Quotes by John Berger - Page 2

Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events.
John Berger / Art Critic
Artist
Events
Greek
Ongoing
Political
From Time To Time
Tragedies
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The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.
John Berger / Art Critic
Power
Envy
Illusion
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Modern thought has transferred the spectral character of Death to the notion of time itself. Time has become Death triumphant over all.
John Berger / Art Critic
Death
Time
Character
Notion
Transferred
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Hope is not a form of guarantee; it's a form of energy, and very frequently that energy is strongest in circumstances that are very dark.
John Berger / Art Critic
Circumstances
Dark
Energy
Form
Strongest
Frequently
Guarantee
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Until 1954, I'd only ever thought of being a painter, but I earned my money when and where I could. You could say I drifted into writing.
John Berger / Art Critic
Painter
Drifted
Earned
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The Cro-Magnons lived with fear and amazement in a culture of Arrival, facing many mysteries. Their culture lasted for some 20,000 years.
John Berger / Art Critic
Amazement
Arrival
Facing
Lasted
Mysteries
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What any true painting touches is an absence - an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss.
John Berger / Art Critic
Loss
Might
Would Be
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Your lips, beloved, are like a honeycomb: honey and milk are under the tongue. And the smell of your clothes is like the smell of my home.
John Berger / Art Critic
Home
Clothes
Smell
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History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the present leads to mystification of the past
John Berger / Art Critic
Past
Relation
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Common-sense is part of the home-made ideology of those who have been deprived of fundamental learning, of those who have been kept ignorant.
John Berger / Art Critic
Home
Common Sense
Ignorant
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The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences.
John Berger / Art Critic
Past
Prisoner
Wish
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Advertising is not merely an assembly of competing messages; it is a language itself which is always being used to make the same general proposal
John Berger / Art Critic
Advertising
Language
Messages
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We who draw do so not only to make something observed visible to others, but also to accompany something invisible to its incalculable destination
John Berger / Art Critic
Destination
Draws
Invisible
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Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive - and at the same time publicity is its dream.
John Berger / Art Critic
Dream
Capitalism
Culture
Publicity
Life Time Culture
Same Time
Survive
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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 / Art Critic
Men
Contrast
Done
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It has always seemed to me that those who are without power, who have to create their own in a makeshifit way, know more about life than those who govern.
John Berger / Art Critic
Life Power Me
Govern
Seemed
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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 / Art Critic
Needs
Painting
Pianist
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The point about hope is that it is something that occurs in very dark moments. It is like a flame in the darkness; it isn't like a confidence and a promise.
John Berger / Art Critic
Confidence
Dark
Moments
Promise
Flame
Occurs
Point
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Ours is the century of enforced travel of disappearances. The century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon.
John Berger / Art Critic
Travel
Century
Disappear
Horizon
People
Seeing
Close
Enforced
Ours
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[O]ften art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. . . .
John Berger / Art Critic
Art
Past
Revenge
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Without ethics man has no future. This is to say mankind without them cannot be itself. Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities.
John Berger / Art Critic
Men
Choices
Priorities
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Without ethics, man has no future. This is to say, mankind without them cannot be itself. Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities.
John Berger / Art Critic
Future
Choices
Determine
Difficult
Ethics
Mankind
Priorities
Actions
Man
Them
Cannot
Itself
Without
Say
No Future
Suggest
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What do drawings mean to me? I really don't know. The activity absorbs me. I forget everything else in a way that I don't think happens with any other activity.
John Berger / Art Critic
Forget Everything
Mean
Thinking
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The contradiction in perspective was that it structured all images of reality to address a single spectator who, unlike God, could only be in one place at a time.
John Berger / Art Critic
Addresses
Perspective
Reality
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It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it
John Berger / Art Critic
Facts
Seeing
World
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Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast.
John Berger / Art Critic
Communication
Pace
Permanent
Propaganda
Reflection
Slogans
Utopian
Fast
Emotive
Network
Requires
Stifle
Systematically
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A boycott is directed against a policy and the institutions which support that policy either actively or tacitly. Its aim is not to reject, but to bring about change.
