A 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 Berger Copy Share Image
The autobiographical doesn't interest me. I could think of few things less interesting than rooting about in my life. — John Berger Copy Share Image
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. — John Berger Copy Share
The impulse to paint comes neither from observation nor from the soul (which is probably blind) but from an encounter: the encounter between painter… — John Berger Copy Share
Oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality of objects. Everything became exchangeable because everything… — John Berger Copy Share
Landscapes can be deceptive. Sometimes a landscape seems to be less a setting for the life of its inhabitants than a curtain behind which… — John Berger Copy Share
We live in a dominant culture of ceaseless Departure and Progress that has so far lasted two or three centuries. — John Berger Copy Share
My heart born naked was swaddled in lullabies. Later alone it wore poems for clothes. Like a shirt I carried on my back the… — John Berger Copy Share
There's the artist's intimacy and truthfulness to himself, but an equal intimacy to the Other [the one drawn]. Picasso drawings are like that... the… — John Berger Copy Share
Traditional Chinese art looked at the Earth from a Confucian mountain top; Japanese art looked closely around screens; Italian Renaissance art surveyed conquered nature… — John Berger Copy Share
In drawing after drawing, pastel after pastel, painting after painting, the contours of Degas's dancing figures become, at a certain point, darkly insistent, tangled… — John Berger Copy Share
We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. — John Berger Copy Share
We can become anything. That is why injustice is impossible here. There may be the accident of birth, there is no accident of death.… — John Berger Copy Share
Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible. This was once achieved by extensive… — John Berger Copy Share
“Today we see the art of the past as nobody saw it before. We actually perceive it in a different way.” — John Berger Copy Share
