Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events.
JOHN BERGERThe essence of songs is neither vocal nor cerebral but organic.
More John Berger Quotes
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As Nelson Mandela has pointed out, boycott is not a principle, it is a tactic depending upon circumstances.
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All creation is in the art of seeing.
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One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cynical and disillusioned is precisely because, when the abstract idealism has worn thin, they are uncertain about the value of the actual lives of the patients they are treating.
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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.
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To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself.
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You can plan events, but if they go according to your plan they are not events.
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Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.
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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)
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Traditional Chinese art looked at the Earth from a Confucian mountain top;
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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.
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It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open.
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Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.
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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.
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Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama.
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The strange power of art is sometimes it can show that what people have in common is more urgent than what differentiates them. It seems to me it’s something that theatre can do, but it’s rare; it’s very rare.
JOHN BERGER