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To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one’s fellow countrymen….

John Berger

If every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories.
JOHN BERGER

Event Given Name Need Occurred Story
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.
JOHN BERGER

Absence Loss might Paint Painting Touch True Unaware
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
I use charcoal a lot. Partly because it has such a fantastic range but also because it is very easy to erase.
JOHN BERGER

Charcoal Drawing Erase Fantastic Partly Range Use White Wrase
Modern thought has transferred the spectral character of Death to the notion of time itself. Time has become Death triumphant over all.
JOHN BERGER

Character Death Modern Notion Spectular Time Transferred
We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice.
JOHN BERGER

Act Choice Look Only See
Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and, in this, hasn’t changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.
JOHN BERGER

Age Believe City Every Nothing Sex Teenager
Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.
JOHN BERGER

Children Looks Speak Recognize Word
Japanese art looked closely around screens; Italian Renaissance art surveyed conquered nature through the window or door-frame of a palace.
JOHN BERGER

Around Close Conquer Country Door Frame Look Place Renaissance Screen Survey Window
Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers.
JOHN BERGER

Constellation First Invented Named Night Sky Star Storyteller
The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product.
JOHN BERGER

Buy Buyer Envy Herself Imagine Meant Product Spectator
What do drawings mean to me? I really don’t know. The activity absorbs me. I forget everything else in a way that I don’t think happens with any other activity.
JOHN BERGER

Absorb Activity Draw Else Everything Forget Happen Mean Think Thinking
Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world which operates on the basis of necessity.
JOHN BERGER

Basis Compassion Natural Necessity Operate Order Place World
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

Artist Communication Drawing Finished Need Only Private Public Relate Statue Work
For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.
JOHN BERGER

Artist Discovery Drawing Literally Phrase Slick True
The stars threaded on that line were like events threaded on a narrative. Imagining the constellations did not of course change the stars, nor did it change the black emptiness that surrounds them. What it changed was the way people read the night sky.
JOHN BERGER

Change Constellation Event Imagining Night People Sky Surround Threaded

To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one’s fellow countrymen….

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To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one’s fellow countrymen….

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