John Berger Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.

  John Berger

  Photograph, Ifs, Meaningless

  John Berger (2008). “Selected Essays of John Berger”, p.344, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.

  John Berger

  Artist, Discovery, Drawing

  John Berger (2008). “Selected Essays of John Berger”, p.30, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

• A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. By contrast, a woman's presence... defines what can and cannot be done to her.

  John Berger

  Men, Done, Contrast

  "Ways of Seeing". Book by John Berger, 1972.

  9 Copy quote

• In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man.

  John Berger

  Men, Average, Oil

  6 Copy quote

• Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.

  John Berger

  Envy, Emotion, Common

  "Ways of Seeing". Book by John Berger (p. 148), 1972.

  20 Copy quote

• The essence of songs is neither vocal nor cerebral but organic. We follow songs in order to be enclosed. We find ourselves inside a message. The unsung, impersonal world remains outside, on the other surface of a placenta. All songs, even when their content or rendering is strongly masculine, operate maternally.

  John Berger

  Song, Order, Essence

  11 Copy quote

• A drawing is an autobiographical record of one's discovery of an event - either seen, remembered or imagined. A 'finished' work is an attempt to construct an event in itself.

  John Berger

  Discovery, Drawing, Events

  4 Copy quote

• Whenever the intensity of looking reaches a certain degree, one becomes aware of an equally intense energy coming towards one through the appearance of whatever it is one is scrutinizing.

  John Berger

  Energy, Degrees, Appearance

  6 Copy quote

• It is comparatively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture by allowing one colour to dominate, or by muting all the colours. Matisse did neither. He clashed his colours together like cymbals and the effect was like a lullaby.

  John Berger

  Artist, Unity, Together

  John Berger (2008). “Selected Essays of John Berger”, p.71, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• Landscapes can be deceptive. Sometimes a landscape seems to be less a setting for the life of its inhabitants than a curtain behind which their struggles, achievements and accidents takes place. For those who are behind the curtain, landmarks are no longer only geographic but also biographical and personal

  John Berger

  Struggle, Achievement, Landscape

  4 Copy quote

• Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible. This was once achieved by extensive deprivation. Today in the developed countries it is being achieved by imposing a false standard of what is and what is not desirable.

  John Berger

  Country, Majority, Today

  "Ways of Seeing". Book by John Berger, 1972.

  13 Copy quote

• If the public photograph contributes to a memory, it is to the memory of an unknowable and total stranger.

  John Berger

  Memories, Stranger, Photograph

  John Berger (2008). “Selected Essays of John Berger”, p.454, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• When he painted a road, the roadmakers were there in his imagination, when he painted the turned earth of a ploughed field, the gesture of the blade turning the earth was included in his own act. Whenever he looked he saw the labour of existence; and this labour, recognised as such, was what constituted reality for him. (On Vincent Van Gogh)

  John Berger

  Reality, Imagination, Earth

  4 Copy quote

• Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world which operates on the basis of necessity. Compassion opposes this order and is therefore best thought of as being in some way supernatural.

  John Berger

  Compassion, Order, World

  John Berger (2009). “The Shape of a Pocket”, p.179, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.

  John Berger

  Men, Sight, Vision

  "Ways of Seeing". Book by John Berger, 1972.

  4 Copy quote

• The human imagination... has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy. It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open.

  John Berger

  Dream, Dog, Philosophy

  John Berger (2011). “Keeping a Rendezvous”, p.231, Vintage

  43 Copy quote

• All publicity works upon anxiety.

  John Berger

  Anxiety, Publicity

  John Berger (2008). “Ways of Seeing”, p.148, Penguin UK

  7 Copy quote

• Painting is something that you need to do, if not every day, then certainly most days. It is almost like being a pianist: if you stop, you lose something.

  John Berger

  Needs, Painting, Pianist

  "John Berger: a life in writing" by Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. April 22, 2011.

  6 Copy quote

• The publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product.

  John Berger

  Publicity, Stealing, Offers

  4 Copy quote

• My heart born naked was swaddled in lullabies. Later alone it wore poems for clothes. Like a shirt I carried on my back the poetry I had read. So I lived for half a century until wordlessly we met. From my shirt on the back of the chair I learn tonight how many years of learning by heart I waited for you.

  John Berger

  Heart, Years, Clothes

  John Berger (2014). “And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos”, p.27, Bloomsbury Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• It can happen that a book, unlike its authors, grows younger as the years pass.

  John Berger

  Book, Years, Grows

  11 Copy quote

• Oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality of objects. Everything became exchangeable because everything became a commodity.

  John Berger

  Oil, Painting, Appearance

  "John Berger, Provocative Art Critic, Dies at 90" by Randy Kennedy, www.nytimes.com. January 2, 2017.

  18 Copy quote

• Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time.

  John Berger

  Village, Emigration, Metropolis

  John Berger (2014). “And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos”, p.45, Bloomsbury Publishing

  30 Copy quote

• Today the discredit of words is very great.

  John Berger

  Hijacking, Today, Discredit

  13 Copy quote

• Modern thought has transferred the spectral character of Death to the notion of time itself. Time has become Death triumphant over all.

  John Berger

  Death, Time, Character

  John Berger (2008). “Selected Essays of John Berger”, p.751, Vintage

  16 Copy quote

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