Portraits: John Berger on Artists

by John Berger, Tom Overton (Editor)

Overview

“A rich and lovely exploration of art history” from one of the world’s most renowned art critics and author of Ways of Seeing (Slate)

A diverse cast of artists comes to life in this jargon-free study Zadie Smith hails as “among the greatest books on art I’ve ever read.”

One of the world’s most celebrated art writers takes us through centuries of drawing and painting, revealing his lifelong fascination with a diverse cast of artists. Berger grounds the artists in their historical milieu in revolutionary ways, whether enlarging on the prehistoric paintings of the Chauvet caves or Cy Twombly’s linguistic and pictorial play.

In penetrating and singular prose, Berger presents entirely new ways of thinking about artists both canonized and obscure, from Rembrandt to Henry Moore, Jackson Pollock to Picasso. Throughout, Berger maintains the essential connection between politics, art and the wider study of culture. The result is an illuminating walk through many centuries of visual culture featuring 100 black and white images, from one of the contemporary world’s most incisive critical voices.

“A wonderful artist and thinker.” —Susan Sontag

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781784781798
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	11/21/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	1,100,282
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Storyteller, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, dramatist and critic, John Berger (1926–2017) 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 Prize–winning novel G; Hold Everything Dear; the Man Booker–longlisted From A to X; and A Seventh Man.

Tom Overton catalogued John Berger’s archive at the British Library as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council–funded Collaborative Doctoral Award with King’s College London, and edited this book as a Henry Moore Institute Research Fellow and a Fellow of the Centre for Life-Writing Research at KCL. He has curated exhibitions at King’s Cultural Institute, Somerset House and the Whitechapel Gallery, and his writing has been published by the New Statesman, Apollo, White Review, Various Small Fires, Tate, the British Council and others. He is working on Berger’s biography and a book on migration and archives.

