The Sense of Sight

by John Berger, Lloyd Spencer (Editor)

With this provocative and infinitely moving collection of essays, a preeminent critic of our time responds to the profound questions posed by the visual world. For when Booker Prize-winning author John Berger writes about Cubism, he writes not only of Braque, Léger, Picasso, and Gris, but of that incredible moment early in this century when the world converged around a marvelous sense of promise. When he looks at the Modigliani, he sees a man’s infinite love revealed in the elongated lines of the painted figure.
 
Ranging from the Renaissance to the conflagration of Hiroshima; from the Bosphorus to Manhattan; from the woodcarvers of a French village to Goya, Dürer, and Van Gogh; and from private experiences of love and of loss, to the major political upheavals of our time, The Sense of Sight encourages us to see with the same breadth, courage, and moral engagement that its author does.

Genres: Art, Essays, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Photography, Art History, Theory

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

John Peter Berger was an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a college text.

Later he was self exiled to continental Europe, living between the french Alps in summer and the suburbs of Paris in winter. Since then, his production has increased considerably, including a variety of genres, from novel to social essay, or poetry. One of the most common themes that appears on his books is the dialectics established between modernity and memory and loss,

Another of his most remarkable works has been the trilogy titled Into Their Labours, that includes the books Pig Earth (1979), Once In Europa (1983) Lilac And Flag (1990). With those books, Berger makes a meditation about the way of the peasant, that changes one poverty for another in the city. This theme is also observed in his novel King, but there his focus is more in the rural diaspora and the bitter side of the urban way of life.

Reviews

[Brynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

"All the languages of art have been developed as an attempt to transform the instantaneous into the permanent." (9)

"Art is an organized response to what nature allows us to glimpse occasionally." (9)

"In any case experience folds upon itself, refers backwards and forwards to itself through the referents of hope and fear; and, by the use of metaphor which is at the origin of language, it is continually comparing like with unlike, what is small with what is large, what is near with what is distant." (15)

"All weddings are similar but every marriage is different." (17)

"The hell of politics - which is why politics compulsively seeks utopias - is that it has to straddle both times: millennia and a few days." (55)

"Manhattan is a concept. It also exists. In its streets a visitor is at first astounded by both the power and weakness of his previous imagination. From this astonishment comes a paradox. They are, at one and the same time, streets in a dream and the most real streets (offering nothing behind what is) that he has ever seen." (61)

"What one might expect to happen on the inside, happens here on the outside. There is no interiority. There may be introspection, guilt, happiness, personal loss; but all of it surfaces and comes out in words, actions, habits, tics, which become events taking place on every floor in every block. It isn't that everything becomes public, for this would suggest that there is no solitariness. Rather, each soul is turned inside out and remains alone." (64)

"Artists cannot change or make history. The most they can do is strip it of pretences." (115)

"Appearances, at any given moment, are a construction emerging from the debris of everything which has previously appeared." (146)

"Art is concerned with memory: experiment is concerned with predictions." (181)

"However intensely and empirically observed at the moment, an impression later becomes, like a memory, impossible to verify." (191)

"The long or short process of painting a picture is the process of constructing the future moments when it will be looked at." (206)

"...poetry being that form of language which addresses itself to that which is beyond speaking." (262)

[Elise · Rating 5 out of 5]

I reread these essays all the time. The final essay "The Production of Reality" (Berger's description of his visit to the van Gogh museum)saved my life.
Berger is a historian,art-critic, marxist, and spriritual/moral guide.
I am pretty sure that John Berger has seen and thought about every single piece of art that has ever existed.

[Jules DiGregorio · Rating 4 out of 5]

I jumped around and skimmed sections because this was quite far down the list of reading priorities in terms of classes + projects + thesis... But thoroughly enjoyed as expected because John Berger is a gift. Feel like I am getting to know him by reading more of his work. He's my imaginary friend

[Namrirru · Rating 4 out of 5]

The prose of this book is unbelievably beautiful.

[Salomé Jashi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The way he writes is extremely visual. it's like watching a film based on small details that make you happy out of nothing. Here's one chapter from this book

http://desperate-ingeorgia.blogspot.c...

[CL Chu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Won't touch Berger for a while. Already too familiar with his style but lacking the cultural capital to empathize with his aesthetic. And no, this book is not that socialist; it's a humanism that takes (Western) culture as serious as a favorite but out-of-stock beer brand.

[Milton Brasher-Cunningham · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Berger gives me new things to think about every time I read one of his books. His words are full of humanity and compassion, as he implores us to look--really look--at the world and see what matters most: "For an animal its natural environment and habitat are a given; for [a human] . . .reality is not a given: it has to be continually sought out, held—I am tempted to say salvaged. . . . Reality, however one interprets it, lies beyond a screen of clichés." (278)

[Dixon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't particularly enjoy the entire book. As a collection of short essays it was a little overbearing. However, two of my favorite short pieces are in the collection. Manhattan & The Theatre of Indifference, which run smoothly together in style, composition and concept. If you have not read these, they are a must, especially in the postmodern society of the 21st century.

[Atila Demirkasımoğlu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kübizm Anı çok önemli bir makale. Yine Şiirin Saati de önemli. John Berger, sanatçı ve yazarı şahsında bütünleyebilmiş bir kişi. Yeni güzellik ve düşüncelerle buluşurken bakmayı ve görmeyi, öncelikle zihinsel bir faaliyet ama ancak birikimin üzerine koyulan bir faaliyet olarak gören ve bunu son derece yalın ve sade biçimde gerçekleştiren bir kişi.

[Tyler Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

One can only read Marxist interpretations of art for so many pages. About 150, I think. Berger is a mammoth, but I wish he'd stop letting Karl Marx tell me why Modigliani is important and just do it himself.

[Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm sure I'll say this again somewhere in my reviews, but read any John Berger you can. He's fantastic. (Seminal work: Ways Of Seeing)