A Writer of Our Time: The Life and Work of John Berger

by Joshua Sperling

"This engaging intellectual biography traces Berger’s creative evolution, analyzes highlights from his vast output ... and situates them within his empathetic Marxism."–The New YorkerThe first intellectual biography of the life and work of John BergerJohn Berger was one of the most influential thinkers and writers of postwar Europe. As a novelist, he won the Booker prize in 1972, donating half his prize money to the Black Panthers. As a TV presenter, he changed the way we looked at art with Ways of Seeing. As a storyteller and political activist, he defended the rights and dignity of workers, migrants, and the oppressed around the world. “Far from dragging politics into art,” he wrote in 1953, “art has dragged me into politics.” He remained a revolutionary up to his death in January 2017.Built around a series of watersheds, at once personal and historical, A Writer of Our Time traces Berger’s development from his roots as a postwar art student and polemicist in the Cold War battles of 1950s London, through the heady days of the 1960s—when the revolutions were not only political but sexual and artistic—to Berger’s reinvention as a rural storyteller and the long hangover that followed the rise and fall of the New Left.Drawing on first-hand, unpublished interviews and archival sources only recently made available, Joshua Sperling digs beneath the moments of controversy to reveal a figure of remarkable complexity and resilience. The portrait that emerges is of a cultural innovator as celebrated as he was often misunderstood, and a writer increasingly driven as much by what he loved as by what he opposed. A Writer of Our Time brings the many faces of John Berger together, repatriating one of our great minds to the intellectual dramas of his and our time.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Art, Art History, British Literature, Literary Criticism, Books About Books

313 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 20, 2018

Reviews

[emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘What Berger hated in Lust for Life was its glorification of madness: illness as inspiration, disturbance as genius. There are countless crazy people whose art is bad. Everyone knows Van Gogh cut off his ear; what is less known is his almost Christlike devotion—.’

Better suited to someone who has never read Berger, probably? While I enjoyed the very generous quotations and references to Berger, ultimately I wanted more than just that. Stylistically, I wouldn’t say that it was something I personally like/enjoy much. But I must have enjoyed it just enough to finish it. I’d say read this if you’re curious about Berger, but if you’ve already read a bunch of his books, and also read a few articles/other written about him, I don’t know if this book would be able to offer enough pleasure.

‘Tantrums aside, anyone who has spent an hour in Berger’s presence can attest to the electric attention he brought to each moment, the sense that as you were talking to him he was devoted entirely to you and no one else. As you spoke, you became a more deliberate and consequential version of yourself, his own unhurried, Delphic cadences rubbing off on every exchange. And anyone who has seen even ten minutes of him on YouTube will have at least a partial sense of this: the personal luminance, the mix of self-assurance with professions of humility, the laser-like focus of his mind and eyes.’

Don’t get me wrong, the Berger excerpts are fun, but predictably so (if you’ve already read quite a bit of Berger, and like his work). I just wanted more from the book; I thought it needed more — whatever ‘more’ is. It just felt sort of lacking (to me). But if you’re someone who hasn’t a clue who Berger is, (I dare assume that) this would be such a massive delight to read quite quickly. Otherwise, it could feel like (at least from my own experience) like a very full-on ‘fan’ homage to Berger (which is absolutely fine, except it just wasn’t what I was looking for). It has its moments, but ultimately it just wasn’t enough for me. While it didn’t properly satisfy me, it might do a lot to another/different reader. 2* because it was precisely and unironically just ‘okay’. I would much prefer to give it a 3* but according to the GR rating scale/system, that would mean that I actually ‘like’ the book. I’m not sure if that could/would be an honest statement (rounding it off to a 3* anyway because I fully believe that if I had read this before I had read any Berger, I’d be fucking thrilled). Regardless, it’s definitely a book I would pass on to someone who I think would appreciate a bit of Berger in their life.

‘The more that genius, fame and private property were fetishized—the more that art became a ‘snob commodity’ to be bought and sold—the less it could fulfil its proper social role. And, again, the state-funded museum was not an adequate corrective. Great works, Berger wrote, ‘have never been consciously produced for the museums of the future’. They were, in one of his many arresting metaphors, more like stones in a bridge that can help a people move in a certain direction.’

‘Abstraction was both the cause and symptom of a vicious cycle. It not only turned the medium in on itself, but also pushed working artists further into a state of alienation and social redundancy—As the space for art became more international and more highly concentrated within an elite stratum of festivals and galleries, the general public mistrust of the value of art increased—More and more people were choosing to become artists for what Berger saw as the wrong reasons, while others chose not to for the right ones. ‘Many of our most serious unrecognised artists’, he said, ‘are so sickened by the preciousness, snobbism, ignorance, bluff and blatant commercialism of the “art world” that they prefer to remain outside it, not even to break in.’

