“The body ages. The body is preparing to die,” John Berger writes in “And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos” (36). Just 3 months ago, John Berger died at the age of 90 in Antony, a quiet town in the southern suburb of Paris, France. He is often acclaimed as a world renowned art critic for his distinctive interpretations of seeing and revealing the political, social and philosophical ideologies behind artworks.
Since 1970s, it is commonly believed that the trending art critics “were concerned with matters of attribution, authentication and technique,” and they believed that “aesthetics was ascribed holy importance” (Asokan). The business of critiquing art is an elite business where general public are laymen and prohibited to understand. It is John Berger who brings art to the public. At his BBC television show “Ways of Seeing,” Berger breaks the pure aesthetic analysis which excludes art from public and sheds light on the worldly aspects of artworks to us, imbuing life and memory to the artworks. Berger also serves as a bridge that connects politics, society, globalization, time, space and awareness to artwork and closes the distance and discontinuity that divides us. How does he do that? Berger brings artwork close to the public by showing certain qualities of art such as ambiguity and subjectivity to people, and, after understanding those qualities, we begin to see the roles of arts such as conveying political messages and offering hope.
As an outsider of art critique, I have always struggled when I stand in front of a piece of artwork, not knowing where to start to interpret and understand it. I felt somehow related to the piece, but I couldn’t describe or explain the connection, and that is the discontinuity between me and the artist. For example, when I first saw J. M. W Turner’s painting, Snow Storm-SteamBoat off a Harbor’s Mouth, which depicts a vessel in the vortex of a storm, I noticed the techniques, the broad brushstrokes and the content. Among those elements, however, I also felt a disturbance that I could neither understand nor explain. The painting felt intangible and hard to relate to.
After reading John Berger, however, starting at the very first time I feel close to art. In essay “Turner and The Barber’s Shop,” Berger gives us a comprehensive instruction on how to build the tangibility with art. Turner himself was a son of a barber, and as Berger points out: “there is a strong correspondence between some of the visual elements of a barber’s shop and the elements of the painting’s mature style” (215). Indeed, the barber’s shop’s elements such as “water, froth, steam, gleaming metal, clouded mirrors, white bowls” look just like the elements in the Snow Storm: the violent waves, the sky filled with steams and the boat blurred in the vortex of the whirlpool (Turner, 215). Without knowing the personal background of Turner, I would have no idea where these signatures of Turner come from. The subjectivity of Turner’s life changes the way that I connect to the painting.
Berger then showed that in Turner’s natural landscape painting, “there is always a kind of restlessness or desperation” (Turner, 215). He explains: “Nature entered Turner’s work – or rather his imagination—as violence...the violence in Turner’s painting appears to be elemental: it is expressed by water, by wind, by fire” (Turner, 216). This comment is precise. The storm becomes a violent existence that engulfs the boat just like how it engulfs the audience of the painting—me. I begin to imagine the sailors crying out lustily for help in the ship as the storm rages on. I then realized—it is the desperation and violence that disturbed me. But somehow, I still felt distant from the painting. It is the further analysis that Berger has done on Turner’s historical background that brought me closer. Turner lived in the first apocalyptic phase of the British Industrial Revolution. The steams and the new productive energy “[challenge and destroy] all previous ideas about wealth, distance, human labor, the city, nature, the will of God, children, time” (Turner, 216). Living in a much different setting than Turner’s, I could not grasp the historical influence on this painting which left a certain ambiguity. However, I then thought of the global warming, the factories with poisoned air and those extreme weathers in the current world, which are contemporary projection of that painting. Put the artwork in different context, the meaning of the artwork changes.
This ambiguity of the painting makes it open to different interpretations by different standards, including history, society, politics etc., and it is this ambiguity that gives me proximity to the painting. After Berger’s analysis, I start to appreciate the tangibility which we can find in most of Berger’s essays. However, where does this tangibility come from? After reading many of Berger’s essays, I began to realize that it is his focus and understanding on the subjectivity and ambiguity that help readers find tangibility in various artworks.
