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What does art tell us about ourselves? John Berger on the politics and consolations of creativity.
In this brilliant collection of diverse works—essays, short stories, poems, translations—which spans a lifetime’s engagement with art, John Berger reveals how he came to his own unique way of seeing. He challenges readers to rethink their every assumption about the role of creativity in our lives. Paying homage to the writers and thinkers who influenced him, he pushes at the limits of art writing, demonstrating beautifully how his artist’s eye makes him a storyteller, rather than a critic. His expansive perspective takes in artistic movements and individual artists—from the Renaissance to the present—while never neglecting the social and political context of their creation. Landscapes—alongside Portraits—completes a tour through the history of art that will be an intellectual benchmark for many years to come.
One of the most influential intellectuals of our time.
John Berger teaches us how to think, how to feel how to stare at things until we see what we thought wasn’t there. But above all, he teaches us how to love in the face of adversity. He is a master.
Berger is a writer one demands to know more about … an intriguing and powerful mind and talent.
Essential ... reminds us that all good writing comes only from good (that is, patient, attentive, loving) looking.
Essential reading not just for our political moment but outside it. He was a monument, a world of his own; at the same time, his thinking and his art—which are the same thing—address themselves at once to the past, the present, and the future
I also loved Landscapes, a posthumous anthology of John Berger’s essays, stories and poems about art.