Artist Quotes by John Berger

The human quality Degas most admired was endurance.

— John Berger

All creation is in the art of seeing.

— John Berger

Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events.

— John Berger

Every painted image of something is also about the absence of the real thing. All painting is about the presence of absence.

— John Berger

“Today we see the art of the past as nobody saw it before. We actually perceive it in a different way.”

— John Berger

What any true painting touches is an absence - an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that…

— John Berger

We who draw do so not only to make something observed visible to others, but also to accompany something invisible to its…

— John Berger

Drawing is a way of coming upon the connection between things, just like metaphor in poetry reconnects what has become separated.

— John Berger

Until 1954, I'd only ever thought of being a painter, but I earned my money when and where I could. You could…

— John Berger

“We who draw do so not only to make something visible to others, but also to accompany something invisible to its incalculable…

— John Berger

I use charcoal a lot. Partly because it has such a fantastic range but also because it is very easy to erase.…

— John Berger

In drawing after drawing, pastel after pastel, painting after painting, the contours of Degas's dancing figures become, at a certain point, darkly…

— John Berger

“Thus painting itself had to be able to demonstrate the desirability of what money could buy. And the visual desirability of what…

— John Berger

In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of…

— John Berger

Painting is something that you need to do, if not every day, then certainly most days. It is almost like being a…

— John Berger

A drawing is essentially a private work, related only to the artist's own needs; a 'finished' statue or canvas is essentially a…

— John Berger

When I was about seven, one or two people encouraged me, and art became an enormous and important refuge. By adolescence, I…

— John Berger

At times failure is very necessary for the artist. It reminds him that failure is not the ultimate disaster. And this reminder…

— John Berger

“Having seen this reproduction, one can go to the National Gallery to look at the original and discover what the reproduction lacks.…

— John Berger

Malevich, Lissitsky, Kandinsky, Tatlin, Pevsner, Rodchenko… all believed in the social role of art… Their works were like hinged doors, connecting activity…

— John Berger

When he painted a road, the roadmakers were there in his imagination, when he painted the turned earth of a ploughed field,…

— John Berger

I can't tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that often art has judged the judges,…

— John Berger

“When I'm drawing - and here drawing is very different from writing or reasoning - I have the impression at certain moments…

— John Berger

The collaboration which sometimes follows is seldom based on good will: usually on desire, rage, fear, pity or longing. The modern illusion…

— John Berger

The extreme proposition on which Giacometti based all his mature work was that no reality... could ever be shared. This is why…

— John Berger

“I can't tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that art has often judged the judges,…

— John Berger

“[...] For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free. They surround us in the…

— John Berger

For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.

— John Berger

When a painter is working he is aware of the means which are available to him - these include his materials, the…

— John Berger

The impulse to paint comes neither from observation nor from the soul (which is probably blind) but from an encounter: the encounter…

— John Berger

[O]ften art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that…

— John Berger

“The real question is: to whom does the meaning of the art of the past properly belong ? To those who can…

— John Berger

“Drawing is a form of probing. And the first generic impulse to draw derives from the human need to search, to plot…

— John Berger

It is comparatively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture by allowing one colour to dominate, or by muting all…

— John Berger

Art is the provocation for talking about enigma and the search for sense in human life. One can do that by telling…

— John Berger

What do drawings mean to me? I really don't know. The activity absorbs me. I forget everything else in a way that…

— John Berger

“Oil painting, before anything else, was a celebration of private property. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are…

— John Berger

Oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality of objects. Everything became exchangeable…

— John Berger

There's the artist's intimacy and truthfulness to himself, but an equal intimacy to the Other [the one drawn]. Picasso drawings are like…

— John Berger

“There is a symbiotic desire to get closer and closer, to enter the self of what is being drawn, and, simultaneously, there…

— John Berger