For me, drawing is a lot to do with taking out, with returning to the white of the paper.
JOHN BERGERFor me, drawing is a lot to do with taking out, with returning to the white of the paper.
JOHN BERGEREmigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time.
JOHN BERGERFor those who are behind the curtain, landmarks are no longer only geographic but also biographical and personal
JOHN BERGERIt is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it
JOHN BERGERThe unsung, impersonal world remains outside, on the other surface of a placenta. All songs, even when their content or rendering is strongly masculine, operate maternally.
JOHN BERGERTracing an imaginary line between a cluster of stars gave them an image and an identity.
JOHN BERGERThe essence of songs is neither vocal nor cerebral but organic.
JOHN BERGERIt is comparatively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture by allowing one colour to dominate, or by muting all the colours.
JOHN BERGERToday the discredit of words is very great.
JOHN BERGERIt dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open.
JOHN BERGERThe past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.
JOHN BERGERThe time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared, you are both in that parenthesis. Its like a proscenium arch for a dialogue.
JOHN BERGERMy heart born naked was swaddled in lullabies.
JOHN BERGERA 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 BERGERThe camera relieves us of the burden of memory.
JOHN BERGERThe past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can’t do is to change its consequences.
JOHN BERGER