23
HE CHANGED
HIS LIFE:
Ritchie Robertson
on Rodin and RilkeBooks
Page 20Books
THE ART NEWSPAPER SECTION 2 Number 284, November 2016
BERGER: © JEAN MOHR
John Berger
at 90
Writings, new and old, by the nonagenarian,
Marxist and self-confessed “stop-gap” storyteller.
By Andrew Lambirth
Portraits: John Berger on Artists
John Berger and Tom Overton, ed
Verso, 544pp, £25 (hb)
Landscapes: John Berger on Art
John Berger and Tom Overton, ed
Verso, 272pp, £16.99 (hb)
Lapwing & Fox: Conversations
between John Berger and
John Christie
John Berger and John Christie
Objectif Press, 288pp, £28 (hb)
Confabulations
John Berger
Penguin, 160pp, £6.99 (pb)19
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Your problem is our problem.ANALYSIS
A
number of books
have been pub-
lished to celebrate
John Berger’s
90th birthday this
month, but this
review focuses on
four: two compila-
tions—Portraits and Landscapes—a
collaboration with John Christie, and
a volume of new essays. Portraits is a
vast and nourishing compendium of
Berger’s essays that begins with a new
preface by the master in which the
first line is unequivocal: “I have always
hated being called an art critic.” He
admits, however, that he operated as
such for a decade (mostly for the New
Statesman), though in the milieu in
which he grew up “to call somebody an
art critic was an insult. An art critic...
wasn’t as bad as an art dealer, but he
was a pain in the arse”. Presumably
that is why Berger prefers to be known
as a storyteller or novelist, or, at a
pinch, an essayist. But he has never
stopped writing about art (he trained as
a painter), and he is inevitably critical
(in the sense of reviewing and assessing
the art he is discussing). Why quibble
over terms? Berger is a brilliant writer
and explicator, internationally influen-tial in a way that few art critics usually
are. To read him is to engage in a
dialogue that invariably stimulates and
enriches. Life has more light and colour
after an encounter with Berger.
His approach is to think himself
into the artist’s studio, “and there I
wait in the hope of learning some-
thing of the story of [the work’s]
making”. This empathetic conver-
gence yields dividends, even if Berger
himself is always doubtful of the value
of the outcome. Although he stopped
painting at the age of 30 in order to
write, he never stopped drawing, and
it is perhaps this continued practice
that gives him such direct insights
into the activity and meaning of art.
This awareness, when coupled with
his consummate skills as a storyteller
and an awareness of political urgen-
cies, enabled him to develop a “sense
of living connection” in the art of
his time.
Berger began by lauding figurative
painting and sculpture built on the
discoveries of Modernist Abstraction,
and stressed the importance of the art-
ist’s receptivity or openness. His ideal
method is to return again and again to
the same artist, or the same work, for
an extended process of consideration
and reconsideration, finding something
diferent each time. A number of the
essays here are compiled in this way.
Berger’s measured prose takes his
readers through the processes of his
thought and looking with a clarity
that is rare among writers of any sort,
but especially among art critics and
historians. He will employ various
formats, from poems and reviews
to letters, extracts from novels and
plays and dialogues, all with the aim
of varying the pace and surprising the
truth. Dialogues with others are typical
of his generosity of spirit—he is a great
collaborator—but all too often what
his interlocutor has to say is of less
interest than his own observations.
(John Christie is an exception here.)Berger’s insights are always worth pon-
dering, whether it is Bruegel collecting
evidence of human indiference, Daum-
ier’s unique use of light, or the sadness
in Monet’s eyes.
He approaches a subject from an
unexpected and often revealing angle.
One night he is lying in bed and his
lover asks him who his favourite
painter is. “I hesitated, searching
for the least knowing, most truthful
answer. Caravaggio. My own reply sur-
prised me...” Berger encourages us to
drop the habit of looking at paintings
exclusively from the point of view of
form. He supplies us with anecdote,
biography, history, often poetry (a
poem prefaces his essay on Degas, for
instance), all skilfully employed to
build a context that illuminates the
subject. He also makes judicious use
of quotation, Cézanne’s “colour is the
place where our brain and the universe
meet”, appearing at just the right
point, for example. And he is neither
afraid of the autobiographical, nor does
he annexe it simply out of egotism or
for efect (like so many contemporary
writers). More than half of his essay
on Käthe Kollwitz is about himself,
history, publishing and ethics, but all
of it has a bearing on the artist.
He is especially good on Hodler
in Bern, on Matisse and colour, on
Kokoschka, Robert Medley and a host
of lesser-known artists such as Abidin
Dino, Sven Blomberg, Michael Quanne
and Rostia Kunovsky. There is a
brilliant finale to his Rembrandt essay
in which he explores love and history,
longing and loss, and elsewhere a
lovely evocation of Willesden Junction
and Prunella Clough, whom he calls
“the best painter of her generation”.
His comparison of Francis Bacon and
Walt Disney is more thought-provoking
than comparing him to Goya or Eisen-
stein, while criticising Henry Moore
early in his career nearly cost him his
job and made him a national traitor.
