black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.

John Berger

Publicity is the life of this culture – in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive – and at the same time publicity is its dream.
JOHN BERGER

Capitalism Culture Dream Publicity Same Time
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
Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast.
JOHN BERGER

Communication Emotive Network Pace Permanent Propaganda Reflection Require Slogan Stifie Systematically
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
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
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
Yet the first symbols were animals. What distinguished men from animals was born of their relationship with them.
JOHN BERGER

Animal Born Distinguish Men Relationship Symbol Yet
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
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
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
Oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality of objects.
JOHN BERGER

Appearance Capital Equality Everything Object Oil Painting Reduce Relation Social
What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements are connected by an and not by a but.
JOHN BERGER

Connect Difficult Significant Statement Strange Understand
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
The extreme proposition on which Giacometti based all his mature work was that no reality… could ever be shared. This is why he believed it impossible for a work to be finished. This is why the content of any work is not the nature of the figure or head portrayed but the incomplete history of him staring at it.
JOHN BERGER

Bases Extreme Finishing Giacometti History Impossible Incomplete Portrayed Proposition Reality Share Staring
It 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 BERGER

Establish Explain Fact Facts Place Seeing Surround Undo Word World
The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich.
JOHN BERGER

Before Century Poverty Priorities Result Scarcity Set World

Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More John Berger Quotes