 1954 edition of House & Garden, the art critic, essayist and novelist John Berger shared his sage advice on buying art. More than 60 years have passed and, while the prices might have soared, his words still ring true.
On the eve of his 90th birthday, one of the most influential writers of his generation talks about migration, Brexit, growing old – and his fondness for texting
As the world mourns over the news of the artist, writer and intellectual’s passing, we reflect on the quotes that helped to demystify, question and critique the world around us
When Joshua Sperling’s biography of John Berger arrived at my door, I approached it with trepidation. I’d known Berger for more than forty years, and biographers, having amassed reams of information about a life, may render it in ways that make it unrecognizable to friends or family. Upon his death in January 2017, many of Berger’s British obituarists, on both the right and the left, engaged in settling decades-old political or art world scores. Berger had not only escaped the confines of his British island but he had had the audacity to rise to fame before doing so. From his French mountainside he denounced injustices that were everywhere visible, even in his native land. He was read in a multiplicity of languages. None of this could altogether be forgiven.
Discover John Berger famous and rare quotes. Share John Berger quotations about painting, art and photography. "We never look at just one thing; we..."
After being afflicted with cataracts, the late critic and novelist reflected on the mechanics of sight.
Tom Overton reflects on the life of a great storyteller with contributions on his art criticism, broadcasting and fiction
Ben Lerner on the writer and critic John Berger, who died earlier this week, at the age of ninety.
'It's an improbable city, Bologna - like one you might walk through after you have died.' A dreamlike meditation on memory, food, paintings, a fond uncle and the improbable beauty of Bologna, from the visionary thinker and art critic. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.
In 1967, while working with the Swiss photographer Jean Mohr on A Fortunate Man, a book about a country GP serving a deprived community in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, John Berger began to rec
El autor, considerado uno de los más influyentes de su generación. «G.», «Siempre bienvenidos» o «Modos de ver» son algunas de sus obras más conocidas
I’ve always been intrigued by your author’s bio, which says that you live “in a small rural community in France.” Where exactly are you? I live in a little hamlet called Quincy in the French Alps, about fifty kilometers west of Mont Blanc. There are only about a hundred people in the community, and […]
Like for so many others, John Berger was an inspirational figure for us, a long while before Tara was born or even thought of. It was from him that we learnt to look at and think about art in a way…
