Selected Essays of John Berger

Notes

The Moment of Cubism

1. See John Golding, Cubism (London: Faber & Faber, 1959; New York: Harper & Row, 1971).

2. D. H. Kahnweiler, Cubism (Paris: Editions Braun, 1950).

3. In the Penguin translation of Apollinaire a misreading of these lines unfortunately reverses the meaning of the poem.

4. El Lissitzky (Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1967), p. 325 (trans. Anya Bo-stock).

5. E. M. Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, trans. A. W. Wheen (London: Putnam & Co., 1929; New York: Mayflower/Dell Paperbacks, 1963).

6. Quoted in Anthony Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy 1450–1600 (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1956; OUP paperback edn, 1962).

7. See Arnold Hauser, Mannerism (London: Routledge, 1965; New York: Knopf, 1965); an essential book for anybody concerned with the problematic nature of contemporary art, and its historical roots.

8. Quoted in Anthony Blunt, op. cit.

9. Artists on Art, ed. R. J. Goldwate and M. Treves (New York: Pantheon Books, 1945; London: John Murray, 1976).

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

12. Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1959), p. 75 (New York: Harper & Row/Torch, 1959).

13. For a similar analysis of Cubism, written thirty years earlier but unknown to the author at the time of writing, see Max Raphael’s great work The Demands of Art (London: Routledge, 1969), p. 162 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968).

14. Eddie Wolfram, in Art and Artists, London, September 1966.

15. Werner Heisenberg, op. cit., p. 172.

16. W. Grey Walter, The Living Brain (London: Duckworth, 1953; Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1961), p. 69 (New York: Norton, 1963).

17. 17. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (London: Routledge, 1964; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), pp. 4, 5.

18. Quoted in Hans Richter, Dada (London: Thames & Hudson, 1966), p. 55 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

Art and Property Now

1. Notes pour un Manifeste (Paris: Galerie Denise René, 1955).

Image of Imperialism

1. ‘Vietnam must not stand alone’, New Left Review, London, no. 43, 1967.

2. Saint-just, Discours et Rapports (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1957), p. 66 (trans. by the author).

3. Ibid., p. 90.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Quoted in Albert Camus, The Rebel (London: Peregrine, 1962), p. 140.

8. E. ‘Che ’ Guevara, Le Socialisme et l ’homme (Paris: Maspero, 1967), p. 113 (trans. by the author).

Nude in a Fur Coat

1. The Success and Failure of Picasso (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965).

The Painter in His Studio

1. Lawrence Gowing, Vermeer (London: Faber & Faber, 1952).

2. Pascal, Pensées (trans. by the author).

L. S. Lowry

1. This quotation is from Mervyn Levy’s L. S. Lowry (London: Studio Vista, 1961). Levy establishes the character of the artist very well, but his interpretations of the works are vulgar.

2. Kenneth Clark, A Tribute to L. S. Lowry (Eccles: Monks Hall Museum, 1964).

3. L. S. Lowry (London: Arts Council catalogue, 1966).

4. Mervyn Levy, L. S. Lowry, op. cit.

5. George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (London: Gollancz, 1937).

Pierre Bonnard

1. Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (London: Macmillan, 1958), p. 168.

2. Stendhal, De l ’Amour (Paris: Editions de Cluny, 1938), p. 43 (trans. by the author).

3. Quoted in Pierre Bonnard (London: Royal Academy catalogue, 1966).

Auguste Rodin

1. Isadora Duncan, My Life (London: Gollancz, 1966), pp. 99, 100.

2. Ibid.

3. Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book X, trans. Mary M. Innes (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955).

4. Quoted by Denys Sutton, Triumphant Satyr (London: Country Life, 1966).

Peter Peri

1. John Berger, A Painter of Our Time (London: Secker & Warburg, 1958; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965).

Victor Serge

1. Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901–1941, ed. and trans. Peter Sedgwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963).

2. Victor Serge, Birth of Our Power, trans. Richard Greeman (London: Gollancz, 1968).

Fernand Léger

1. John Berger, Corker’s Freedom (London: Methuen, 1964).

The Sight of a Man

1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense, trans. Hubert L. Dreyfus (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1964).

