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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

Tracing an imaginary line between a cluster of stars gave them an image and an identity.
JOHN BERGER

Between Cluster Gave Identity Image Imaginary Star Trace
Pleasure and pain need to be considered together; they are inseparable. Yet the space filled by each is perhaps different. Pleasure, defined as a sense of gratification, is essential for nature
JOHN BERGER

Consider Essential Inseparable Nature Need Pain Pleasure Sense Space Together
The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.
JOHN BERGER

Female Herself Object Sight Surveyed Turn Vision Woman
To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude.
JOHN BERGER

Naked Oneness Oneself Order Other Recognize Sight
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

Beloved Clothes Home Honeycomb Like Lip Milk Smell Tongue
To be naked is to be oneself.
JOHN BERGER

Be Naked Oneself
Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.
JOHN BERGER

Aqtch Look Men Sight Vision Women
This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.
JOHN BERGER

Determine Effection Men Most Only Relation Relationship Themselves Wome
We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.
JOHN BERGER

Earth Explanation Knowledge Quite Sight Yet
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

Average Country Men never Painting Presume Principal Protagonist Rude Spectator
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
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

Autobiographical Discovery Drawing Event Imagine Record Remembered Seen
Photography, because it stops the flow of life, is always flirting with death.
JOHN BERGER

Death Flirting Flow Life Photography
Yet nowherein a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond.
JOHN BERGER

Animal Beyond Blindly Encounter Flicker Gaze Look Most Pass Stranger
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
Everything became exchangeable because everything became a commodity.
JOHN BERGER

Become Commodity Everything Exchangeable

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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