Main entry:

Berger, John.

Title & Author:

Selected essays / John Berger ; edited by Geoff Dyer.

Edition:

First American edition.

Publication:

New York : Pantheon Books, ©2001.

Description:

xiii, 588 pages ; 25 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references.
From Permanent red (1960) (US title Toward reality) -- Preface to the 1979 edition -- Introduction -- Drawing -- Jackson Pollock -- Henry Moore -- Juan Gris -- Jacques Lipchitz -- Ossip Zadkine -- Fernand Léger -- Pablo Picasso -- Henri Matisse -- Oskar Kokoschka -- The clarity of the Renaissance -- The calculations of Piero -- Poussin's order -- Watteau as the painter of his time -- The Honesty of Goya -- The dilemma of the Romantics -- Millet and labour -- The politics of Courbet -- Gauguin's crime -- From The moment of Cubism (1969) -- The moment of Cubism -- The historical function of the museum -- The changing view of man in the portrait -- Art and property now -- Image of imperialism -- Nude in a fur coat: Rubens -- The painter in his studio: Vermeer -- Et in arcadia ego: Poussin -- The maja dressed and the maja undressed: Goya -- Mathias Grünewald -- L.S. Lowry -- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec -- Alberto Giacometti -- Pierre Bonnard -- Frans Hals -- Auguste Rodin -- From The look of things (1972) -- Peter Peri -- Zadkine -- Le Corbusier -- Victor Serge -- Walter Benjamin -- Drawings by Watteau -- Fernand Léger -- Thicker than water (Corot) -- Painting a landscape -- Understanding a photograph -- The political uses of photo-montage -- The sight of a man -- Revolutionary undoing -- Past seen from a possible future -- The nature of mass demonstrations -- The Booker Prize speech (1972) -- From About looking (1980) -- Why look at animals? -- The suit and the photograph -- Photographs of agony -- Paul Strand -- Uses of photography -- The primitive and the professional -- Millet and the peasant -- Seker Ahmet and the forest -- La Tour and humanism -- Francis Bacon and Walt Disney -- An article of faith -- Between two Colmars -- Courbet and the jura -- Turner and the barber's shop -- Rouault and the suburbs of Paris -- Magritte and the impossible -- Romaine Lorquet -- Field -- From The white bird (1985) (US title The sense of sight) -- The white bird -- The storyteller -- The eaters and the eaten -- On the Bosphorus -- The theatre of indifference -- Modigliani's alphabet of love -- The Hals mystery -- In a Moscow cemetery -- Ernst Fischer: the philosopher and death -- François, Georges, Amélie: a requiem in three parts -- Drawn to that moment -- The eyes of Claude Monet -- The work of art -- Mayakovsky: his language and his death [with Anya Bostock] -- The hour of poetry -- Leopardi -- The production of the world -- Ulysses -- The first and the last recipe: Ulysses (1991) -- From Keeping a rendezvous (1992) -- Note to the reader -- Ev'ry time we say goodbye -- That which is held -- A load of shit -- Mother -- A Story for Aesop -- The ideal palace -- Imagine Paris -- A kind of sharing -- Christ of the peasants -- A professional secret -- Ape theatre -- The opposite of naked -- A household -- Drawing on paper -- Erogenous zone -- The soul and the operator -- The third week of August, 1991.
Dust jacket.

Summary:

John Berger's diverse achievements as a writer are widely recognized. In addition to plays, novels, short stories, and poetry, he has always written essays, expressing more than forty years of tireless intellectual inquiry and fierce political engagement. Polemical, meditative, radical, and always original ("The moment at which a piece of music begins to provide a clue to the nature of all art"), Berger's essays are also extremely wide-ranging. Photographers, artists, thinkers, peasants, zoos, museums, and cities he has visited are among his subjects -sometimes all within the space of a single essay. On the occasion of Berger's seventy-fifth birthday, this collection acknowledges and honors the rich variety of his ideas and concerns. It does not simply show how Berger's views have changed or how his thought has evolved; it can also be seen as a kind of vicarious autobiography and a history of our time, as seen through the prism of art. Geoff Dyer has selected essays that originally appeared in Permanent Red, The Moment of Cubism, The Look of Things, About Looking, The Sense of Sight, and Keeping a Rendezvous. Apparent throughout these essays are the central concerns that have informed all of Berger's writing: the enduring mystery of great art and the experience of the oppressed. Most important, Selected Essays addresses the question asked by readers new to Berger's remarkable body of work: "Which book should I read first?" Selected Essays is an excellent answer to that question.

Resources:
Contributor biographical information
Publisher description

ISBN:

0375421564
9780375421563

Subject:

Berger, John Political and social views.
Berger, John
Art criticism.
Art and society.
Artists Social conditions.
Artists Psychological aspects.
Critique d'art.
Art et société.
Artistes Aspect psychologique.
art criticism.
Political and social views
Malerei
Geschichte
Aufsatzsammlung

Form/genre:

Essay
Essays.
essays.
Essais.

Added entries:

Dyer, Geoff.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 221963
Call No.: PR6052.E5 A6 2001
Status: Available