In “Drawn to that Moment,” Berger examines the process of creating an artwork by inspecting the process of drawing his dead father. When Berger started to draw his father, he drew with complete objectivity. “Appearances, at any given moment, are a construction emerging from the debris of everything that has previously appeared” (drawn). Berger drew the appearances of his dead father — his mouth, his eyebrow, his eyelids… Because of this objectivity in the drawing, the audiences see it as an old man sleeping rather than a Berger’s dying father. However, as Berger wrote in the essay, “I felt the history and the experience which had made them as they were… but within it [the drawing] … his character and destiny had emerged” (Drawn, 41). The appearance has different meanings for the artist and the audiences. Artist creates with objectivity, which often turn out to be filled with subjectivity. “If I look at the drawing now, I scarcely see the face of a dead man; instead I see aspects of my father’s life” (Drawn, 42). The memory and spirits of his father emerge in the drawing. But if a random person comes in, he or she could only see a dead man. “The change which has taken place is subjective” (Drawn, 42). Berger’s emphasis on the subjectivity gives an artwork a tangibility. Creating an artwork is a subjective process. As in Turner’s the Snow Storm, without knowing his childhood experience in the barbershop, one wouldn’t find the relation with visual elements of barbers; instead, one would just see it as a vessel in the storm. For Turner, the same art work conjures up memories in a barbershop. This subjectivity exists in every piece of art. As the audiences realize the subjectivity, they would recognize the insufficiency of grasping a piece of art by simply looking at it, and they would start to put themselves into the artist’s shoes. Although the audience are not able to hold the same aspects as the memory of the creator, by knowing the relevant subjective information of the artist, they are able to begin to imagine the story and start to appreciate the artwork. That’s what Berger do in his essays, he put in the artist’s shoes and give us many artist’s subjective information, and then we start to imagine.
Berger’s focus on ambiguity of artwork is also important to pave the way to making art tangible. In Berger’s TV show Ways of Seeing, he juxtaposed Goya’s famous The Third of May 1808 which depicts the Spanish resistance against the Napoleon’s army with girls wearing tartans dancing absurdly. This arrangement gives the painting a sense of humor, and it seems the whole scene is staged and in a drama show in Broadway. Then, Berger juxtaposed the same painting with black people being nailed on the crux and shouted by soldiers. This arrangement renders the painting with an extremely different meaning which involves the harsh history of racism. As we can see, the ambiguity of art allows the different arrangement and interpretations, which yields different meanings. As Berger said, “each time, the impact of Goya is modified” (BBC). To put the same art work in different context, the ambiguity emerges.
Another ambiguity is using the words. In his show Ways of Seeing, Berger first asked us to see the painting of a group of birds flying over a cornfield in silence, and I somehow found it tranquil and peaceful. Then, he told us that this was the last painting of Van Gogh before he killed himself. Somehow, this very short description changes my perspectives, making me notice the loneliness and sadness of the crows and the dark sky. This short words changed the meaning of artwork, and, as he says, “Words you notice consciously…it can work almost without you noticing it” (BBC). Where does this ambiguity come from? Influenced by Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Berger concluded that this ambiguity is explained by the reproduction of art: “Reproduction of works of art can be used by anybody for their own purposes” (BBC). This ambiguity changes the meaning of art by simply changing different context with different words. Like in Turner’s The Snow Storm, the historical context of British industrial revolution changes the meaning of artwork and if we put this piece within a global warming campaign, we may see the effect of increasing sea level and extreme weathers. Just as in Ways of Seeing, Berger mentioned that “we accept it [artwork] in so far as it corresponds to our own observation of people, gestures, faces and institutions” (Ways, 14). Understanding the ambiguity, the audience can use a certain art piece for one’s own purpose and shed one’s own meaning for the work in one’s own context. In a way, “images can be used like words—we can talk with them. Reproduction should make it easier to connect to our experience of art directly with other experiences” (BBC). Now, utilizing the ambiguity, an artwork begins to make sense by our means, and we can even use artwork like words to convey our own ideas.
Berger is successful not only because he makes art tangible, but also because how he uses the properties like subjectivity and ambiguity, he makes art like words and conveys political messages. In “Welcome to the abyss,” Berger analyzes the work Millennium Triptych by Hieronymus Bosch which depicted the scene of hell where he finds that “there is no horizon there. There is no continuity between actions, there are no pauses, no paths, no pattern, no past and no future.” He compared it to “the average publicity sot, or in a typical CNN news bulletin, or any mass-media commentary” (Welcome). And he described the hell depicted by Bosch as “a prophecy of the mental climate imposed on the world by globalization and the new economic order” (Welcome). As a Marxist against capitalism, Berger is influenced by Marxist theory on aesthetics and art history. Early Marxists saw art as “a means of communicating socialist ideals to the masses, covering subjects relevant to their everyday lives” (Marxist aesthetics). Marxists believe that economic and social conditions affect every aspect of an individual's life, “from religious beliefs to legal systems to cultural frameworks” (Marxist aesthetics). And Marxist aesthetics are especially concerned with the social value of art work, in a sense that whether this artwork is beneficial to the society and improve the society. Of course, Berger, like most of the Marxist, believes capitalism is the culprit of the injustice economic order and the huge gap between rich and poor. Therefore, Berger firmly stood against it: “Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible” (). These ideas are conveyed through artworks. By using the ambiguity of Millennium Triptych, Berger puts it in a contemporary setting and addresses the problem of globalization. This is one important message that Berger wants to convey: capitalism is evil.
