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Miha Colner

Art Making is Always Collective Act: about John Berger

Art Making is Always Collective Act: about John Berger

Art Making is Always Collective Act: about John Berger

On the book Portraits: John Berger on Artists (ed. Tom Overton) which was released by Verso Books in 2015, and on the public interview with John Berger at The British Library on 18 September 2015.

The article was initially published in Slovenian language at the Dnevnik daily newspaper, on 26 September 2015.

At 88 years of age John Berger is probably one of the most acclaimed as well as the most insightful writers on art and society. However, throughout his long career he also wrote poetry and literature. Recently he published the book, entitled Portraits: John Berger on Artists, which is to be followed in the coming year by extensive study on the landscape genre. Berger has been active as a writer and critic (the term that he has always tried to avoid) all the way from the early 1950s when he was contributing reviews and columns to the British newspaper New Statesman. In the period when the abstract art was overwhelmingly dominant in the art world of the West he defended different practices of modern art; the ones that were usually characterised with potent socio-political substance. Despite the sharp break during and after the second world war number of artists of that period have managed to continue working in the tradition of progressiveness and engagement of the early avant-garde movements.

 Frans Hals, Regentesses of the Old Man's Almshouse, Haarlem, 1664

Frans Hals, Regentesses of the Old Man’s Almshouse, Haarlem, 1664

One of Berger’s most daring and far-reaching works was the study The Success and Failure of Picasso (1965), written and published while this notorious painter was still alive and active. The book profoundly analyses several creative periods of the superstar artist who became an embodiment of celebrity culture, leisure lifestyle and new-found individuality. Furthermore, it was one of the few studies that consider the persona and the work of Picasso with an unmerciful criticism. Unlike number of writers before and after he does not see him as almighty and slightly maladjusted genius but rather as an artist with ongoing creative struggles.

Francisco Goya, The Truth Has Died, 1810

Francisco Goya, The Truth Has Died, 1810

Soon after he published the book, entitled The Art and Revolution: Ernst Neizvestny and the Role of the Artist in the U.S.S.R. (1969) where he focused on the life and work of Soviet artist Ernst Neizvestny, the maverick who did not follow prescribed norms of state sponsored style of socialist realism, and who became widely admired after his supposed argument with the president Nikita Khruschov. With this study Berger offered a precious insight into the developments of art making behind the iron curtain that was at that period still hermetically veiled. In addition to his writings on art (at that period) prolific Berger also wrote prose and was awarded a Booker prize for his fictionalised historical novel G (1972). On this occasion he became infamous for his decision to donate half of the cash prize to the British wing of the revolutionary black movement The Black Panthers while he invested the other half to research process for his next book A Seventh Man (1975), which is an interdisciplinary piece of work combining photographs and texts. The donation was directly related to the colonial past of the major sponsor of the award, the Booker family who gained wealth by exploiting slave labour force.

 Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans, 1849-1850

Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans, 1849-1850

Probably the most crucial work of Berger’s mid-career was the TV series and the book, entitled The Ways of Seeing (1972), where he parsed in-depth the dominant discourses of the history of art while at the same time he even presented his own alternative. Instead of dealing with commissioners, the popes, kings, bishops or wealthy traders, he focused on the artists and on profound meanings of their works that are always in close relation to certain place and time. More than in commercial aspects of the art works he was interested in their very substance what was (only) one of the reasons that he was so often indiscriminately labeled as a Marxist; the label that was not and still is not very desirable among the elites in Great Britain. However, the series that was broadcast on the BBC was an instant success that rocketed him among the most important and widely popular thinkers of that period. After that blockbuster and bestseller he has remained mostly dedicated to writing, always combining diverse genres, and by now he released more than 50 publications.

Renato Guttuso, The Battle at Ponte dell'Ammiraglio, 1952

Renato Guttuso, The Battle at Ponte dell’Ammiraglio, 1952

On the occasion of launch of his recent book the British Library organised a conversation with Berger who otherwise rarely speaks publicly. The book comprises more than 500 pages and it includes separate essays on 74 artists, the anonymous as well as renown and less known, from the cave paintings 300.000 years ago to contemporary art practices. For its temporal span the book is not an comprehensive overview of art history of civilisation, however, despite that the author managed to analyse some crucial figures of western visual art as well as the artists from the marginal parts of the world. The book is thus concluded with the text about Palestinian artist Randa Mdah from Ramallah on the West Bank. The most significant and distinctive Berger’s statement is therefore the selection of artists that reflect his world view. There are no superstars of contemporary art but rather very distinctive artists such as Vija Celmins, Andres Serrano, Christoph Hänsli and Peter Kennard.

Peter Kennard, Thatcher Cuts Healthcare, 1985

Peter Kennard, Thatcher Cuts Healthcare, 1985

The latter is presented in the book with the reproduction of his photomontage, entitled Thatcher Cuts Healthcare (1985), that points at the issues of ongoing stratification and loss of basic civil rights at the end of the 20th century. The work is still (or even more so) topical nowadays in the era of austerity policies that rest on the backs of the majority of the population. Berger hes always been, and today he is even more so, extremely critical of the global financial structures and transnational capital. As a protagonist of post-war generation of Europeans he has seen the rise as well as fall of the working class, the middle class and the civil society. He described the current period as an era of financial fascism that led to the fact that the term democracy nowadays sounds almost derogatory and that the political caste has been left without any power and credibility. And the political elite is fully aware of that, therefore its rhetoric sounds so shallow and inconsistent.

 Ernst Neizvestny, Tomb of Nikita Khrushchev, 1971

Ernst Neizvestny, Tomb of Nikita Khrushchev, 1971

Berger describes aforementioned phenomena the most effectively through the analysis of visual culture where the essence of today’s world can be found. In his looking he is very disciplined while in his writing he is very self-critical, and maybe that is why his texts are often fairly short and very concise. Instead of defining it as an art critique or art theory he describes his work as a storytelling. And storytelling has to be hospitable to the reader, he adds. In his recent book he thus establishes a thesis which is actually a leitmotif of his entire career, that is, that essentially art is always created collectively in a constant dialogue with its environment and its zeitgeist.

 

Andrea Mantegna, The Dead Christ, 1490

Andrea Mantegna, The Dead Christ, 1490

 

Randa Mdah, Puppet Theater, 2008

Randa Mdah, Puppet Theater, 2008