Permanent Red: Essays in Seeing

by John Berger

Permanent Essays in Seeing

Genres: Art, Essays, Nonfiction, Politics, Art History, Criticism

224 pages, Hardcover

Published March 1, 1969

About the author

John Peter Berger was an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a college text.

Later he was self exiled to continental Europe, living between the french Alps in summer and the suburbs of Paris in winter. Since then, his production has increased considerably, including a variety of genres, from novel to social essay, or poetry. One of the most common themes that appears on his books is the dialectics established between modernity and memory and loss,

Another of his most remarkable works has been the trilogy titled Into Their Labours, that includes the books Pig Earth (1979), Once In Europa (1983) Lilac And Flag (1990). With those books, Berger makes a meditation about the way of the peasant, that changes one poverty for another in the city. This theme is also observed in his novel King, but there his focus is more in the rural diaspora and the bitter side of the urban way of life.

Reviews

[marcia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, I'm disappointed by this collection. The essays at the beginning are insightful, but I fail to glean anything of value from those vignettes. I don't mind reading criticism about artists I'm unfamiliar with, but vignettes aren't the right format for that. You may enjoy this if you're more brushed up on art history that I am.

Favorites:
"Introduction"
"Drawing"
"The Difficulty of Being an Artist"

[Eva Rajher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Needed a long long time to finish this as it took a lot of googling for the many many art references.
The essays on art I found a lot more inspiring than the ones on the artists, and some of his views are outdated and of course subjective. Didn’t agree with everything he had to say but really agreed on some and overall very beautifully written and many underlined passages.

“only if we recognize the mortality of art, shall we cease to stand in such superstitious awe of it - only then shall we consider art expandable and so have the courage to risk using it for our own immediate, urgent, only important purposes.”
“in life it would be better if paintings were for looking at.” (opposed to commercialization)

[Fenne Bosman · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ★

Ondanks dat ik wist dat John Berger een kunstcriticus was, had ik verwacht dat het onderwerp ('zien') zou worden benaderd vanuit het perspectief van een kunstenaar. Niet vanuit een observator van de werken, waaruit hij bedenkt hoe de makers van de werken zien.


Berger bekijkt hoe kunstenaars kijken. Hij gaat veel grote namen bij langs (Naum Gabo, Paul Klee, David Bomberg) en gaat ook werken bij langs om ze te bestuderen. Ik moest alle kunstenaars en werken opzoeken om te weten waar hij het over had.

Het boek is meer geschikt voor mensen die bekend zijn met kunstgeschiedenis. Ook zou het boek zich goed lenen voor een visuele versie 😅

Ondanks dat het boek anders is dan ik had verwacht, zijn er wel een aantal opmerkingen die me zijn bijgebleven.

'Imagination is not, as is sometimes thought, the ability to invent; it is the capacity to disclose that which exists.'

'Today our cultured have gone beyond nostalgia; in their despair they hate all but the violently primitive, and so originality becomes an act of faith which offends them because it questions their illusion of freedom from all traditions.'

En bovenal: 'The aesthete tries to seperate beauty from what they express, but in so far as he succeeds, he has to live in an entirely passive and contemplative world of his own, denying cause, effect and history.'

[emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘—the picture was painted by Carl Fabricius. Fabricius, a student of Rembrandt, was killed in an explosion when he was thirty-two years old. Consequently his works are very rare and very valuable. A newly discovered portrait would be worth about £20,000. But of course in life one can never know the whole story. In life it would be better if paintings were for looking at.’

Not my favourite Berger. But brilliant nonetheless. Rating this very much on how I 'feel' and/or how much I 'enjoyed' reading it rather than the quality of the text .

[Darragh Mulryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes hard to follow unless you have a deep knowledge of the works of the artists he discusses (which I don’t), but interesting nonetheless to hear an expert’s opinions on many topics within the art world. I particular liked the essay on drawing. I take every critic’s writings with a pinch of salt because at the end of the day it’s all subjective, but Berger undoubtably has authority in this realm and is worth listening to.

[Jordan Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

With an interest in art but no real sense of who or what matters in art criticism, this book was a mostly educational experience. Berger’s writing style is cocky but clear, and his ideas about the purpose and potential of art are really inspiring. His focus on intent being the differentiator between squiggles on a page and ‘art’ is well explored throughout, though I did feel at times that his focus on a specific artist would draw away from this central idea a bit too far. There were plenty of intriguing ideas to hold on to in the book - “Whatever the artist chooses for his genesis will seem inadequate…But it is this inadequacy that he then pushes against…Always aware of the richness of life and the poorness of art.” - and his discussions about specific artists was eye-opening for someone who knows little. Picasso - “He makes us recognise ourselves in the parody of a distorting mirror.” - was someone I knew slightly more about, but his section was just as interesting as Goya’s, Auerbach’s, and Kokoschka’s (who I’d never heard of). Maybe I could read it again with more knowledge to challenge/appreciate it in future.

[Leif · Rating 5 out of 5]

Berger is a personal hero so I am naturally biased. Here, what is interesting is less the formal content per se - the evaluations on artists - but more Berger's development of a critic's stance, his resolute embrace of the ancient powers of praise and dispraise, from which seriousness an admirable courage is palpable. A salutary book, although likely not for many people.

