John Berger

Template:Short description Template:About Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English Template:Infobox writer John Peter Berger (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell; 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to the BBC series of the same name, was influential. He lived in France for over fifty years.

Early life

Berger was born on 5 November 1926<ref name="The New York Times-2017"/> in Stoke Newington, London,<ref name="The Guardian-2017">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="The New Statesman-2015">Template:Cite news</ref> the first of two children of Miriam and Stanley Berger.<ref name="The Guardian-1999">Template:Cite news</ref>

His grandfather was from Trieste, now Italy,<ref name="The Books Interview">The Books Interview: John Berger: The Books Interview: John Berger, accessdate: 2 January 2017</ref> and his father, Stanley, raised as a non-religious Jew who adopted Catholicism,<ref>Andy Merrifield, John Berger, Reaktion Books (2013), p. 29</ref> had been an infantry officer on the Western Front during the First World War and was awarded the Military Cross<ref name="The New Statesman-2015"/><ref name="The Guardian-2016">Template:Cite news</ref> and an OBE.<ref name="Duncan O'Connor">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Berger was educated at St Edward's School, Oxford.<ref name="The Guardian-2005"/> He served in the British Army during the Second World War from 1944 to 1946.<ref name="Ray-2007">Template:Cite book</ref> He enrolled at the Chelsea School of Art<ref name="The Guardian-2005"/> and the Central School of Art and Design in London.<ref name="Ray-2007"/>

Career

Berger began his career as a painter<ref name="John Berger-2017">Template:Cite news</ref> and exhibited works at a number of London galleries in the late 1940s.<ref name="John Berger-2017"/><ref name="Duncan O'Connor" /> His art has been shown at the Wildenstein, Redfern and Leicester Galleries in London.<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/>

Berger taught drawing at St Mary's teacher training college.<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/> He later became an art critic, publishing many essays and reviews in the New Statesman.<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/><ref name="The Washington Post-2017"/> His Marxist literary criticism and strongly stated opinions on modern art combined to make him a controversial figure early in his career.<ref name="arthistorians.info">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="LARB-2017">Template:Cite news</ref> As a statement of political commitment, he titled an early collection of essays Permanent Red.<ref name="New Republic-2015">Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Berger was never a formal member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB): rather he was a close associate of it and its front, the Artists' International Association (AIA), until the latter disappeared in 1953. He was active in the Geneva Club, a discussion group that appears to have overlapped with British communist circles in the 1950s.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Publishing

In 1958, Berger published his first novel, A Painter of Our Time,<ref name="The Guardian-2017-2">Template:Cite news</ref> which tells the story of the disappearance of Janos Lavin, a fictional exiled Hungarian painter, and his diary's discovery by an art critic friend called John.<ref name="The Week-2017">Template:Cite news</ref> The work was withdrawn by the publisher under pressure from the Congress for Cultural Freedom a month after its publication.<ref name="Duncan O'Connor"/> His next novels were The Foot of Clive and Corker's Freedom;<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/> both of which presented an urban English life of alienation and melancholy. Berger moved to Quincy in Mieussy in Haute-Savoie, France, in 1962 due to his distaste for life in Britain.<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/>

In 1972, the BBC broadcast his four-part television series Ways of Seeing<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/><ref name="John Berger-2017"/><ref name="The Week-2017"/> and published its accompanying text, a book of the same name. The first episode functions as an introduction to the study of images; it was derived in part from Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction".<ref name="Berger-1972">Template:Cite book</ref> The subsequent episodes concern the image of woman as a sexualized object in Western culture, expressions of property ownership and wealth in European oil painting, and modern advertising.<ref>Berger, John (writer) and Michael Dibb (producer). Ways of Seeing. British Broadcasting Corporation, 1972.</ref> The series, the first of several close collaborations with director Mike Dibb, has had a lasting influence, and in particular introduced the concept of the male gaze, as part of his analysis of the treatment of the nude in European painting. It soon became popular among feminists, including the British film critic Laura Mulvey, who used it to critique traditional media representations of the female character in cinema.<ref>A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, edited by Sharon L. James, Sheila Dillon, p. 75, 2012, Wiley, Template:ISBN, 9781444355000</ref>