However, Berger “seems to have little interest in the deep structures of power or in parties,” his hatred of capitalism “signals an anger on behalf of the dispossessed” (Marr). Indeed, Berger seems to care more about the underdog of the society than the political dynamics happened in Washington. “In any situation where political power was in play, his very instinct was to side with the powerless” (Moore). In “Caravaggio: A Contemporary View”, he admitted that his favorite art painter is Caravaggio. Berger knows that there are a lot of other painters who are more admirable, but Caravaggio is the one to whom he feels closest. The closest is by the sharing of dispossessed. Caravaggio was a fugitive—a member of the underworld, so he understood the fear and need of the other underworld people. They fear “distance and solitude” (Caravaggio). Caravaggio’s work depicted those overcrowding which had no distance between each other and they were never left alone. The chiaroscuro that featured Caravaggio’s work “banish daylight” and most of his work are within a painted interior since underworld people “only felt relatively at ease inside” (Caravaggio). Caravaggio vividly depicts the underworld which spellbound Berger. The reason why Berger is so empathetic to the underrepresented people, I believe, is based on his experience. After he moved from Switzerland to a more remote village in French Alps, Berger began to collect “stories from the voiceless and dispossessed – peasants, migrants, even animals – a self-effacing role he would continue to occupy for the next 43 years” (Maughan). Berger serves as a voice for the voiceless and by analyzing artwork, he devoted his whole life delivering their voices.
However, if Berger is so interested in politics and the under-privileged people, why did he live in a remote village writing art? His short essay “the White Bird” gives us an answer: “In a world of suffering in which evil is rampant, a world whose events do not confirm our being, a world that has to resisted. It is in this situation that the aesthetic moment offers hope. A beautiful crystal or poppy makes us feel less alone. We are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe . . . For an instant, the energy of one’s perception becomes inseparable from the energy of the creation” (The White Bird).
The hope, I believe, is the most fundamental message Berger wants to convey through his large body of literary works. Art, as the protest and anger in any political movements, are derived from hope and give hope as well. “Shouting out against injustice is always in the hope of those injustices being somewhat corrected and a little more justice established” (Interview). Hope is the struggling boat in the vortex of the snow storm in Turner’s painting; hope is the memory awaken when Berger sees his father’s drawing; hope is the string of light that penetrates a dark room full of the under-privileged in Caravaggio’s world; hope is also what Berger sees in the dispossessed, and in writing angrily against capitalism and the current economic order. “Hope,” as Berger once said, “is a contraband passed from hand to hand and story to story” (Bento’s, 87).
Work Cited:
Asokan, Ratik. "The Many Faces of John Berger." New Republic. N.p., 29 Dec. 2015. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.
Berger, John. And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos. London: Bloomsbury, 2005. Print.
Berger, John. “Turner and The Barber’s Shop” The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose. Ed. Laura Buzzard, et al. Broadview Press. 2016. Print.
Berger, John. "Drawn To That Moment." How to Lose a War (2008): n. pag. Web.
Berger, John. "Ways of Seeing." BBC. N.d. Television.
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.
Berger, John. "Welcome to the Abyss." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 19 Nov. 1999. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.
Berger, John. "Caravaggio: a contemporary view." Studio International, 1983, Volume 196 Number 998, Web.
Berger, John. "The White Bird." The White Bird. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.
Berger, John. Bento's Sketchbook. London: Verso, 2015. Print.
"Interview: John Berger, Author." Lifestyle. The Scotsman, 03 June 2011. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.
"Marxist aesthetics." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 1 Mar. 2017. Web. 9 Apr. 2017.
Marr, Andrew. "Why John Berger Is the Least Theoretical Marxist on Earth." NewStatesman. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.
Maughan, Philip. ""I Think the Dead Are with Us": John Berger at 88." NewStatesman. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.
Moore, Suzanne. "I Do Not Recognise the Stereotype of John Berger as a Dour Marxist – His Work Embodied Hope." Theguardian. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Apr. 2017.