For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.
JOHN BERGEREvery authentic poem contributes to the labor of poetry… to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart…
More John Berger Quotes
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To remain innocent may also be. to remain ignorant.
JOHN BERGER -
It is comparatively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture by allowing one colour to dominate, or by muting all the colours.
JOHN BERGER -
Drawing is a way of coming upon the connection between things, just like metaphor in poetry reconnects what has become separated.
JOHN BERGER -
Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events.
JOHN BERGER -
Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.
JOHN BERGER -
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 -
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 -
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 -
In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying every hour as a consequence of politics, no writing anywhere can begin to be credible unless it is informed by political awareness and principles.
JOHN BERGER -
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 -
The century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon.
JOHN BERGER -
A drawing is essentially a private work, related only to the artist’s own needs; a ‘finished’ statue or canvas is essentially a public, presented work – related far more directly to the demands of communication.
JOHN BERGER -
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 -
The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.
JOHN BERGER -
Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible.
JOHN BERGER