File:John Berger-2009 (4).jpg

John Berger

Berger's novel G., a picaresque romance set in Europe in 1898, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Booker Prize in 1972.<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/><ref name="The Booker Prizes-1972">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Berger donated half the Booker cash prize to the British Black Panthers, and retained the other half to support his work on the study on migrant workers, which became A Seventh Man; he asserted that both endeavors represented aspects of his political struggle.<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In his acceptance speech at the Booker Prize ceremony, Berger said the prize's sponsor, Booker McConnell, had a long history of slavery and exploitation in the Caribbean, and this was why he wanted to donate the money to the British Black Panthers and fund the writing of his book on migrant workers.[1]

Berger's sociological writings include A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor (1967)<ref name="The Guardian-2015">Template:Cite news</ref> and A Seventh Man: Migrant Workers in Europe (1975).<ref name="The Guardian-2010">Template:Cite news</ref>

Berger and photographer Jean Mohr, his frequent collaborator, sought to document and understand the experiences of peasants.<ref name="Berger-2010">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Read an excerpt from the book here: Template:Cite journal</ref>

Their subsequent book, Another Way of Telling, discusses and illustrates their documentary technique and treats the theory of photography through Berger's essays and Mohr's photographs.<ref name="Penguin Random House">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> His studies of individual artists include The Success and Failure of Picasso (1965), a survey of that modernist's career, and Art and Revolution: Ernst Neizvestny, Endurance, and the Role of the Artist in the USSR (1969).<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/>

In the 1970s, Berger collaborated on three films with the Swiss director Alain Tanner:<ref name="The New York Times-2017"/><ref name="Ray-2007"/> He wrote or co-wrote La Salamandre (1971), The Middle of the World (1974), and Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1976).<ref>Christian Dimitriu, Alain Tanner, Paris: Henri Veyrier, 1985, pp. 125–134.</ref> His major fictional work of the 1980s, the trilogy Into Their Labours (consisting of the novels Pig Earth, Once in Europa, and Lilac and Flag),<ref name="The Guardian-1999"/><ref name="BRILL-2015">Template:Cite book</ref> treats the European peasant experience from its farming roots to contemporary economic and political displacement and urban poverty.<ref name="The Guardian-1999"/><ref name="The New York Times-1987"/> In 1974, Berger co-founded the Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative Ltd in London with Arnold Wesker, Lisa Appignanesi, Richard Appignanesi, Chris Searle, Glenn Thompson, Siân Williams, and others.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The cooperative was active until the early 1980s.<ref name="African American Literature Book Club">Template:Cite news</ref>

In later essays, Berger wrote about photography, art, politics, and memory. He published in The Shape of a Pocket a correspondence with Subcomandante Marcos,<ref name="Publico-2017">Template:Cite news</ref> and penned short stories that appeared in The Threepenny Review and The New Yorker. His sole volume of poetry is Pages of the Wound, though other volumes, such as the theoretical essays And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos contain poetry. His 2007 collection of essays on the uses of art as an instrument of political resistance, Hold Everything Dear, was titled after the poem by Gareth Evans (poet). His later novels include To the Wedding, a love story dealing with the AIDS crisis,<ref name="The Guardian-2016" /><ref name="Hertel-2005">Template:Cite book</ref> and King: A Street Story, a novel about homelessness and shantytown life told from the perspective of a stray dog.<ref name="The Guardian-1999"/><ref name="Hertel-2005" /> Initially, Berger insisted that his name be kept off the cover and title page of King, wanting the novel to be received on its own merits.<ref name="The Telegraph-2001">Template:Cite news</ref>

Berger's 1980 volume About Looking includes an influential chapter, "Why Look at Animals?"<ref name="McCance-2013">Template:Cite book</ref> It is cited by numerous scholars in the interdisciplinary field of animal studies. The chapter was later reproduced in a Penguin Great Ideas selection of essays of the same title.<ref name="McCance-2013" />

