Landscapes: John Berger on Art - Softcover

John Berger

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1784785857 ISBN 13: 9781784785857

Publisher: Verso, 2018

Synopsis

In this brilliant collection of diverse worksessays, short stories, poems, translationswhich spans a lifetimes 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 artists eye makes him a storyteller, rather than a critic. His expansive perspective takes in artistic movements and individual artistsfrom the Renaissance to the presentwhile never neglecting the social and political context of their creation. Landscapesalongside Portraitscompletes a tour through the history of art that will be an intellectual benchmark for many years to come.

About this title

Review:

"Essential ... reminds us that all good writing comes only from good (that is, patient, attentive, loving) looking."
--Andrew Marr, New Statesman

"Berger's prose manifests an ethics of the committed gaze, a great sympathy for the human animal in pain and a great anger for the political conditions that extend that pain unnecessarily. As he wrote recently: 'What has prompted me to write over the years is the hunch that something needs to be told and that if I don't try to tell it, it risks not being told.' The humbleness of the word 'hunch' in that statement tells you all you need to know."
--John Douglas Millar, Frieze

"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."
--n+1

"Life has more light and colour after an encounter with Berger."
--Art Newspaper

"Berger is a masterful observer, a trait that lends his writing a profound element of artistry: these essays read like sketched studies of an as-yet-painted masterwork ... these worldly essays are timeless, inspiring works of critical observation."
--Kirkus

Praise for John Berger:

"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."
--Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things

"I admire and love John Berger's books ... Not since Lawrence has there been a writer who offers such attentiveness to the sensual world with responsiveness to the imperatives of conscience. He is a wonderful artist and thinker."
--Susan Sontag

"One of the most influential intellectuals of our time."
--Sean O'Hagan, Observer

"Berger is a writer one demands to know more about ... an intriguing and powerful mind and talent."
--New York Times

"Best Books of 2018"
--Observer

About the Author:

John Berger (19262017) was one of the most internationally influential writers of the last fifty years. His many books include Ways of Seeing; the fiction trilogy Into Their Labours; Here Is Where We Meet; the Booker Prizewinning novel G; Hold Everything Dear; the Man Bookerlonglisted From A to X; and A Seventh Man.

About this edition

• Publisher: Verso
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1784785857
• ISBN 13: 9781784785857
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320