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John Berger

British painter, writer and art critic

This article is about the English artist and writer. For other uses, see John Berger (disambiguation).

John Peter Berger (BUR-jər; 5 November – 2 January ) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel G. won the Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to the BBC series of the same name, was influential.

He lived in France for over fifty years.

Early life

Berger was born on 5 November [1] in Stoke Newington, London,[2][3] the first of two children of Miriam and Stanley Berger.[4]

His grandfather was from Trieste, now Italy,[5] and his father, Stanley, raised as a non-religious Jew who adopted Catholicism,[6] had been an infantry officer on the Western Front during the First World War and was awarded the Military Cross[3][7] and an OBE.[8]

Berger was educated at St Edward's School, Oxford.[9] He served in the British Army during the Second World War from to [10] He enrolled at the Chelsea School of Art[9] and the Central School of Art and Design in London.[10]

Career

Berger began his career as a painter[11] and exhibited works at a number of London galleries in the late s.[11][8] His art has been shown at the Wildenstein, Redfern and Leicester Galleries in London.[2]

Berger taught drawing at St Mary's teacher training college.[2] He later became an art critic, publishing many essays and reviews in the New Statesman.[2][12] His Marxistliterary criticism and strongly stated opinions on modern art combined to make him a controversial figure early in his career.[13][14] As a statement of political commitment, he titled an early collection of essays Permanent Red.[15]

Berger was never a formal member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB): rather he was a close associate of it and its front, the Artists' International Association (AIA), until the latter disappeared in He was active in the Geneva Club, a discussion group that appears to have overlapped with British communist circles in the s.[16]

Publishing

In , Berger published his first novel, A Painter of Our Time,[17] which tells the story of the disappearance of Janos Lavin, a fictional exiled Hungarian painter, and his diary's discovery by an art critic friend called John.[18] The work was withdrawn by the publisher under pressure from the Congress for Cultural Freedom a month after its publication.[8] His next novels were The Foot of Clive and Corker's Freedom;[2] both of which presented an urban English life of alienation and melancholy.

Berger moved to Quincy in Mieussy in Haute-Savoie, France, in due to his distaste for life in Britain.[2]

In , the BBC broadcast his four-part television series Ways of Seeing[2][11][18] and published its accompanying text, a book of the same name.

The first episode functions as an introduction to the study of images; it was derived in part from Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction".[19] The subsequent episodes concern the image of woman as a sexualized object in Western culture, expressions of property ownership and wealth in European oil painting, and modern advertising.[20] The series, the first of several close collaborations with director Mike Dibb, has had a lasting influence, and in particular introduced the concept of the male gaze, as part of his analysis of the treatment of the nude in European painting.

It soon became popular among feminists, including the British film critic Laura Mulvey, who used it to critique traditional media representations of the female character in cinema.[21]

Berger's novel G., a picaresque romance set in Europe in , won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Booker Prize in [2][22]

Berger donated half the Booker cash prize to the British Black Panthers, and retained the other half to support his work on the study on migrant workers, which became A Seventh Man; he asserted that both endeavors represented aspects of his political struggle.[2][23] In his acceptance speech at the Booker Prize ceremony, Berger said the prize's sponsor, Booker McConnell, had a long history of slavery and exploitation in the Caribbean, and this was why he wanted to donate the money to the British Black Panthers and fund the writing of his book on migrant workers.[1]

Berger's sociological writings include A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor ()[24] and A Seventh Man: Migrant Workers in Europe ().[25]

Berger and photographer Jean Mohr, his frequent collaborator, sought to document and understand the experiences of peasants.[26][27]

Their subsequent book, Another Way of Telling, discusses and illustrates their documentary technique and treats the theory of photography through Berger's essays and Mohr's photographs.[28] His studies of individual artists include The Success and Failure of Picasso (), a survey of that modernist's career, and Art and Revolution: Ernst Neizvestny, Endurance, and the Role of the Artist in the USSR ().[2]

In the s, Berger collaborated on three films with the Swiss director Alain Tanner:[1][10] He wrote or co-wrote La Salamandre (), The Middle of the World (), and Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year ().[29] His major fictional work of the s, the trilogy Into Their Labours (consisting of the novels Pig Earth, Once in Europa, and Lilac and Flag),[4][30] treats the European peasant experience from its farming roots to contemporary economic and political displacement and urban poverty.[4][31] In , Berger co-founded the Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative Ltd in London with Arnold Wesker, Lisa Appignanesi, Richard Appignanesi, Chris Searle, Glenn Thompson, Siân Williams, and others.[32] The cooperative was active until the early s.[33]

In later essays, Berger wrote about photography, art, politics, and memory.