Berger's novel From A to X was long-listed for the 2008 Booker Prize.<ref name="The New York Times-2017"/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In Bento's Sketchbook (2011) Berger combines extracts from Baruch Spinoza, sketches, memoir, and observations in a book that contemplates the relationship of materialism to spirituality. According to Berger, what could be seen as a contradiction "is beautifully resolved by Spinoza, who shows that it is not a duality, but in fact an essential unity".<ref name="Wroe-2011">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The book has been described as "a characteristically sui generis work combining an engagement with the thought of the 17th-century lens grinder, draughtsman, and philosopher Baruch Spinoza, with a study of drawing and a series of semi-autobiographical sketches".<ref name="Wroe-2011" /> Among his last works is Confabulations (essays, 2016).<ref name="The Guardian-2016"/><ref name="Independent-2017">Template:Cite news</ref>

Other work

In 1999, Berger voiced both twin brother characters Archie and Albert Crisp in the video game Grand Theft Auto: London 1969.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

He was a member of the Support Committee of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Personal life

Berger married three times,<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/> first to artist and illustrator Patricia (Pat) Marriott in 1949; they had no children together and the couple divorced.<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/> In the mid-1950s, he married the Russian translator Anya Bostock (née Anna Sisserman), with whom he had two children, Katya Berger and Jacob Berger; the couple divorced in the mid-1970s.<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/> Soon afterwards, he married Beverly Bancroft, with whom he had one child, Yves.<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/> Beverly died in 2013.<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/>

Berger died at his home in Antony, France, on 2 January 2017 at the age of 90.<ref name="The New York Times-2017"/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Legacy

In July 2009 Berger donated his archive of 369 files, nine boxes and one bookTemplate:Which? to the British Library. The contents include literary manuscripts, drafts, unpublished material and correspondence.<ref>John Berger Archive, archives and manuscripts catalogue, the British Library. Retrieved 7 May 2020</ref>

Awards

• 1972 Booker Prize<ref name="The Telegraph-2017">Template:Cite news</ref>
• 1972 James Tait Black Memorial Prize<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/>
• 1991 Petrarca-Preis<ref name="Bürkle-2006">Template:Cite book</ref>
• 2009 Golden PEN Award<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Literary works

Fiction

Novels and novella

• A Painter of Our Time (1958)<ref name="The Guardian-2005">Template:Cite news</ref>
• Marcel Frishman (with George Besson) (1958)<ref name="Psychology Press-2003">Template:Cite book</ref>
• The Foot of Clive (1962)<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/>
• Corker's Freedom (1964)<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/>
• G. (1972)<ref name="The New York Times-1987">Template:Cite news</ref>
• Into Their Labours trilogy (1991): Pig Earth (1979), Once in Europa (1987), Lilac and Flag (1990)<ref name="The Guardian-1999"/><ref name="The New York Times-1987"/>
• To the Wedding (1995)<ref name="The Guardian-2005"/>
• King: A Street Story (1999)<ref name="The Guardian-1999"/>
• Here is Where We Meet (2005)<ref name="The Guardian-2005"/>
• From A to X (2008)<ref name="The New York Times-2008">Template:Cite news</ref>

Plays

• A Question of Geography (with Nella Bielski) (1987)<ref name="Soja-1989">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Merrifield-2013">Template:Cite book</ref>
• Les Trois Chaleurs (1985)<ref name="www.lesarchivesduspectacle.net">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• Boris (1983)<ref>John Berger, "Boris", Granta 9, 1 September 1983.</ref>
• Goya's Last Portrait (with Nella Bielski) (1989)<ref name="www.brooklynrail.org-2016">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Screenplays

• Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (with Alain Tanner) (1976)<ref name="The New York Times-1987"/><ref name="The Washington Post-2017">Template:Cite news</ref>
• La Salamandre (The Salamander) (with Alain Tanner) (1971)<ref name="Talbot-2010">Template:Cite book</ref>
• Le Milieu du monde (The Middle of the World) (with Alain Tanner) (1974)<ref name="Talbot-2010"/>
• Play Me Something (with Timothy Neat) (1989)<ref name="Independent-2016">Template:Cite news</ref>
• Une ville à Chandigarh (A City at Chandigarh) (1966)<ref name="The Indian Express-2016">Template:Cite news</ref>

Poetry

• Pages of the Wound (1994)<ref name="Psychology Press-2003"/>
• Collected Poems (2014)<ref name="The Hindu-2015">Template:Cite news</ref>

