Portraits: John Berger on Artists

478 Pages·2015·5.26 MB·English

by  John Berger

Praise for John Berger
‘Electric with thought and energy … Berger’s words and images, rendered
serene by age and habit, provide an exhilarating and unflinching account of
global devastation and ordinary life’
Colin MacCabe, New Statesman ‘Berger is a writer one demands to know more
about … an intriguing and powerful mind and talent’
New York Times ‘John Berger throws a long shadow across the literary
landscape; in that shade so many of us have taken refuge, encouraged by his
work that you can be passionately, radically political and also concerned with
the precise details of artistic production and everyday life, that the beautiful and
the revolutionary belong together, that you can chart your own course and ignore
the herd, that you can make words on the page sing and liberate minds that way.
Like so many writers, I owe him boundless gratitude and regard news of a new
book as encouragement that the most important things are still possible. The
gifts are huge, and here’s another one coming’
Rebecca Solnit ‘A broad jumper of the intellect. He is always making links
where no one else has. Between the famous photograph of a Bolivian colonel
pointing to Che Guevara’s dead body and the Rembrandt painting of a doctor in
an identical pose pointing to a cadaver before a group of medical students.
Between the struggle of Third against First World today and the tensions of city
dweller against peasant as painted by Millet’
Adam Hochschild ‘In this extraordinary new work, John Berger embarks on a
process of rediscovery and refiguring of history through the visual narratives
given to us by portraiture. Berger’s ability for storytelling is both incisive and
intriguing. He is one of the greatest writers of our time’
Hans Ulrich Obrist
PORTRAITS:
JOHN BERGER ON ARTISTS
by
John Berger
Edited by Tom Overton
First published by Verso 2015
© John Berger 2015
Introduction © Tom Overton 2015
Lack of space constrains the publisher from acknowledging all the publications in which these writings
originally appeared and the copyright holders for each image reproduced here; a comprehensive list of
acknowledgements appears in the back matter.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright
material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any
corrections to be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
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Verso is the imprint of New Left Books ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-176-7
eISBN-13: 978-1-78478-177-4 (US) eISBN-13: 978-1-78478-178-1 (UK) British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data
Berger, John, author.
[Essays. Selections]
Portraits : John Berger on artists / edited by Tom Overton.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-78478-176-7 (hardback) 1. Art. I. Title. II. Title: John Berger on artists.
N7445.2.B466 2015
709.2›2–dc23
2015030114
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the
Library of Congress Typeset in Electra by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh Printed in the UK by CPI
Mackeys
For Beverly and for Gareth Evans
Contents
Preface: John Berger
Introduction: Tom Overton
1. The Chauvet Cave Painters (c. 30,000 years BC)
2. The Fayum Portrait Painters (1st–3rd century)
3. Piero della Francesca (c. 1415–92)
4. Antonello da Messina (c. 1430–79)
5. Andrea Mantegna (1430/1–1506)
6. Hieronymous Bosch (c. 1450–1516)
7. Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–69)
8. Giovanni Bellini (active about 1459, died 1516)
9. Matthias Grünewald (c. 1470–1528)
10. Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)
11. Michelangelo (1475–1564)
12. Titian (?1485/90–1576)
13. Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8–1543)
14. Caravaggio (1571–1610)
15. Frans Hals (1582/3–1666)
16. Diego Velázquez (1599–1660)
17. Rembrandt (1606–69)
18. Willem Drost (1633–after 1663)
19. Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721)
20. Francisco de Honoré Goya (1746–1828)
21. Honoré Daumier (1808–79)
22. J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851)
23. Jean-Louis-André-Théodore Géricault (1791–1824)
24. Jean-François Millet (1814–75)
25. Gustave Courbet (1819–77)
26. Edgar Degas (1834–1917)
27. Ferdinand ‘Le Facteur’ Cheval (1836–1924)
28. Paul Cézanne (1839–1906)
29. Claude Monet (1840–1926)
30. Vincent van Gogh (1853–90)
31. Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945)
32. Henri Matisse (1869–1954)
33. Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
34. Fernand Léger (1881–1955)
35. Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967)
36. Henry Moore (1898–1986)
37. Peter Lazslo Peri (1899–1967)
38. Alberto Giacometti (1901–66)
39. Mark Rothko (1903–70)
40. Robert Medley (1905–94)
41. Frida Kahlo (1907–54)
42. Francis Bacon (1909–92)
43. Renato Guttuso (1911–87)
44. Jackson Pollock (1912–56)
45. Pollock and Lee Krasner (1908–84)
46. Abidin Dino (1913–93)
47. Nicolas de Staël (1914–55)
48. Prunella Clough (1919–99)
49. Sven Blomberg (1920–2003)
50. Friso Ten Holt (1921–97)
51. Peter de Francia (1921–2012)
52. Francis Newton Souza (1924–2002)
53. Yvonne Barlow (1924–)
54. Ernst Neizvestny (1925–)
55. Leon Kossoff (1926–)
56. Anthony Fry (1927–)
57. Cy Twombly (1928–2011)
58. Frank Auerbach (1931–)
59. Vija Celmins (1938–)
60. Michael Quanne (1941–)
61. Maggi Hambling (1945–)
62. Liane Birnberg (1948–)
63. Peter Kennard (1949–)
64. Andres Serrano (1950–)
65. Juan Muñoz (1953–2001)
66. Rostia Kunovsky (1954–)
67. Jaume Plensa (1955–)
68. Cristina Iglesias (1956–)
69. Martin Noel (1956–2008)
70. Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–88)
71. Marisa Camino (1962–)
72. Christoph Hänsli (1963–)
73. Michael Broughton (1977–)
74. Randa Mdah (1983–)
Acknowledgements
Preface
I HAVE ALWAYS hated being called an art critic. It’s true that for a decade or more
I wrote regularly in the Press about artists, exhibitions, museum shows, and so
the term is justified.
But in the milieu in which I grew up since I was a teenager, to call somebody
an art critic was an insult. An art critic was somebody who judged and
pontificated about things he knew a little or nothing about. He wasn’t as bad as
an art dealer, but he was a pain in the arse.
This was a milieu of painters, sculptors, graphic artists of all ages who
struggled to survive and to create a life’s work with a minimum of publicity,
acclaim, or smart recognition. They were cunning, they had high standards, they
were modest, the old masters were their companions, they were fraternally
critical of one another, but they didn’t give a fuck about the art market and its
promoters. Many of them were political émigrés. And by nature they were
outlaws. Such were the men and women who taught and inspired me.
Their inspiration has led me to write about art intermittently throughout my
long life as a writer. Yet what happens when I write – or try to write – about art?
Having looked at a work of art, I leave the museum or gallery in which it is
on display, and tentatively enter the studio in which it was made. And there I
wait in the hope of learning something of the story of its making. Of the hopes,
of the choices, of the mistakes, of the discoveries implicit in that story. I talk to
myself, I remember the world outside the studio, and I address the artist whom I
maybe know, or who may have died centuries ago. Sometimes something he has
done replies. There’s never a conclusion. Occasionally there’s a new space to
puzzle both of us. Occasionally there’s a vision which makes us both gasp –
gasp as one does before a revelation.
What such an approach and practice yields, it is for the reader of my texts to
judge. I myself can’t say. I’m always in doubt. One thing, however, I’m sure
about, and that is my gratitude to all the artists for their hospitality.
The illustrations in this book are all in black and white. This is because
glossy colour reproductions in the consumerist world of today tend to reduce
what they show to items in a luxury brochure for millionaires. Whereas black-
and-white reproductions are simple memoranda.
John Berger
24 March 2015