black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

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

Add All Cutting Daily Future Mean Media Modernism Past Presently
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

Back Herself Love Offer Price Product Publicity Stealing
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

Argument Diversion Opposite Same Screen Struggle Towards Truthfulness Use Word Writing
She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself.
JOHN BERGER

Envy Herself Imagine Justify Loving Menat Object Other Product Transform
The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals.
JOHN BERGER

Animal Look Offer Opportunity Public Purpose Visitor Zoos
You cant draw it for others. You can try, of course, but it doesn’t work. People obeying rules laid down my somebody else is not the same thing as respecting life. And if you want to respect life, you have to draw a line.
JOHN BERGER

Course Else Life Line Obey Other People Respect Somebody
Hope is a contraband passed from hand to hand and story to story.
JOHN BERGER

Contraband Hand Stories
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

Burden Camera Forget God Like Memories Photography Relieve Survey Us Yet
No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.
JOHN BERGER

Belong Draw Naturalist Paint Photograph Subject Way
To be desired is perhaps the closest anybody in this life can reach to feeling immortal.
JOHN BERGER

Anybody Closest Desire Feeling Immortal Life
For me, drawing is a lot to do with taking out, with returning to the white of the paper.
JOHN BERGER

Lot Me Out Paper Returning Take White
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

Alone Carry Century Chair Clothes Heart Later Learn Like Live Poem Poet Read Want
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

Achieve Country Deprivation Desirable Develop False Impose Intensive Standard Today
When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss.
JOHN BERGER

Anguish Childhood Grief Learn Loss Period Suffer Total
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

Addresses Adorable Contradiction God Image Perspective Reality Really Single Spectator Structure Unlike
Buildings become furniture, courtyards become carpets and arrases, the streets are like galleries, the boulevards conservatories. It is a house, one or two centuries old, rich, bourgeois, distinguished. The only way of going out, or shutting the door behind you, is to leave the centre.
JOHN BERGER

Behind Bourgeois Building Conservatories Door Furniture Galleries Go House Shutting Street Way

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More John Berger Quotes