Non-fiction

Essays and articles

• The Look of Things: Selected Essays and Articles (1972)<ref name="Psychology Press-2003"/>
• About Looking (1980)<ref name="The Washington Post-2017"/>
• A Fortunate Man (with Jean Mohr) (1967)<ref name="Psychology Press-2003"/>
• Keeping a Rendezvous (1992)<ref name="Psychology Press-2003"/>
• Photocopies (1996)<ref name="The Guardian-2017"/>
• Selected Essays (Geoff Dyer, ed.) (2001)<ref name="Psychology Press-2003"/>
• Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance (2007; 2nd ed. 2016)<ref name="Verso-2008">Template:Cite book</ref>
• Why Look at Animals? (2009)<ref name="The Guardian-2009">Template:Cite news</ref>
• Confabulations (Essays) (2016)<ref name="The Washington Post-2017"/>
• Meanwhile (2008)<ref name="The Guardian-2016"/>
• Swimming Pool (with Leon Kossoff) (Introduction by Deborah Levy. Postscript by Yves Berger. Berger's Texts selected by Teresa Pintó. Book design by John Christie) (2020)

Art and art criticism

• Permanent Red (1960)<ref name="Psychology Press-2003"/> (Published in the United States in altered form in 1962 as Toward Reality: Essays in Seeing)
• The Success and Failure of Picasso (1965)<ref name="The New York Times-1987"/><ref name="The Washington Post-2017"/>
• Art and Revolution: Ernst Neizvestny And the Role of the Artist in the U.S.S.R (1969)<ref name="Psychology Press-2003"/>
• The Moment of Cubism and Other Essays (1969)<ref name="Psychology Press-2003"/>
• Ways of Seeing<ref name="The New York Times-1987"/> (with Mike Dibb, Sven Blomberg, Chris Fox and Richard Hollis) (1972)
• The Sense of Sight (1985)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• Albrecht Dürer: Watercolours and Drawings (1994)<ref name="Taschen-1994">Template:Cite book</ref>
• Titian: Nymph and Shepherd (with Katya Berger) (1996)<ref name="Psychology Press-2003"/>
• The Shape of a Pocket (2001)<ref name="Psychology Press-2003"/>
• Berger on Drawing (2005)<ref name="Occasional Press-2005">Template:Cite book</ref>
• Lying Down to Sleep (with Katya Berger) (2010)<ref name="Maurizio Corraini-2010">Template:Cite book</ref>
• Bento's Sketchbook (2011)<ref name="The Paris Review-2011">Template:Cite news</ref>
• Understanding a Photograph (Geoff Dyer, ed.) (2013)<ref>John Berger, Understanding a Photograph, Aperture. Template:ISBN.</ref>
• Daumier: The Heroism of Modern Life (2013)<ref name="Harry N. Abrams-2013">Template:Cite book</ref>
• Portraits: John Berger on Artists (Tom Overton, ed.) (2015)<ref name="www.brooklynrail.org-2016"/>
• Landscapes: John Berger on Art (Tom Overton, ed.) (2016)<ref name="Penguin Random House-2">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• Seeing Through Drawing<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Other

