Selected Essays

Marvelous writing; Superb essays, including those in other book purchased, "About Looking." BUT THE PRINT IS EXTREMELY SMALL, ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO READ. I MAY KEEP THE BOOK AND TRY TO USE A MAGNIFIER TO READ IT, A BIT AT A TIME. Seller should have noted that information in the ad for potential buyers. Beware of Amazon.

I was introduced to Berger's writings by an artist and art department chair. These are high-level reading, not fluffy, essays. I love his up-front, no-nonsense writing style. Berger writes about life and art. His essays are primarily art philosophies and critiques, and even when he writes of his daily life, art is still the point. There are wonderful lessons in his writings, some academic lessons and some life lessons. I find these readings enhance my studio art classes.

This is a wonderful, comprehensive collection nicely supplementing Bergers major books, such as "ways of seeing", "a fortunate man" (out of print, alas), or the more recent "here is where we meet" or "from A to X". You either love Bergers writing and his particular perspective, or dislike his style, I guess. I do belong to the former subgroup. Not having finished reading this big e-book, and not feeling like a literature critic in a foreing language anyway, I just want to point to a flaw of the *kindle edition*:The older texts at least seem to have been scanned and processed with OCR - this resulted in some annoying wrong words, most notably "die" instead of "the" several dozen times in the first essay "Drawing". For me as a German native (speaker) this is especially puzzling, as "die" is the female form of the direct article, so it is something like a 'near miss' from a foreing language. I would appreciate tighter editorial control of the final texts, beyond automated spell-checking - otherwise e-books (generated from scans) achieve a 'cheap' appearance (without being *that* cheap).

Good essays, especially those on the visual arts. A European marxist member of the establishment.

great thoughtful intellectual writer on the arts

I enjoyed the essays that I read though I quibble with the font size.

I happened to pick this book up in a store because I had read one novel of Berger's, Pig Earth, which I thought was very good. I knew he was an art critic, but I never had any particular urge to read art criticism; I didn't think visual art needed a lot of explaining. Just reading the three page essay on Jackson Pollock convinced me that, at least regarding the type of criticism that Berger writes, I was wrong. In a few sentences, he seems to capture the essence of what an artist has accomplished (or is trying to accomplish) in his or her work, and makes the work more vivid and meaningful than it was before. Here is clear proof that finding words for one's experience of a work of art doesn't devalue it but makes it richer.One of the things that makes these essays so gripping is that Berger is interested in something that seems to have fallen out of fashion in criticism: using art to identify the predicament of a culture. I remember, even before I picked up Pig Earth, being worried by the fact that Berger is a lifelong Marxist. But there is nothing doctrinaire or repetitive about his explanations of phenomenon; he is a free intellect, and I would argue that just because Marx's solutions have been widely discounted does not necessarily mean that his diagnoses are also invalid. In any case, Berger's priorities are always first exploring his subject, not imposing an orthodox framework on them.The book, also, is not just about art. Berger is a real man of letters; his essays range over every art form and subject, and in the space of a few pages he can marshall support for his points from a novelist, painter, poet, photographer, and historian. He is never pretentious, because his primary objective is always communicating his argument with urgency. I bought this essay on the strength of the Pollock essay alone, and I've discovered so many more that I could read again and again; this is really one of my treasured books (a good measure of which is the frequency with which it comes into the bathroom with me).The tight construction of Berger's essays makes it hard to quote a section and have it make sense as an argument, but here are a few samples: "Nobody who has not painted himself can fully appreciate what lies behind Matisse's mastery of colour. it is comparitively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture either 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."Or, in the essay on our changing relationship with animals: "Public zoos came into existence at the beginning of the period which was the see the disappearance of animals from daily life. The zoo to which people go to meet animals, to observe them, to see them, is, in fact, a monument to the impossibility of such encounters. Modern zoos are an epitaph to a relationship which was as old as man." The essay on animals had a passage on nearly every page which made me want to put the book down and think for a few minutes, and I hope I'm not doing it a disservice by quoting a fragment. Buy the book and read it all; there are few other collections that contain such a breadth of knowledge and insight. Seriously, this is value for money.

Berger is a truly great art writer - one from whom you can really feel the love for and fascination with art, the struggle to make sense of the ineffable effects art has had on him, and whose genuine goal seems to be helping the reader (and perhaps himself) understand art better (as opposed to more recent criticism whose raison d'etre seems to be maximizing obfuscation). Berger's gentle, ruminative style is pleasurable but can at times seem a bit wispy, giving him a somehow old-fashioned feel - I found myself at times wishing for a little more 'tooth' - but the breadth and depth are such to make that a fleeting concern.

I originally bought an edition of this book in Washington DC at the National Gallery bookstore, but then found this version on sale at Amazon. The text is the same, but this edition is printed on heavier paper with larger text - it's altogether an improvement in terms of the experience of reading. I gave it to my son as a present when he started his BA in Philosophy at Bristol University, knowing that he will enjoy dipping into it.In my view Berger ranks alongside Robert Hughes and Christopher Hitchens as one of the greatest essayists of the last century and I would recommend this book to anybody with an interest in the study of the History of Art and/or political philosophy.

John Berger ranks with Orwell and Angela Carter as a truly great essayist of the later part of the c20th. Always open, always engaging, and a model of how an essay need never be dull.

As expected excellent to have as kindle

What is left to write about Berger! Such a powerful individual! & such is his ingenious perspectives! It is indeed a pleasure to read his essays which gives an immense pleasure by unveiling self-consciousness through his eyes.Bergers essays are in a way itself gets the statute of history.Lastly, I would recommend that as a beginner one should start by Berger's "Ways of Seeing" and then come to this book which must serve the purpose of development of individual perspectives in the purest sense of the term.

A great read! The book arrived on time and in perfect condition.