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Landscapes : John Berger on art / by John Berger ; edited with an introduction by Tom Overton.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextPublisher: London ; New York : Verso, 2016Copyright date: ©2016Description: xv, 254 pages ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781784785840
  • 1784785849
Uniform titles:
  • Essays. Selections. 2016
Subject(s):
Contents:
Introduction: down with enclosures. Part 1 Redrawing the maps : Kraków -- To take paper, to draw -- The basis of all painting and sculpture is drawing -- Frederick Antal: a personal tribute -- An address to Danish worker actors on the art of observation, by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Anya Rostock and John Berger -- Revolutionary undoing: on Max Raphael's The Demands of Art -- Walter Benjamin: antiquarian and revolutionary -- The storyteller -- Ernst Fischer: a philosopher and death -- Gabriel García Márquez: the secretary of death reads it back -- Roland Barthes: inside the mask -- Forthflowing on a Joycean tide -- A gift for Rosa Luxembourg -- The ideal critic and the fighting critic. Part 2 Terrain : The clarity of the Renaissance -- A view of Delft -- The dilemma of the Romantics -- The Victorian conscience -- The moment of Cubism -- Parade, 1917 -- Judgment on Paris -- Soviet aesthetic -- The biennale -- Art and property now -- No more portraits -- The historical function of the museum -- The Work of Art -- 1968/1979 preface to Permanent Red (1960) -- Historical afterword to the Into Their Labours trilogy -- The white bird -- The soul and the operator -- The third week of August 1991 -- Ten dispatches about place (June 2005) -- Stones (Palestine, June 2003) -- Meanwhile -- Acknowledgements.
Summary: "With Portraits, world-renowned art writer John Berger took us on a captivating journey through centuries of art, situating each artist in the proper political and historical contexts. In Landscapes, a narrative of Berger's own journey emerges. Through his penetrating engagement with the writers and artists who shaped his own thought, Walter Benjamin, Rosa Luxembourg and Bertolt Brecht among them, Landscapes allows us to understand how Berger came to his own way of seeing. As always, Berger pushes at the limits of art writing, demonstrating beautifully how his painter's eyes lead him to refer to himself only as a storyteller. A landscape is, to John Berger, like a portrait, an animating, liberating metaphor rather than a rigid definition. It's a term, too, that reminds us that there is more here than simply the backdrop or 'by-work' of a portrait. Landscapes offers a tour of the history of art, but not as you know it"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 700 B496 Available 33111008491728
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A major new work from the world's leading writer on art

Landscapes , the companion volume to John Berger's highly acclaimed Portraits , explores what art tells us about ourselves.

"Berger's work is an invitation to reimagine; to see in different ways," writes Tom Overton in the introduction to this volume. As a master storyteller and thinker John Berger challenges readers to rethink their every assumption about the role of creativity in our lives.

In this brilliant collection of diverse pieces--essays, short stories, poems, translations--which spans a lifetime's engagement with art, John Berger reveals how he came to his own unique way of seeing. He pays homage to the writers and thinkers who infuenced him, such as Walter Benjamin, Rosa Luxemburg and Bertolt Brecht. His expansive perspective takes in artistic movements and individual artists--from the Renaissance to the present--while never neglecting the social and political context of their creation.

Berger pushes at the limits of art writing, demonstrating beautifully how his artist's eye makes him a storyteller in these essays, rather than a critic. With "landscape" as an animating, liberating metaphor rather than a rigid defnition, this collection surveys the aesthetic landscapes that have informed, challenged and nourished John Berger's understanding of the world. Landscapes --alongside Portraits --completes a tour through the history of art that will be an intellectual benchmark for many years to come.

Introduction: down with enclosures. Part 1 Redrawing the maps : Kraków -- To take paper, to draw -- The basis of all painting and sculpture is drawing -- Frederick Antal: a personal tribute -- An address to Danish worker actors on the art of observation, by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Anya Rostock and John Berger -- Revolutionary undoing: on Max Raphael's The Demands of Art -- Walter Benjamin: antiquarian and revolutionary -- The storyteller -- Ernst Fischer: a philosopher and death -- Gabriel García Márquez: the secretary of death reads it back -- Roland Barthes: inside the mask -- Forthflowing on a Joycean tide -- A gift for Rosa Luxembourg -- The ideal critic and the fighting critic. Part 2 Terrain : The clarity of the Renaissance -- A view of Delft -- The dilemma of the Romantics -- The Victorian conscience -- The moment of Cubism -- Parade, 1917 -- Judgment on Paris -- Soviet aesthetic -- The biennale -- Art and property now -- No more portraits -- The historical function of the museum -- The Work of Art -- 1968/1979 preface to Permanent Red (1960) -- Historical afterword to the Into Their Labours trilogy -- The white bird -- The soul and the operator -- The third week of August 1991 -- Ten dispatches about place (June 2005) -- Stones (Palestine, June 2003) -- Meanwhile -- Acknowledgements.

"With Portraits, world-renowned art writer John Berger took us on a captivating journey through centuries of art, situating each artist in the proper political and historical contexts. In Landscapes, a narrative of Berger's own journey emerges. Through his penetrating engagement with the writers and artists who shaped his own thought, Walter Benjamin, Rosa Luxembourg and Bertolt Brecht among them, Landscapes allows us to understand how Berger came to his own way of seeing. As always, Berger pushes at the limits of art writing, demonstrating beautifully how his painter's eyes lead him to refer to himself only as a storyteller. A landscape is, to John Berger, like a portrait, an animating, liberating metaphor rather than a rigid definition. It's a term, too, that reminds us that there is more here than simply the backdrop or 'by-work' of a portrait. Landscapes offers a tour of the history of art, but not as you know it"-- Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references.

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