October 28, 2003
John Berger quotes
Here are two John Berger quotes that struck me in the first fifty pages of his Selected Essays. The first comes from the introduction to Permanent Red (1960):
After we have responded to a work of art, we leave it, carrying away in our consciousness something which we didn't have before. This something amounts to more than our memory of the incident represented, and also more than our memory of the shapes and colours and spaces which the artist has used and arranged. What we take away with us--on the most profound level--is the memory of the artist's way of looking at the world.
The second comes from an essay in that collection titled "The Clarity of the Renaissance" (1955):
After Michelangelo the artist lets us follow him; before, he leads us to the image he has made. It is this difference--the difference between the picture being a starting-off point and a destination--that explains the clarity, the visual definitiveness, the tactile values of Renaissance art.
I need to read further, as I'm only in the mid-1960s of this mostly chronological selection, but thus far I have found two distinct characteristics of his writing (which are intertwined): his braggadocio and the ease with which he is quoted. He writes swaggering epigrams, not unlike Dave Hickey, that at first contain the seductiveness of their own confidence. Further thought slices right through that surface--in Berger's case (so far) revealing a relentless political stance that has a reductive effect on his observations--but there is definite value to searching for the diamonds in the rough. It is best left for another post altogether, but I at least give Berger credit for expressing his opinion with force, something often lacking from contemporary criticism. (At times my own included.)