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Kirkus Book Review

Britain's John Berger has got to be the widest-ranging Marxist art critic around; and in these 23 assorted essays, 1966-79, he almost apotheosizes into a butterfly. He'll poke around at anything anywhere that might ratify his rather wistful dream of truly socio-historical art. ""Why We Look at Animals,"" the longish lead piece, throws together every quote Berger seems to have been able to find in order to build a finally less-than-stirring argument: that the modern zoo is the culmination of the ""marginalization"" capitalism imposes even on beasts. His trendy essays on photography, which comprise the second section, try to out-Sontag Sontag (whose thoughts he credits with prompting some of his); but they are thin, wishy, or even obviously silly. (An August Sander photo of suited peasants on their way to a dance supposedly illustrates the succumbing of a perfectly good working-class sartorial fashion to the ""class hegemony"" of suits). The third section focuses variously on painting and painters. And here Berger writes that primitives, Grandma Moses included, do not ""emigrate"" to the standards of the ruling class as ""professionals"" do because their ""whole experience is one of being excluded from the exercise of power. . . ."" But he also maintains that Ralph Fasanella, the New York nÄive painter, denies perspective as a protest against the city's dehumanization (Berger is all over the place in this one). Yet on other topics--the Dutch de Stiff group, Turner, Courbet (""lawless visibility""--brilliant phrase)--Berger is adventurous and expanding. A messier, more Procrustean critic would be hard to find, farfetched as often as he is just; yet Berger always holds your interest--which, considering the present state of art criticism, is no mean accomplishment. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

John Peter Berger was born in London, England on November 5, 1926. After serving in the British Army from 1944 to 1946, he enrolled in the Chelsea School of Art. He began his career as a painter and exhibited work at a number of London galleries in the late 1940s. He then worked as an art critic for The New Statesman for a decade.

He wrote fiction and nonfiction including several volumes of art criticism. His novels include A Painter of Our Time, From A to X, and G., which won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Booker Prize in 1972. His other works include an essay collection entitled Permanent Red, Into Their Labors, and a book and television series entitled Ways of Seeing.

In the 1970s, he collaborated with the director Alain Tanner on three films. He wrote or co-wrote La Salamandre, The Middle of the World, and Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000. He died on January 1, 2017 at the age of 90.

(Bowker Author Biography)