The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled -- so opens John Berger's revolutionary million-copy bestseller on how to look at art

John Berger's Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the Sunday Times critic commented: This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures. By now he has.

Compelling and intimate, this collection of never-before-seen letters between the celebrated art critic and essayist, John Berger and his son Yves, an artist, is a moving look at their musings on art, memory, life, death, and beyond.

Written between 2015-16, with 53 color images of well-known old masters and contemporary art as well as some of the Bergers' own drawings and watercolors, Over to You is an informal back and forth not unlike the ping-pong games father and son used to play in the barn of their house. It begins when John--who is in a Parisian suburb--sends Yves--who is in Haute Savoie--an envelope of reproductions of art that have moved him. And so they begin to reveal their thoughts looking at a Goya, Watteau, Twombly, Joan Mitchell, Durer, Caravaggio, Manet, and Euan Uglow, among many others. But the art is just a way to summon shared emotions and memories, as well as deepen their understanding of the world and its mysteries.

John at 89 is the more formal teacher, Yves at 39 comes across as the younger, philosophical artist. There are John's thoughts on the use of color, light and space in, say, a Dürer, or a Beckmann to the question of staying fully alive; or Yves noting how much in life exceeds our understanding, the gap between our consciousness and our feeling, between the said and the unsaid. That's the zone where I would like us to meet. Are you coming? He asks his father. I may need other eyes to confirm what is really there. Like your eyes always did. This is an exceptional and moving tribute to a relationship between a father and son, and between two artists, as well as a thought provoking look at questions we all have about work, time, the universe, life and death.

A powerful meditation on political resistance and the global search for justice

From the 'War on Terror' to resistance in Ramallah and traumatic dislocation in the Middle East, Berger explores the uses of art as an instrument of political resistance. Visceral and passionate, Hold Everything Dear is a profound meditation on the far extremes of human behaviour, and the underlying despair. Looking at Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq, he makes an impassioned attack on the poverty and loss of freedom at the heart of such unnecessary suffering.

These essays offer reflections on the political at the core of artistic expression and at the center of human existence itself.

A deeply moving exploration of the relationship between thinking and drawing, from the author of the groundbreaking Ways of Seeing

The seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza (a.k.a. Bento) spent the most intense years of his short life writing. He also carried with him a sketchbook. After his sudden death, his friends rescued letters, manuscripts, notes--but no drawings.

For years, without knowing what its pages might hold, John Berger has imagined finding Bento's sketchbook, wanting to see the drawings alongside his surviving words. When one day a friend gave him a beautiful virgin sketchbook, Berger said, 'This is Bento's!' and he began to draw, taking inspiration from the philosopher's vision.

In this beautifully illustrated book, Berger uses the imaginative space opened up in this experiment to explore politics, storytelling, Spinoza's life and times, and the process of drawing itself.

John Berger's explorations of the relationships between the individual and society, culture and politics, and experience and expression through the written word, films, photographic collaborations and performances are unmatched in their diversity, ambition and reach. His television series and book Ways of Seeing revolutionized the way that art is understood. Now, Understanding a Photograph gathers the photography writings of one of the most internationally influential authors of the past 50 years. Understanding a Photograph is arranged chronologically, leading the reader on a thought-provoking journey through selected essays from hallmark works such as About Looking and Another Way of Telling, as well as previously uncollected pieces written for exhibitions or catalogues that discuss a wide range of artists--from August Sander to Jitka Hanzlová. This collection of some 25 texts has been carefully selected by novelist and essayist Geoff Dyer, who has also written a critical study of Berger's oeuvre.

Why should an artist's way of looking at the world have any meaning for us? Any artwork reflects the artist's intentions, but also its times: therefore all art is political

In Permanent Red, John Berger argues that the contemporary artist should strive for a realism that aims for hope, to transform the world. Surveying the work of historical artists as well as that of near contemporaries such as Picasso, Léger and Matisse, he explores the role of the artist, dividing these figures into those that struggle, those that fail, and the true masters. He explains why we should study the work of the past: in order to understand the present and to rethink the future.

First published in 1960, Permanent Red established John Berger as a firebrand critic willing to broadcast controversial opinions on some of the most important British artists of the day, including Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.

What makes shit such a universal joke is that it's an unmistakable reminder of our duality, of our soiled nature and of our will to glory. It is the ultimate lèse-majesté.

