John Berger © Jean Mohr
A number of books were published to celebrate Berger’s 90th birthday last year, including two compilations—Portraits and Landscapes—a collaboration with John Christie, and a volume of new essays, which Andrew Lambirth reviewed in The Art Newspaper.
Lambirth wrote:
"Portraits is a vast and nourishing compendium of Berger’s essays that begins with a new preface by the master in which the first line is unequivocal: 'I have always hated being called an art critic.' He admits, however, that he operated as such for a decade (mostly for the New Statesman magazine), though in the milieu in which he grew up 'to call somebody an art critic was an insult. An art critic… wasn’t as bad as an art dealer, but he was a pain in the arse'. Presumably that is why Berger prefers to be known as a storyteller or novelist, or, at a pinch, an essayist. But he has never stopped writing about art (he trained as a painter), and he is inevitably critical (in the sense of reviewing and assessing the art he is discussing). Why quibble over terms? Berger is a brilliant writer and explicator, internationally influential in a way that few art critics usually are. To read him is to engage in a dialogue that invariably stimulates and enriches. Life has more light and colour after an encounter with Berger.
In the 2016 film The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger, the actress Tilda Swinton visits the critic and painter in his Alpine village home. Photo: Sandro Kopp
Berger began by lauding figurative painting and sculpture built on the discoveries of Modernist Abstraction, and stressed the importance of the artist’s receptivity or openness. His ideal method is to return again and again to the same artist, or the same work, for an extended process of consideration and reconsideration, finding something different each time."