2. Merleau-Ponty, op. cit.

3. Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, ed. James M. Edie, trans. William Cogg et al. (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1964).

Revolutionary Undoing

1. Max Raphael, The Demands of Art, trans. Norbert Guterman (London: Routledge, 1968).

On the Bosphorus

1. ‘The new dissent: intellectuals, society and the left’, New Society, 23 November 1978.

The Work of Art

1. Nicos Hadjinicolaou, Art History and Class Consciousness (London: Pluto Press, 1978; Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1978).

Mayakovsky

1. V. V. Mayakovsky, How Are Verses Made? (London: Cape, 1970; New York: Grossman, 1970).

2. This is a literal translation by the authors.

3. Mayakovsky, op. cit.

4. Yannis Ritsos, Gestures, trans. Nikos Stangos (London: Cape Goliard, 1971; New York: Grossman, 1970).

Leopardi

1. Giacomo Leopardi, Moral Tales, trans. Patrick Creagh (Manchester: Carcanet, 1983; New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

A Story for Aesop

1. Danilo Dolci, Sicilian Lives (New York: Pantheon, 1981), p. 171.

2. José Ortega y Gasset, Historical Reason (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), p. 187.

Sources

Where no prior source is indicated, a piece is assumed to have been first published in book form. Otherwise the pieces were first published — sometimes with different titles, in different versions — as follows.

Permanent Red

All pieces first published in the New Statesman

The Moment of Cubism

The Moment of Cubism: New Left Review

The Historical Function of the Museum, The Changing View of Man in the Portrait, Art and Property Now, Image of Imperialism, Nude in a Fur Coat, Mathias Grünewald, L. S. Lowry, Alberto Giacometti, Pierre Bonnard, Auguste Rodin: New Society

The Painter in His Studio: Vermeer: Punch

Et in Arcadia Ego: Poussin: New Statesman

The Maja Dressed and The Maja Undressed: Goya: Sunday Times Magazine

Toulouse-Lautrec: Observer

Frans Hals: Sunday Times Magazine

The Look of Things

Peter Peri, Zadkine, Victor Serge, Walter Benjamin, Painting a Landscape, Understanding a Photograph, The Political Uses of Photo-Montage, The Sight of a Man, Revolutionary Undoing, Past Seen from a Possible Future, The Nature of Mass Demonstrations: New Society

Le Corbusier, Drawings by Watteau, Thicker than Water: New Statesman Fernand Léger: Marxism Today

The Booker Prize Speech: Guardian (24 November 1972)

About Looking

All previously published in New Society except:

Between Two Colmars, Romaine Lorquet: Guardian

Turner and the Barber’s Shop, Rouault and the Suburbs of Paris: Réalities

The White Bird

The Storyteller, On the Bosphorus, The Theatre of Indifference, The Hals Mystery, In a Moscow Cemetery, François, Georges and Amélie: A Requiem in Three Parts, Drawn to That Moment, The Eyes of Claude Monet, The Work of Art, The Hour of Poetry, Leopardi, The Production of the World: New Society

The Eaters and the Eaten: Guardian

Modigliani’s Alphabet of Love: Village Voice

Ernst Fischer: A Philosopher and Death: Introduction to his autobiography, An Opposing Man: The Autobiography of a Romantic Revolutionary (New York: Liverlight, 1974)

Mayakovsky: His Language and His Death: 7 Days

The First and Last Recipe: Ulysses: Guardian

Keeping a Rendezous

Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye, The Soul and the Operator: Expressen

That Which Is Held: Village Voice

A Load of Shit, Imagine Paris, The Opposite of Naked, Drawing on Paper: Harper’s Magazine

Mother: Threepenny Review

A Story for Aesop: partly in Granta, partly in Village Voice Literary Supplement A Kind of Sharing, The Third Week of August, 1991: Guardian

Christ of the Peasants: exhibition catalogue published by the Arts Council of Great Britain

A Professional Secret: New Society

Ape Theatre: Granta

A Household: New Statesman & Society

Erogenous Zone: El Pais