Quote

A drawing is essentially a private work, related only to the artist's own needs a 'finished' statue or canvas is essentially a public, presented work - related far more directly to the demands of communication.

John Berger

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Berger
Age: 90 †
Born: 1926
Born: November 5
Died: 2017
Died: January 2
Art Critic
Art Historian
Author
Critic
Journalist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Painter
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Hackney
John Peter Berger
Artist
Directly
Needs
Related
Work
Drawing
Statue
Finished
Statues
Private
Presented
Communication
Canvas
Demand
Essentially
Public
Demands

More quotes by John Berger

Image
What any true painting touches is an absence - an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss.
John Berger
Image
Drawing is a way of coming upon the connection between things, just like metaphor in poetry reconnects what has become separated.
John Berger
Image
What is saved in the cinema when it achieves art is a spontaneous continuity with all mankind.
John Berger
Image
Protest and anger practically always derives from hope, and the shouting out against injustice is always in the hope of those injustices being somewhat corrected and a little more justice established.
John Berger
Image
The autobiographical doesn't interest me. I could think of few things less interesting than rooting about in my life.
John Berger
Image
Photography, because it stops the flow of life, is always flirting with death.
John Berger
Image
When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.
John Berger
Image
Never chain your dogs together with sausages. One must accustom one's self to be bored.
John Berger
Image
Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.
John Berger
Image
We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice.
John Berger
Image
The camera relieves us of the burden of memory.
John Berger
Image
It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it
John Berger
Image
Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion. The industrial society ... recognises nothing except the power to acquire ... No other kind of hope or satisfaction or pleasure can any longer be envisaged within the culture of capitalism.
John Berger
Image
The opposite of love is not to hate but to separate. If love and hate have something in common it is because, in both cases, their energy is that of bringing and holding together
John Berger
Image
Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.
John Berger
Image
Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world which operates on the basis of necessity. Compassion opposes this order and is therefore best thought of as being in some way supernatural.
John Berger
Image
Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of an intolerable world, words appear to change very little. State power has become congenitally deaf, which is why but the editorialists forget it terrorists are reduced to bombs and hijacking.
John Berger
Image
Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.
John Berger
Image
The media network has its idols, but its principal idol is its own style which generates an aura of winning and leaves the rest in darkness. It recognizes neither pity nor pitilessness.
John Berger
Image
The animal has secrets which, unlike the secrets of caves, mountains, seas are specifically addressed to man.
John Berger