In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man.
John BergerThe autobiographical doesn't interest me. I could think of few things less interesting than rooting about in my life.
John BergerGlamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.
John BergerThe past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences.
John BergerWhen 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 BergerWhat makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.
John BergerA peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements are connected by an and not by a but.
John BergerIt is comparatively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture by allowing one colour to dominate, or by muting all the colours. Matisse did neither. He clashed his colours together like cymbals and the effect was like a lullaby.
John BergerTo live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one's fellow countrymen.... But toemigrate is always to dismantle the centre of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.
John BergerI wanted to write about looking at the world, so it's more about helping people, or persuading people, to see what is around us; both the marvellous and the terrible.
John BergerModern thought has transferred the spectral character of Death to the notion of time itself. Time has become Death triumphant over all.
John BergerPainting is something that you need to do, if not every day, then certainly most days. It is almost like being a pianist: if you stop, you lose something.
John BergerThe envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.
John BergerTo be desired is perhaps the closest anybody in this life can reach to feeling immortal.
John BergerWhen we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.
John BergerThe relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.
John BergerNakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.
John BergerIf everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.
John Berger