He published in The Shape of a Pocket a correspondence with Subcomandante Marcos,[34] and penned short stories that appeared in The Threepenny Review and The New Yorker. His sole volume of poetry is Pages of the Wound, though other volumes, such as the theoretical essays And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos contain poetry.

His collection of essays on the uses of art as an instrument of political resistance, Hold Everything Dear, was titled after the poem by Gareth Evans. His later novels include To the Wedding, a love story dealing with the AIDS crisis,[7][35] and King: A Street Story, a novel about homelessness and shantytown life told from the perspective of a stray dog.[4][35] Initially, Berger insisted that his name be kept off the cover and title page of King, wanting the novel to be received on its own merits.[36]

Berger's volume About Looking includes an influential chapter, "Why Look at Animals?"[37] It is cited by numerous scholars in the interdisciplinary field of animal studies.

The chapter was later reproduced in a Penguin Great Ideas selection of essays of the same title.[37]

Berger's novel From A to X was long-listed for the Booker Prize.[1][38] In Bento's Sketchbook () Berger combines extracts from Baruch Spinoza, sketches, memoir, and observations in a book that contemplates the relationship of materialism to spirituality.

According to Berger, what could be seen as a contradiction "is beautifully resolved by Spinoza, who shows that it is not a duality, but in fact an essential unity".[39] The book has been described as "a characteristically sui generis work combining an engagement with the thought of the 17th-century lens grinder, draughtsman, and philosopher Baruch Spinoza, with a study of drawing and a series of semi-autobiographical sketches".[39] Among his last works is Confabulations (essays, ).[7][40]

Other work

In , Berger voiced both twin brother characters Archie and Albert Crisp in the video game Grand Theft Auto: London .[41]

He was a member of the Support Committee of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine.[42]

Personal life

Berger married three times,[2] first to artist and illustrator Patricia (Pat) Marriott in ; the marriage was childless and the couple divorced.[2] In the mids, he married the Russian Anya Bostock (née Anna Sisserman), with whom he had two children, Katya Berger and Jacob Berger; the couple divorced in the mids.[2] Soon afterwards, he married Beverly Bancroft, with whom he had one child, Yves.[2] Beverly died in [2]

Berger died at his home in Antony, France, on 2 January at the age of [1][43][44]

Legacy

In July Berger donated his archive of files, nine boxes and one book to the British Library.

The contents include literary manuscripts, drafts, unpublished material and correspondence.[45]

Awards

Literary works

Fiction

Novels and novella

Plays

Screenplays

Poetry

Non-fiction

Essays and articles

  • The Look of Things: Selected Essays and Articles ()[50]
  • About Looking ()[12]
  • A Fortunate Man (with Jean Mohr) ()[50]
  • Keeping a Rendezvous ()[50]
  • Photocopies ()[2]
  • Selected Essays (Geoff Dyer, ed.) ()[50]
  • Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance (; 2nd ed.

    )[61]

  • Why Look at Animals? ()[62]
  • Confabulations (Essays) ()[12]
  • Meanwhile ()[7]
  • Swimming Pool (with Leon Kossoff) (Introduction by Deborah Levy. Postscript by Yves Berger. Berger's Texts selected by Teresa Pintó.