John Berger's essay begins by describing the experience of burying a year's worth of his household's excrement. What follows is an extended reflection--at once philosophically detached and profoundly engaged with the inescapable stuff of life--on shit as an emblem of what it means to be human: on our simultaneous kinship with and profound difference from all other animals.

Eris Gems make available in the form of beautifully produced saddle-stitched booklets a series of outstanding short works of fiction and non-fiction.

The great art critic and writer John Berger joined forces again with Turkish writer and illustrator Selçuk Demirel in this unexpected pictorial essay.

What happens when an art critic loses some of his sight to cataracts? What wonders are glimpsed once vision is restored?

In this impressionistic essay written in the spirit of Montaigne, John Berger, whose treatises on seeing have shaped cultural and media studies for four decades, records the effects of cataract removal operations on each of his eyes. The result is an illuminated take on perception. Berger ponders how we can become accustomed to a loss of sense until a dulled world becomes the norm, and describes the sudden richness of reawakened sight with acute attention to sensory detail.

This wise little book beckons us to pay close attention to our own senses and wonder at their significance as we follow Berger's journey into a more vivid, differentiated way of seeing. Demirel's witty illustrations complement the text, creating a mini-world where eyes take on whimsical lives of their own. The result is a collaborative collectors' piece perfect for every reader's bedside table.

This title completes a trilogy of books by Berger and Demirel. Smoke was published in 2018, and What Time Is It? was published in 2019.

In the dusty, ramshackle town of Suse lives A'ida. Her insurgent husband Xavier has been imprisoned. Resolute, sensuous and tender, A'ida's letters to the man she loves tell of daily events in the town, and of its motley collection of inhabitants whose lives flow through hers. But the town is under threat, and as a faceless power inexorably encroaches from outside, so the smallest details and acts of humanity assume for A'ida a life-affirming significance, acts of resistance against the forces that might otherwise extinguish them.

The writing career of Booker Prize winner John Berger-poet, storyteller, playwright, and essayist-has yielded some of the most original and compelling examinations of art and life of the past half century. In this essential volume, Geoff Dyer has brought together a rich selection of many of Berger's seminal essays.

Berger's insights make it impossible to look at a painting, watch a film, or even visit a zoo in quite the same way again. The vast range of subjects he addresses, the lean beauty of his prose, and the keenness of his anger against injustice move us to view the world with a new lens of awareness. Whether he is discussing the singleminded intensity of Picasso's Guernica, the parallel violence and alienation in the art of Francis Bacon and Walt Disney, or the enigmatic silence of his own mother, what binds these pieces throughout is the depth and fury of Berger's passion, challenging us to participate, to protest, and above all, to see.

A pictoral essay by the great art critic, novelist and long-time smoker, John Berger, and Turkish writer and illustrator Selçuk Demirel.

Once upon a time, men, women and (secretly) children smoked.

This charming illustrated work reflects on the cultural implications of smoking, and suggests, through a series of brilliantly inventive illustrations, that society's attitude to smoke is both paradoxical and intolerant. It portrays a world in which smokers, banished from public places, must encounter one another as outlaws. Meanwhile, car exhausts and factory chimneys continue to pollute the atmosphere. Smoke is a beautifully illustrated prose poem that lingers in the mind.

A cigarette is a breathing space. It makes a parenthesis. The time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared you are both in that parenthesis. It's like a proscenium arch for a dialogue. - John Berger (in interview)

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When the Japanese Empire went to war with the Allies in December 1941, it had already been fighting in China for 10 years. During that time it had conquered huge areas of China, and subjugated millions of people. The Japanese needed to control the Chinese population in these occupied territories, and for this reason they set up governments from amongst the leaders of the Chinese who were willing to co-operate with them. These so-called 'puppet' governments were designed to rule on behalf of the Japanese while firmly under their overall control. In turn, the 'puppet' governments needed their own 'independent' armed forces. These 'puppet' armies were large in number, reaching a total of well over 1 million before 1945. Although poorly-armed and equipped, these forces had an influence on the Japanese war effort through sheer numbers.

The Chinese 'puppet' soldiers ranged from the well-drilled and trained regular Army of the Last Emperor of China, Pu Yi, who ruled the newly-formed state of Manchukuo, 1932-45, to the irregular Mongol cavalry who served alongside Japanese troops in the 'secret war' waged in the Mongolian hinterlands.