• A Seventh Man (with Jean Mohr) (1975)<ref name="The Washington Post-2017"/>
• Another Way of Telling (with Jean Mohr) (1982)<ref name="Psychology Press-2003"/>
• And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos (1984)<ref name="Psychology Press-2003"/>
• The White Bird (U.S. title: The Sense of Sight) (1985)<ref name="Psychology Press-2003"/>
• Isabelle: A Story in Shots (with Nella Bielski) (1998)<ref name="Psychology Press-2003"/>
• At the Edge of the World (with Jean Mohr) (1999)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• I Send You This Cadmium Red: A Correspondence between John Berger and John Christie (with John Christie) (2001)<ref name="ACTAR-2000">Template:Cite book</ref>
• My Beautiful (with Marc Trivier) (2004)<ref name="Mondadori Bruno-2008">Template:Cite book</ref>
• The Red Tenda of Bologna (2007)<ref name="www.thedrawbridge.org">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• War with No End (with Naomi Klein, Hanif Kureishi, Arundhati Roy, Ahdaf Soueif, Joe Sacco and Haifa Zangana) (2007)<ref name="Penguin Random House-4">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• From I to J (with Isabel Coixet) (2009)<ref name="Actar-D Bruno-2009">Template:Cite book</ref>
• Railtracks (with Anne Michaels) (2011)<ref name="Counterpoint-2013">Template:Cite book</ref>
• Cataract (with Selçuk Demirel) (2012)<ref name="www.macleans.ca">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• Flying Skirts: An Elegy (with Yves Berger) (2014)<ref name="Occasional Press-2015">Template:Cite book</ref>
• Cuatro horizontes (Four Horizons) (with Sister Lucia Kuppens, Sister Telchilde Hinkley and John Christie) (2015)<ref name="ggili.com">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• Lapwing & Fox (Conversations between John Berger and John Christie) (2016)<ref name="www.a-n.co.uk">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• John by Jean: Fifty Years of Friendship (Jean Mohr, ed.) (2016)<ref name="www.occasionalpress.net">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• A Sparrow's Journey: John Berger Reads Andrey Platonov (CD: 44:34 & 81-page book with Robert Chandler and Gareth Evans), London: House Sparrow Press in association with the London Review Bookshop (2016)<ref name="House Sparrow Press">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• Smoke (with Selçuk Demirel) (2017)
• What Time Is It? (with Selçuk Demirel) (Template:Ill, ed.) (2019)
• Over To You. Letters Between a Father & Son. Tate Publishing (2024)

Film

• The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger (2016), directed by Tilda Swinton, Colin MacCabe, Christopher Roth and Bartek Dziadosz.
• Taskafa: Stories of the Street (2013), directed by Andrea Luka Zimmerman.

Reviews

• Harkness, Allan (1983), Berger: A Seventh Man?, review of A Seventh Man and Another Way of Telling, in Hearn, Sheila G.(ed.), Cencrastus No. 12, Spring 1983, pp. 46 & 47, Template:Issn

Further reading

• Bounds, Philip "Beyond: The Media Criticism of John Berger" in Philip Bounds and Mala Jagmohan (Eds.), Recharting Media Studies, Peter Lang 2008, Template:ISBN.
• Chandan, Amarjit; Evans, Gareth; Gunaratnam, Yasmin (Eds.) The Long White Thread of Words: Poems for John Berger, Ripon: Smokestack Books, 2016. Template:ISBN.
• Chandan, Amarjit; Gunaratnam, Yasmin (Eds.) A Jar of Wild Flowers: Essays in Celebration of John Berger, London: Zed Books, 2016. Template:ISBN.
• Dyer, Geoff Ways of Telling: The Work of John Berger, Template:ISBN.
• Dyer, Geoff (Ed.) John Berger, Selected Essays, Bloomsbury. Template:ISBN.
• Fuller, Peter (1980) Seeing Berger. A Revaluation of , Writers and Readers. Template:ISBN.
• Hertel, Ralf and David Malcolm (Eds.), On John Berger: Telling Stories. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Template:ISBN.
• Hochschild, Adam Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels (Syracuse University Press, 1997), "Broad Jumper in the Alps," pp. 50–64.
• Krautz, Jochen Vom Sinn des Sichtbaren. John Bergers Ästhetik und Ethik als Impuls für die Kunstpädagogik am Beispiel der Fotografie, Hamburg 2004 (Dr. Kovac) Template:ISBN.
• Merrifield, Andy John Berger, London: Reaktion Books, 2012. Template:ISBN
• Papastergiadis, Nikos Modernity as exile: The stranger in John Berger's writing (Manchester University Press, 1993) Template:ISBN.
• Papastergiadis, Nikos John Berger and Me: A Migrant's Eye (Giramondo Publishing Company, 2024) Template:ISBN.
• Sperling, Joshua (2018) A Writer of Our Time: The Life and Work of John Berger Template:ISBN

External links

• John Berger Home Official Website
• Postscript: John Berger, 1926–2017
• 'Introduction to John Berger on Picasso' Mike Gonzalez in International Socialism 40 (1988).
• Defending Picasso's late work by John Berger, International Socialism 40 (1988).
• Verso Books author page
• John Berger Archive at the British Library Template:Webarchive