When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.
John BergerEvery painted image of something is also about the absence of the real thing. All painting is about the presence of absence.
John BergerTraditional Chinese art looked at the Earth from a Confucian mountain top; Japanese art looked closely around screens; Italian Renaissance art surveyed conquered nature through the window or door-frame of a palace. For the Cro-Magnons, space is a metaphysical arena of continually intermittent appearances and disappearances.
John BergerThe human imagination... has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy. It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open.
John BergerYou painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting โVanity,โ thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.
John BergerThe existence of pleasure is the first mystery. The existence of pain has prompted far more philosophical speculation. Pleasure and pain need to be considered together; they are inseparable. Yet the space filled by each is perhaps different. Pleasure, defined as a sense of gratification, is essential for nature
John Berger