    Book design by John Christie) ()

Art and art criticism

Other

  • A Seventh Man (with Jean Mohr) ()[12]
  • Another Way of Telling (with Jean Mohr) ()[50]
  • And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos ()[50]
  • The White Bird (U.S.

    title: The Sense of Sight) ()[50]

  • Isabelle: A Story in Shots (with Nella Bielski) ()[50]
  • At the Edge of the World (with Jean Mohr) ()[72]
  • I Send You This Cadmium Red: A Correspondence between John Berger and John Christie (with John Christie) ()[73]
  • My Beautiful (with Marc Trivier) ()[74]
  • The Red Tenda of Bologna ()[75]
  • War with No End (with Naomi Klein, Hanif Kureishi, Arundhati Roy, Ahdaf Soueif, Joe Sacco and Haifa Zangana) ()[76]
  • From I to J (with Isabel Coixet) ()[77]
  • Railtracks (with Anne Michaels) ()[78]
  • Cataract (with Selçuk Demirel) ()[79]
  • Flying Skirts: An Elegy (with Yves Berger) ()[80]
  • Cuatro horizontes (Four Horizons) (with Sister Lucia Kuppens, Sister Telchilde Hinkley and John Christie) ()[81]
  • Lapwing & Fox (Conversations between John Berger and John Christie) ()[82]
  • John by Jean: Fifty Years of Friendship (Jean Mohr, ed.) ()[83]
  • A Sparrow's Journey: John Berger Reads Andrey Platonov (CD: & page book with Robert Chandler and Gareth Evans), London: House Sparrow Press in association with the London Review Bookshop ()[84]
  • Smoke (with Selçuk Demirel) ()
  • What Time Is It? (with Selçuk Demirel) (Maria Nadotti, ed.) ()
  • Over To You.

    Letters Between a Father & Son. Tate Publishing ()

Film

  • The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger (), directed by Tilda Swinton, Colin MacCabe, Christopher Roth and Bartek Dziadosz.

Reviews

  • Harkness, Allan (), Berger: A Seventh Man?, review of A Seventh Man and Another Way of Telling, in Hearn, Sheila G.(ed.), Cencrastus No.

    12, Spring , pp. 46 & 47, ISSN&#;

References

  1. ^ abcde"John Berger, Provocative Art Critic, Dies at 90". The New York Times. 2 January Retrieved 3 January
  2. ^ abcdefghijklmnopqrs"John Berger obituary".

    John berger author biography essay sample John Berger. Tools Tools. English PEN. The Red Tenda of Bologna 4.

    The Guardian. 2 January Retrieved 3 January

  3. ^ ab"I think the dead are with us": John Berger at 88". The New Statesman. 11 June Retrieved 3 January
  4. ^ abcdef"Contented exile".

    The Guardian. 13 February Retrieved 3 January

  5. ^The Books Interview: John Berger: The Books Interview: John Berger, accessdate: 2 January
  6. ^Andy Merrifield, John Berger, Reaktion Books (), p. 29
  7. ^ abcd"John Berger: 'If I'm a storyteller it's because I listen'".

    The Guardian.

  8. What is a author biography
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  10. How to write a author biography

    11. 30 October Retrieved 3 January

  11. ^ abcDuncan O'Connor. "Literary Encyclopedia &#; John Berger". . Retrieved 3 January
  12. ^ abcde"A radical returns".

    The Guardian. 3 April Retrieved 4 January

  13. ^ abcRay, Ed. Mohit K. (). The Atlantic Companion to Literature in English. Atlantic Publishers. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
  14. ^ abc"John Berger, art critic and author of Ways of Seeing, dies".

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  15. ^ abcdef"John Berger, influential British art critic, novelist, dies at 90". The Washington Post.

    3 January Retrieved 4 January

  16. ^"Berger, John". .
  17. ^"A Smuggling Operation: John Berger's Theory of Art". LARB. 2 January Retrieved 5 January
  18. ^"The Many Faces of John Berger". New Republic. 30 December Retrieved 5 January
  19. ^Parker, Lawrence (2 February ).

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    25. Weekly Worker. Retrieved 19 January

  25. ^"John Berger, art critic and author, dies aged 90". The Guardian. 2 January Retrieved 3 January
  26. ^ ab"John Berger: Five key works by the late art critic". The Week.

    3 January Retrieved 4 January

  27. ^Berger, John (). Ways of Seeing. London: BBC and Penguin Books. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
  28. ^Berger, John (writer) and Michael Dibb (producer). Ways of Seeing. British Broadcasting Corporation,
  29. ^A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, edited by Sharon L.