Table of Contents

Preface John Berger xi

Introduction Tom Overton xiii

1 The Chauvet Cave Painters (c. 30,000 years BC) 1

2 The Fayum Portrait Painters (1st-3rd century) 7

3 Piero della Francesca (c. 1415-92) 12

4 Antonello da Messina (c. 1430-79) 17

5 Andrea Mantegna (1430/1-1506) 23

6 Hieronymous Bosch (c. 1450-1516) 35

7 Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-69) 41

8 Giovanni Bellini (active about 1459, died 1516) 44

9 Matthias Grünewald (c. 1470-1528) 49

10 Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) 56

11 Michelangelo (1475-1564) 62

12 Titian (?1485/90-1576) 67

13 Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8-1543) 81

14 Caravaggio (1571-1610) 87

15 Frans Hals (1582/3-1666) 96

16 Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) 112

17 Rembrandt (1606-69) 137

18 Willem Drost (1633-after 1663) 159

19 Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) 167

20 Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) 171

21 Honoré Daumier (1808-79) 198

22 J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) 203

23 Jean-Louis-André-Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) 209

24 Jean-Francois Millet (1814-75) 215

25 Gustave Courbet (1819-77) 226

26 Edgar Degas (1834-1917) 236

27 Ferdinand 'Le Facteur' Cheval (1836-1924) 244

28 Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) 252

29 Claude Monet (1840-1926) 255

30 Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) 267

31 Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) 275

32 Henri Matisse (1869-1954) 279

33 Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) 283

34 Femand Léger (1881-1955) 290

35 Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967) 304

36 Henry Moore (1898-1986) 309

37 Peter Lazslo Peri (1899-1967) 319

38 Alberto Giacometti (1901-66) 324

39 Mark Rothko (1903-70) 329

40 Robert Medley (1905-94) 332

41 Frida Kahlo (1907-54) 335

42 Francis Bacon (1909-92) 341

43 Renato Guttuso (1911-87) 353

44 Jackson Pollock (1912-56) 361

45 Pollock and Lee Krasner (1908-84) 365

46 Abidin Dino (1913-93) 372

47 Nicolas de Stael (1914-55) 375

48 Prunella Clough (1919-99) 382

49 Sven Blomberg (1920-2003) 386

50 Friso Ten Holt (1921-97) 390

51 Peter de Francia (1921-2012) 394

52 Francis Newton Souza (1924-2002) 399

53 Yvonne Barlow (1924-) 401

54 Ernst Neizvestny (1925-) 404

55 Leon Kossoff (1926-) 410

56 Anthony Fry (1927-) 422

57 Cy Twombly (1928-2011) 426

58 Frank Auerbach (1931-) 428

59 Vija Celmins (1938-) 430

60 Michael Quanne (1941-) 434

61 Maggi Hambling (1945-) 439

62 Liane Birnberg (1948-) 445

63 Peter Kennard (1949-) 448

64 Andres Serrano (1950-) 452

65 Juan Muñoz (1953-2001) 455

66 Rostia Kunovsky (1954-) 466

67 Jaume Plensa (1955-) 472

68 Cristina Iglesias (1956-) 475

69 Martin Noel (1956-2008) 478

70 Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88) 482

71 Marisa Camino (1962-) 486

72 Christoph Hänsli (1963-) 489

73 Michael Broughton (1977-) 494

74 Randa Mdah (1983-) 497

Acknowledgements 503

Editorial Reviews

08/31/2015
This thick anthology of John Berger’s previously published art writings, edited by Overton, the cataloger of his archive at the British Library, point to the many sides of the prolific English critic’s writing career. Here, woven together, are mostly essays, but also poems, play fragments, novel excerpts, letters, and conversations, each seeking artists’ perspectives (Berger begins by considering the unknown creators of the Chauvet Cave paintings and concludes with contemporary artist Randa Mdah). The result is alternately frustrating and enchanting. An essay on Edgar Degas is prefaced by a poem on one of the artist’s bronzes; the section on Goya concludes with a passage from Berger’s first novel. Some mash-ups are fluid, others less so, and readers must consult the back of the book for original titles, sources, and publication dates. But the project is redeemed by Berger’s writing—the laconic strength of his voice, the intimacy and generosity of feeling, and the colossal weight of his visual experience. Of Caravaggio, he writes: “His darkness smells of candles, overripe melons, damp washing waiting to be hung out the next day.” On Rembrandt, Fernand Léger, Cy Twombly, and anything related to drawing, Berger is tremendous. 100 b&w illus. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Editors’ Choice”
—New York Times

“John Berger teaches us how to think, how to feel, how to stare at things till 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

“A volume whose breadth and depth bring it close to a definitive self-portrait of one of Britain’s most original thinkers.”
—Financial Times

“Unruly attentiveness animates … a lifetime’s engagement with artists like Rembrandt, Goya, Henry Moore and Francis Bacon … Ingenious, jargon-free and direct … Berger is a formidable stylist.”
—Alexi Worth, New York Times

“Perhaps the greatest living writer on art … reminds us just how insufficient most art commentary is these days … an indispensible guide to understanding art from cave painting to today’s experimenters.”
—Spectator (Art Books of the Year 2015)

“A near exhaustive selection of the ever astute writer’s ‘responses’ to various artists and works, chronologically organised from early cave paintings through to the Palestinian artist Randa Mdah.”
—Independent (Books of the Year 2015)

“Berger’s art criticism transcends its genre to become a very rare thing—literature.”
—New Republic

“A rich and loving exploration of art history, at once intellectually acute and deeply personal … vital and uncommonly engaging proof of concept for ideas that Berger has long espoused.”
—Slate

“John Berger is always illuminating and his latest book doesn’t disappoint.”
—Scotsman

“In this extraordinary new book, John Berger embarks on a process of re-discovery and re-figuring of history through the visual narratives given to us by portraiture. Berger’s ability for storytelling is both incisive and intriguing. He is one of the greatest writers of our time.”
—Hans Ulrich Obrist, author of Ways of Curating

“The pages are rife with muscular prose, sinewy intellectualism, and especially the sensual analogy for which he is most known. Portraits is so lively a book it can feel uncanny.”
—n+1

“Regardless of the era he studies or the decade in which he writes, his lyrical prose always ultimately serves a fervent political concern … Berger’s writing is fearless, winnowing down canonized artists to their essential political bones.”
—Brooklyn Rail

“A vast and nourishing compendium … Life has more light and colour after an encounter with Berger.”
—The Art Newspaper

“Much of his best critical prose appears in [this] chunky volume.”
—Economist

From the Publisher

2015-08-15
A Berger sampler: the esteemed art critic offers up personal portraits of a wide array of well-known and lesser-known artists and art works. The prolific Berger (Understanding a Photograph, 2013, etc.) has written books in many genres (including his Booker-winning novel G.), but he's best known as a discerning art critic, and this collection of 74 essays, some only a couple pages long, will enhance that reputation. Editor Overton, who sees Berger as a storyteller critic, has gathered them together with Berger's blessing. The pieces are arranged chronologically, from the ancient paintings on France's Chauvet Cave and the Egyptian Fayum Portraits found in necropolises to contemporary artists like the Palestinian sculptor Randa Mdah, whose installation piece, Puppet Theater, Berger writes, possesses "a power…such as I have seen in no other [work]." His comments and insights constantly surprise. For Berger, Michelangelo's subject was always the human body, and its "sublimity lay revealed in the male organ." Fellow Brit J.M.W. Turner "represents most fully the character of the British nineteenth century." Mark Rothko's greatest canvasses are "very close to blindness." They "take off the blindfolds of colour." Francis Bacon painted "human flesh as if it were a rasher of bacon." Cy Twombly is the "painterly master of verbal silence!" As a Marxist, Berger's inquiries are often situated in a distinctly political or social context, and they vary greatly in their modes of telling. His piece on Goya, the "first artist to paint the nude as a stranger," is partly written in the form of a play. His piece on Titian consists of letters written between him and his daughter. His favorite? Caravaggio, whose chiaroscuro could "banish daylight." Although some of the more mannered pieces don't work as well as others, it's always Berger's unique, captivating mind on display in these unabashedly personal essays—and that never disappoints.

Kirkus Reviews