John Berger / Art Critic
Aim
Boycott
Actively
Directed
Reject
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I wanted to write about looking at the world, so it's more about helping people, or persuading people, to see what is around us; both the marvellous and the terrible.
John Berger / Art Critic
Helping
Helping People
Marvellous
People
Persuading
World
Writing
World Looking People
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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 / Art Critic
Men
Average
Oil
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It is not usually possible in a poem or a story to make the relationship between particular and universal fully explicit. Those who try to do so end up writing parables.
John Berger / Art Critic
Stories
Trying
Writing
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Do you know the legend about cicadas? They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to.
John Berger / Art Critic
Alive
Legends
Soul
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Hair is associated with sexual power. With passion. The woman's sexual passion needs to be minimized, so that the spectator may feel that he has the monopoly on such passion
John Berger / Art Critic
Hair
Needs
Passion
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Nothing in the nature around us is evil. This needs to be repeated since one of the human ways of talking oneself into inhuman acts is to cite the supposed cruelty of nature.
John Berger / Art Critic
Cruelty
Evil
Inhuman
Needs
Oneself
Talking
Nature Nothing Human
Acts
Cite
Repeated
Supposed
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We can become anything. That is why injustice is impossible here. There may be the accident of birth, there is no accident of death. Nothing forces us to remain what we were.
John Berger / Art Critic
Impossible
Injustice
May
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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 / Art Critic
Discovery
Drawing
Events
Finished
Finished Work
Remembered
Attempt
Autobiographical
Construct
Event
Imagined
Record
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The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.
John Berger / Art Critic
God
Burden
Cynical
Forget
Memories
Order
Photography
Records
Surveys
Camera
Memory
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Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.
John Berger / Art Critic
Add
Critical
Cutting
Mean
Media
Opinion
Past
Cut
Daily
Futures
Present
Orphaned
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The opposite of love is not to hate but to separate. If love and hate have something in common it is because, in both cases, their energy is that of bringing and holding together
John Berger / Art Critic
Love
Hate
Opposites
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That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe.
John Berger / Art Critic
Nature
Alone
Beautiful
Believe
Existence
Sadness
Single
Single Life
Life Beautiful Believe
Less
Find
Course
Crystal
Deeply
Lead
Means
Would
Inserted
Poppy
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At times failure is very necessary for the artist. It reminds him that failure is not the ultimate disaster. And this reminder liberates him from the mean fussing of perfectionism.
John Berger / Art Critic
Artist
Mean
Perfection
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I think I'm very permeable. I can very easily, without even choosing to do it, enter the life of another. Or, to put it in a more modest and accurate way, for that life to enter mine.
John Berger / Art Critic
Accurate
Modest
Life Way More
Choosing
Enter
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Between the experience of living a normal life at this moment on the planet and the public narratives being offered to give a sense to that life, the empty space, the gap, is enormous.
John Berger / Art Critic
Space
Giving
Normal
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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 / Art Critic
Dream
Imagination
Difficulty
Dog
Human Imagination
Philosophy
Practice
Within
Basket
Open
Confines
Materialist
Strictly
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Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It's the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one is writing a poem, a novel or an argument.
John Berger / Art Critic
Diversion
Opposites
Struggle
Truthfulness
Writing
Opposite
Poem
Screen
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The media network has its idols, but its principal idol is its own style which generates an aura of winning and leaves the rest in darkness. It recognizes neither pity nor pitilessness.
John Berger / Art Critic
Idols
Media
Winning
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The industrial society... recognises nothing except the power to acquire... No other kind of hope or satisfaction or pleasure can any longer be envisaged within the culture of capitalism.
John Berger / Art Critic
Acquire
Capitalism
Pleasure
Satisfaction
Envisaged
Except
Industrial
Recognises
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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 / Art Critic
Appearance
Degrees
Energy
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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 / Art Critic
Appearance
Oil
Painting
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The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich.
John Berger / Art Critic
Century
Natural
Poverty
Priorities
Rich
Scarcity
World
Set
Rest
Unlike
Imposed
Result
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A cigarette is a breathing space. It makes a parenthesis. The time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared, you are both in that parenthesis. Its like a proscenium arch for a dialogue.
John Berger / Art Critic
Arches
Breathing Space
Cigarette
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