    James, Sheila Dillon, p. 75, , Wiley, ISBN&#;,

  30. ^"G". The Booker Prizes. 8 June Retrieved 7 November
  31. ^McNay, Michael (24 November ). "Berger turns tables on Booker". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 5 December
  32. ^"John Berger's A Fortunate Man: a masterpiece of witness".

    The Guardian. 7 February Retrieved 4 January

  33. ^"A Seventh Man: Migrant Workers in Europe by John Berger and Jean Mohr – review". The Guardian. 18 December Retrieved 4 January
  34. ^Berger, John; Mohr, Jean; Blomberg, Sven (). A Seventh Man: A Book of Images and Words about the Experience of Migrant Workers in Europe.

    Verso. ISBN&#;.

  35. ^Read an excerpt from the book here: Berger, John (). "The Seventh Man". Race & Class. 16 (2): – doi/ S2CID&#;
  36. ^"ANOTHER WAY OF TELLING". Penguin Random House.
  37. ^Christian Dimitriu, Alain Tanner, Paris: Henri Veyrier, , pp.

    –

  38. ^On John Berger: Telling Stories. BRILL. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
  39. ^ abcdef"LOVE AMONG THE PEASANTRY". The New York Times. 5 April Retrieved 4 January
  40. ^"Libros para Principiantes: Quienes somos".

    . Retrieved 3 January

  41. ^"Remembering Glenn Thompson". African American Literature Book Club. Retrieved 5 January
  42. ^"Morreu John Berger, um artista (e um espectador) total". Publico. 2 January Retrieved 4 January
  43. ^ abHertel, Ralf ().

    Making Sense: Sense Perception in the British Novel of the s and s.

    John berger author biography essay examples The Seasonal Read Legacy [ edit ]. British painter, writer and art critic. Berger was born on 5 November [ 1 ] in Stoke Newington , London, [ 2 ] [ 3 ] the first of two children of Miriam and Stanley Berger.

    Rodopi. p.&#; ISBN&#;.

  44. ^"Portrait of the artist as a wild old man". The Telegraph. 23 July Retrieved 4 January
  45. ^ abMcCance, Dawne ().

    John berger author biography essay The Red Tenda of Bologna 4. Pig Earth 4. Associated Press. Art and art criticism [ edit ].

    Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction. SUNY Press. p.&#; ISBN&#;.

  46. ^Michelle Pauli. "Booker longlist boost for first-time novelists". the Guardian. Retrieved 2 January
  47. ^ abWroe, Nicholas (22 April ). "John Berger: a life in writing".

    The Guardian. Retrieved 22 August

  48. ^"John Berger dead: Booker Prize-winning author and art critic dies aged 90". Independent. 2 January Retrieved 4 January
  49. ^"RIP John Berger, Famous British Novelist, Art Critic and Secret GTA: London Villain". Rockstar Games. 3 January Retrieved 4 January
  50. ^"Patrons | Russell Tribunal on Palestine".

    . Retrieved 8 January

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  53. ^John Berger Archive, archives and manuscripts catalogue, the British Library.

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  54. ^"Booker prize-winning author John Berger dies aged 90". The Telegraph. 2 January Retrieved 3 January
  55. ^Bürkle, Christoph (). Johann Sebastian Bach: der geometrische Komponist, Issues –. Niggli. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
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  58. ^ abcdefghijklmnoThe International Who's Who .

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  59. ^"'From A to X: A Story in Letters,' by John Berge". The New York Times. 31 October Retrieved 4 January
  60. ^Soja, Edward W. (). Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (illustrated, reprint&#;ed.).

    Verso. p.&#; ISBN&#;.

  61. ^Merrifield, Andy (). John Berger (illustrated&#;ed.). Reaktion Books. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
  62. ^"John Berger". . 5 November
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  65. ^ abTalbot, Toby (). The New Yorker Theater and Other Scenes from a Life at the Movies (illustrated&#;ed.). Columbia University Press. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
  66. ^"Tilda Swinton on making 'The Seasons in Quincy', four short films about maverick artist and thinker John Berger".