The troops were dismissed as traitors by the Chinese fighting the Japanese, and they were equally despised by the Japanese themselves. The troops were motivated by a range of reasons, from simple survival to a loyalty to their commander. The fact that so many Chinese were willing to fight for the Japanese was embarrassing to all sides, and for this reason has been largely ignored in previous histories of the war in the East. In the first of a three volume series, Philip Jowett tells the story of the Chinese who fought for the Japanese over a 14 year period.

Essential reading--n+1

Creative and political art criticism on landscape works from the Renaissance to the present from a master storyteller (Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things)

In this brilliant collection of diverse pieces--essays, short stories, poems, translations--which spans a lifetime's engagement with art, John Berger reveals how he came to his own unique way of seeing. He pays homage to the writers and thinkers who influenced him, such as Walter Benjamin, Rosa Luxemburg and Bertolt Brecht. His expansive perspective takes in artistic movements and individual artists--from the Renaissance to the present--while never neglecting the social and political context of their creation.

Berger pushes at the limits of art writing, demonstrating beautifully how his artist's eye makes him a storyteller in these essays, rather than a critic. With landscape as an animating, liberating metaphor rather than a rigid definition, this collection surveys the aesthetic landscapes that have informed, challenged and nourished John Berger's understanding of the world. Landscapes--alongside its companion Portraits--completes a tour through the history of art that will be an intellectual benchmark for many years to come.

Patience, patience, because the great movements of history have always begun in those small parenthesis that we call 'in the meantime.' --John Berger

The last book that John Berger wrote was this precious little volume about time titled What Time Is It?, now posthumously published for the first time in English by Notting Hill Editions. Berger died before it was completed, but the text has been assembled and illustrated by his longtime collaborator and friend Sel uk Demirel, and has an introduction by Maria Nadotti.

What Time Is It? is a profound and playful meditation on the illusory nature of time. Berger, the great art critic and Man Booker Prize-winning author, reflects on what time has come to mean to us in modern life. Our perception of time assumes a uniform and ceaseless passing of time, yet time is turbulent. It expands and contracts according to the intensity of the lived moment. We talk of time saved in a hundred household appliances; time, like money, is exchanged for the content it lacks. Berger posits the idea that time can lengthen lifetimes once we seize the present moment. What-is-to-come, what-is-to-be-gained empties what-is.

Why does the Western world look to migrant laborers to perform the most menial tasks? What compels people to leave their homes and accept this humiliating situation? In A Seventh Man, John Berger and Jean Mohr come to grips with what it is to be a migrant worker--the material circumstances and the inner experience--and, in doing so, reveal how the migrant is not so much on the margins of modern life, but absolutely central to it. First published in 1975, this finely wrought exploration remains as urgent as ever, presenting a mode of living that pervades the countries of the West and yet is excluded from much of its culture.

Booker Prize-winning author John Berger brings us this tender and bittersweet novel is a book of dreams: dreams of freedom and romance, dreams that intoxicate and redeem, dreams that have the power to exalt their dreamers or dash them against hard truth.

It is the unforgettable, often comical portrait of a dreamer, one William Corker, the genteel proprietor of a London employment agency, who, in his sixty-third year, has just moved out of the house he shared with his overbearing sister. As Corker takes his first steps into a life of passions, Berger creates a character of astonishing depth and liveliness--a man whose fantasies and ambitions are at once splendid and tragic.

A rich and lovely exploration of art history from the world-renowned art critic behind Ways of Seeing (Slate)!

A diverse cast of artists comes to life in this jargon-free study Zadie Smith hails as among the greatest books on art I've ever read.

One of the world's most celebrated art writers takes us through centuries of drawing and painting, revealing his lifelong fascination with a diverse cast of artists. Berger grounds the artists in their historical milieu in revolutionary ways, whether enlarging on the prehistoric paintings of the Chauvet caves or Cy Twombly's linguistic and pictorial play.

In penetrating and singular prose, Berger presents entirely new ways of thinking about artists both canonized and obscure, from Rembrandt to Henry Moore, Jackson Pollock to Picasso. Throughout, Berger maintains the essential connection between politics, art and the wider study of culture. The result is an illuminating walk through many centuries of visual culture featuring 100 black and white images, from one of the contemporary world's most incisive critical voices.

A wonderful artist and thinker. --Susan Sontag