There are tender and poetic reminis-
cences of Ossip Zadkine, and he writes
afectingly about love (in an essay on
Maggi Hambling). He identifies the
“accuracies of tact, of longing, of loss,
of expectation” in Cy Twombly’s work,
and calls him “the painterly master
of verbal silence”. He memorably
describes L.S. Lowry as “about as primi-
tive as a Zen Buddhist monk”.
Berger will describe his dreamsif he thinks they will lead us to an
understanding of the art or artist he
wants to elucidate. (He seems to favour
Shakespeare’s approach: “By indirec-
tions find directions out.”) You think
he is writing about Juan Muñoz, but
then the focus shifts to the Turkish
poet Nazim Hikmet, only to shift back
(via Red Lion Square and Meyerhold)
to Muñoz. Similarly, he writes about
Jaume Plensa by way of the Hebridean
island of Gigha. We might be given
Berger himself as a young painter, or
an episode of politics, but each of his
essays is always an overwhelmingly
human document, even when touching
on abstract thought or theory. Writing
about Courbet, Berger tells us: “The
only justification for criticism is that it
allows us to see more clearly.” His lucid
prose persuades us to see clearly indeed.
Landscapes is subtitled John Berger
on Art, as if this can somehow be
separated from his writing on artists.
But publishing two volumes makes
a wider selection of essays available,
each book with a diferent focus. If
the Portraits compilation is about indi-
viduals, Landscapes is about contexts,
about how and why art is made; or as
the editor, Tom Overton, puts it: “the
conditions from which it arises, or the
climate into which it was received”.
Landscapes is a smaller book than its
sibling, but equally rich, with a broad,
pluralistic approach and collaborative
ethos. As Overton writes: “Berger’s
work is an invitation to reimagine; to
see in diferent ways.”
The book is divided into two sec-
tions: Redrawing the Maps and Terrain.
In the first half we have essays about
the shaping of Berger’s thought, with
thought-provoking pieces on Frederick
Antal and Ernst Fischer, and a moving
account of Krakow and an early friend
called simply Ken. There is some
marvellously descriptive and evocative
writing here, but also challenging
essays on the nature of portraiture and
drawing. In an age of snap judgements
and shallow knowledge, Berger is an
exceptionally thinking man. He broods
and considers, then he reconsiders,
and the fruit of all this mental and
emotional activity is these remarkable
writings. Perhaps their efectiveness
is due to his modesty and lack of
illusions. In an essay entitled The Story-
teller, he says: “I have never thought of
writing as a profession. It is a solitary
independent activity in which practice
can never bestow seniority.” So, no
prizes for being a nonagenarian then...
Landscapes includes such deep-
ly-considered historical essays as The
Moment of Cubism, The Clarity of
the Renaissance and a piece about
the beginnings of Surrealism. Theycontain good synoptic writing such as:
“After 1600, the great artists, pushed
by lonely compulsion, stretch and
extend the range of painting, break
down its frontiers. Watteau breaks
out towards music, Goya towards the
stage, Picasso towards pantomime. A
few, such as Chardin, Corot, Cézanne,
did accept the strictest limitations.
But before 1550 every artist did. One
of the most important results of this
diference is that in the great later
forays only genius could triumph:
before, even a small talent could give
profound pleasure.” Then it was the
subject, not the way of painting it,
which had to express the painter’s
ideas and emotions.
Berger is still a Marxist, and is
much exercised by what he calls
“the disastrous relationship between
art and property”. He writes about
subjects that appear in few art books:
the lives of peasants, and about
displacement, migration and prison.
But he is also a great and hopeful
humanist and listener. The evident
passion which fuels his writing is
matched by tremendous compassion,
and it is the singular blending of these
characteristics which makes him such
a compelling storyteller.
Lapwing & Fox is a correspond-
ence book between Berger and the
artist, writer and film-maker John
Christie, and is the second they have
published. (The first, I Send You This
Cadmium Red, appeared in 2000.) The
text is doubled: first a facsimile of
the handwritten letter (from Berger),
then a printed transcription, or, in
Christie’s case, photographic repro-
duction of the small books he made
to send to Berger, also followed by a
transcription. Although Christie does
occasionally append handwritten notes
to his pamphlets, most of his writing
is already typed, so a transcription
seems somewhat superfluous, but he
clearly decided the format should be
maintained. Berger’s handwriting can
be erratic, so the printed version is
useful, and there’s a postscript on page
195 that does not appear in Christie’s
original text, so the reader is encour-
aged to be vigilant.
The friends’ correspondence ranges
over such subjects as portraits, the
gaze and the mystery of space, with
examples from the Sainsbury Centre
for Visual Arts in Norwich (Christie’s
favourite local museum) illustrating the
commentary. There are lots of poignant
personal stories from both Johns, and
the dead move in and out of the text—
parents, artists, friends, writers. There
is quite a lot on Christie’s own work as
print-maker and pastellist. GiacomettiJohn Berger: do not
call him an art criticCONTINUED ON PAGE 22NOVEMBER 2016
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