    Independent. 15 February Retrieved 4 January

  67. ^"The glory and the dream". The Indian Express. 13 March Retrieved 4 January
  68. ^"A review of John Berger's Collected Poems". The Hindu. 10 October Retrieved 5 January
  69. ^Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance.

    Verso. ISBN&#;.

  70. ^"Why Look at Animals?

    What is a author biography: Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. Welcome back. Home Answers. In , Berger published his first novel, A Painter of Our Time , [ 17 ] which tells the story of the disappearance of Janos Lavin, a fictional exiled Hungarian painter, and his diary's discovery by an art critic friend called John.

    by John Berger". The Guardian. 19 September Retrieved 4 January

  71. ^"Sense of Sight By John Berger". Carmen Balcells Literary Agency.
  72. ^Albrecht Dürer: Watercolours and Drawings. Taschen. ISBN&#;.
  73. ^Berger on Drawing. Occasional Press. ISBN&#;.
  74. ^Lying Down to Sleep.

    Maurizio Corraini. ISBN&#;.

  75. ^"John Berger on 'Bento's Sketchbook'". The Paris Review. 22 November Retrieved 4 January
  76. ^John Berger, Understanding a Photograph, Aperture. ISBN&#;
  77. ^Daumier: The Heroism of Modern Life. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN&#;.
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    Examples of author biography Add New. The History Book Ways of Seeing. Awards [ edit ].

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  80. ^"At the Edge of the World". Reaktion Books. Archived from the original on 6 January Retrieved 5 January
  81. ^I Send You this Cadmium Red: A Correspondence Between John Berger and John Christie.

    ACTAR. ISBN&#;.

  82. ^My Beautiful. Mondadori Bruno. ISBN&#;.
  83. ^"John Berger limited edition". . Archived from the original on 4 August Retrieved 5 January
  84. ^"War With No End". Penguin Random House.
  85. ^From I to J.

    Actar-D Bruno.

  86. ^Railtracks. Counterpoint. ISBN&#;.
  87. ^"Review: Cataract". . February
  88. ^Flying Skirts: An Elegy. Occasional Press. ISBN&#;.
  89. ^"Cuatro horizontes Una visita a la capilla de Ronchamp de Le Corbusier".

    . Archived from the original on 17 March

  90. ^"Lapwing & Fox, conversations between John Berger and John Christie". .
  91. ^"John by Jean: Fifty Years of Friendship". . Archived from the original on 15 August
  92. ^"A Sparrow's Journey: John Berger reads Andrey Platonov".

    House Sparrow Press.

Further reading

  • Sperling, Joshua () A Writer of Our Time: The Life and Work of John Berger
  • Bounds, Philip "Beyond&#;: The Media Criticism of John Berger" in Philip Bounds and Mala Jagmohan (eds), Recharting Media Studies, Peter Lang , ISBN&#;
  • Dyer, Geoff Ways of Telling: The Work of John Berger, ISBN&#;
  • Dyer, Geoff (Ed.) John Berger, Selected Essays, Bloomsbury.

    ISBN&#;

  • Fuller, Peter () Seeing Berger. A Revaluation of , Writers and Readers. ISBN&#;
  • Hertel, Ralf and David Malcolm (eds.), On John Berger: Telling Stories. Leiden: Brill, ISBN&#;
  • Hochschild, Adam Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels (Syracuse University Press, ), "Broad Jumper in the Alps," pp.&#;50–
  • Krautz, Jochen Vom Sinn des Sichtbaren.

    John Bergers Ästhetik und Ethik als Impuls für die Kunstpädagogik am Beispiel der Fotografie, Hamburg (Dr. Kovac) ISBN&#;X.

  • Merrifield, Andy John Berger, London: Reaktion Books, ISBN&#;
  • Papastergiadis, Nikos Modernity as exile: The stranger in John Berger's writing (Manchester University Press, ) ISBN&#;
  • Chandan, Amarjit; Evans, Gareth; Gunaratnam, Yasmin (Eds.) The Long White Thread of Words: Poems for John Berger, Ripon: Smokestack Books, ISBN&#;
  • Chandan, Amarjit; Gunaratnam, Yasmin (Eds.) A Jar of Wild Flowers: Essays in Celebration of John Berger, London: Zed Books, ISBN&#;

External links