[renata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Berger is a genius but even a genius can’t escape his own biases and the environment where he learned his craft, so the book was ALMOST perfect in my eyes, except for his undying devotion to Picasso and saying statements like Picasso taught non-westerns to appreciate their own art.
Too many passages stuck with me but one of my favourite chapters is the one about Romanticism because so much of it applies to how us progressives see ourselves today: “its political gesture was important and also undoubtedly sincere. But it remains a gesture.” and “it was a sincere view, but it was a compromisingly privileged view. And between the privilege and the reality lay the predicament.”
I love it and I can’t wait to go to see some of the artworks mentioned here

[Maisie Ryle · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the most poetic haters of our time

[Jack Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to return my "Selected Essays of John Berger" to the library because someone else wants it. Good! More people should read John Berger! He finds a way to overturn so many of your deeply held ideas about art and society, mainly by insisting that, uh, people matter, and that you shouldn't let institutions or governments or museums or anyone else tell you how to feel. His critical project is unmistakably political: "Permanent Red" (I'm reviewing it because much of it is included in "Selected Essays") begins with a preface apologizing for NOT BEING EXTREME ENOUGH. Heck, I'll just quote that apology in full, it's so good...

As I re-read [this book] today I have the impression that I was trapped at that time: trapped in having to express all that I felt or thought in art-critical terms. Perhaps an unconscious sense of being trapped helps to explain the puritanism of some of my judgments. In some respects I would be more tolerant today: but on the central issue I would be even more intransigent. I now believe that there is an absolute incompatibility between art and private property, or between art and state property-- unless the state is a plebeian democracy. Property must be destroyed before imagination can develop any further. Thus today I would find the function of regular current art criticism-- a function which, whatever the critic's opinions, serves to uphold the art market-- impossible to accept. And thus today I am more tolerant of those artists who are reduced to being largely destructive.

Berger was saying this stuff-- putting in a good word for collective action and democracy, even (especially?) if it's destructive-- years before the counterculture, before the punks, before the great freedom movements. He was wayyy ahead of his time (though he'd probably despise me for saying that) and is, in many ways, still ahead of ours. Here are some of the essays from "Selected" (again, didn't read them all (yet), cuz library problems) that made a particularly deep impression on me:

"Jackson Pollock": in which Berger really takes the whole "cult of genius" thing to the mat
"Ossip Zadkine": like the statue it discusses, a really moving tribute to the victims of war atrocities
"The Moment of Cubism": before I read this essay, I thought Cubism is just about painting everything with little boxes. Berger shows how it was a movement before a style, and how the movement was all about social and artistic (entwined!) possibilities
"Image of Imperialism": the famous one about the photo of Che Guevara's corpse. Again, strangely galvanizing
"The Nature of Mass Demonstrations": seriously if every media outlet had printed this last summer instead of whatever other bullshit they were saying about freedom movements... Berger argues that the Mass demonstration is not, in itself, democracy, but almost like, necessary democracy cosplay
"The Booker Prize Speech": Berger uses the platform to talk about how the prize is only worthwhile to the extent that it funds interesting social projects, and then describes briefly how he's gonna use the Booker's money to basically undermine the vision that Booker himself stood for
"Francis Bacon and Walt Disney": can't decide who he's harder on, here
"Why Look at Animals?": amazing critique of, err, zoos
"A Load of Shit": definitely lives up to the title

[aimee ☆ · Rating 4 out of 5]

i actually finished reading this a few days but it still hasn't really clicked with me that im finally done with it because i've been reading it for such a long time!! im glad i took my time with it though; i haven't read many marxist analyses of the fine arts before and i was very excited and eager to read more the whole time because it's such a wonderful combination of two things that i love!!
i highly recommend it, or if you aren't at all familiar with john berger i would really recommend watching the youtube re-uploads of the BBC "ways of seeing" series he did, it's great!!
had a few small issues with some of his discussion on the relationship between art, the artist and morality but it nevertheless gave me much to think about... also particularly happy to have discovered kokoscha's paintings through reading this book <3

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was definitely and interesting read and I feel like I learnt a lot. Cause this was mostly about artists from like 60+ years ago I had to search a lot of them up as I was reading which good cause it helped to make it more meaningful but it was also annoying to be having to interrupt reading time with phone so constantly (every few pages).

[gwyneth cunningham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but overall fine? Maybe needs a re-read. Not totally sure I grasped everything that these essays were trying to convey so I can’t really form too much of an opinion. I did however really enjoy the last essay, “A moral,” as the message was what I was expecting of the book in the first place with its claim that all art is political and that these are essays in seeing.

[Lars Robberechts · Rating 4 out of 5]

He talks about a lot of specific works an artists when making a point, so sometimes its hard to follow if you don’t know the examples. On the other hand you can learn so much from this book, i looked up everything i didn’t know and this way i expanded my knowledge with a lot of artists and works:) would recommend this book for everyone interested in art. I will never not like a john berger book

[Iris Shu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didnt completely finish. Some essays hit harder than others but I’d probably appreciate it more if I knew literally anything about art history

[Patrick Coyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool to read John Berger as a young angsty and critical author

[Sidney Amos · Rating 4 out of 5]

yasssss socialist art criticism slayyyy

[Sotiris Sotiriou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some part of weren’t that great but overall very eyes opening read.

[Kerly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ei meenu, nagu oleks andnud mingeid uusi tööriistu või nägemise viise. Meenutas Barthese Camera Obscura ja Pandora Laeka tekstide segu. Vb peaks uuesti lugema.

[Frightful_elk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is full of wonderful thoughts and new ways of thinking about art. Produces many sparks of inspiration and excitement in the reader.