‘If colour is the place, as Cézanne said, where our brain and the universe meet, the photo-text may be the place where the different currents inside us—the verbal and the visual, faces and landscapes, desires and ideas—can gather and cohabit. People talk about being ‘right brained’ or ‘left brained’ as if you can’t be both.’

‘The confluence of frank sexuality, aesthetic experimentalism and public scandal forms a particularly robust and laurelled lineage of modernism. In the heyday of the 1860s there was Manet’s Olympia; a year later Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde. Berger’s own ornate renderings derived partly from Picasso. In the artist’s portraits he had noted the sexual disfigurations of the face (the nose as phallus, the mouth as vagina), and spoke of Les Demoiselles D’Avignon as a ‘raging frontal attack’. At the height of literary modernism there were Joyce, Lawrence and Miller. Then, in the 1950s and 1960s, Nabokov, Roth and Vidal.—Artistic and sexual rebels both perform in order to provoke. Both set out to shock the same people: the self-appointed defenders of good taste.’

‘Three weeks after Toynbee’s initial letter—three confusing weeks when the Hungarian and Soviet water polo teams left blood in the water at the Melbourne Olympics, when Elvis dedicated ‘Peace in the Valley’ to Hungary on the Ed Sullivan show, when Sartre declared that socialism could never be brought by bayonet point—Berger finally broke his silence. ‘I do not want to be callous and I respect those who can be moved by the use of their imagination,’ he said.’

‘In Berger’s career there had been stories of shared labour and of restless travel, but now, as an old man, the seasons traversed, he could finally tell stories of the heart—From libidinal fixation, he turned to what was rarer. Tender intimacy, far more than fucking, became his focus—Berger came to speak in a way so many men—shy away from. It was the opposite of Hemingway or Humphrey Bogart or Raymond Carver.’

‘Berger was often accused of being aggressive in print, but his handwriting was a mellifluous cursive, a felt-tip trace. I spent months reading it in archives—to confess to a certain glow I have seen emerge out of the sediment of time. To research is also to resuscitate.’

[Carole · Rating 5 out of 5]

“It was a kind of intellectual packing, stuffing premonitions into the rucksack of print before heading out on a journey.” (85)
The decision to focus this biography of John Berger entirely on his work was a refusal to corrupt the clarity of vision with which his work can be examined, and an act to provide Berger the dignity of a scholar without surrendering to a tabloid sense of drama about his life. It is also a decision that allows the structure of the book to be a flight rather than a chronological drudgery. I learned an incredible amount about Berger in a way that was natural and layered, coming to the general direction of what Berger thought eventually. This book did a great deal to contextualize things for me, and to provide a great deal of detail on eras of his work I had no idea about: the composition of G and his collaborative work and his early Marxist art criticism, for example.
There is much here to admire and emulate, not the least of which was Berger's absolute coherence to a set of values continually developing yet informed by a vast amount of experience and gathered knowledge. An image that really stuck with me was the idea of him throwing a grenade into a contemporary understanding of something and walking away to let everyone else pick up the rubble. It’s beautiful and freeing to be able to have an idea without having to follow it down every rabbit hole for the satisfaction of those who would poke holes and throw stones. Similarly, the idea that his theoretical ideas and approach were so common sense that they have now been seamlessly woven into the fabric of our modern culture is certainly something to admire. To create in a beautiful new way consistent with an empathetic set of values is not as impossible as I sometimes fear.

[Ric Dragon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've written that Berger is that one person I would have loved to have shared a meal with; thus reading his biography was of top interest. In some ways, particularly in his early life, I wasn´t so in love with him. But it helped to explain the person he became, and by the end of the bio, I WAS still in love with that man. Perhaps he was one of those personalities, a bit bigger than life; but OK, can´t hold that agains anyone. And Sperling did a great job - and intelligent insight into his task.

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gave this book three stars, because it was not what I was expecting and not what I wanted. It isn’t a biography - more an analysis of Berger’s writing and creative endeavors throughout his life. If that is what you are looking for, this book is excellent. I find it odd and revealing that the author finds his subject’s relationships and interactions with friends, family, and lovers completely irrelevant to his biography.

[Scott Neigh]

An intellectual biography of radical English writer and art critic John Berger. Examines his key work from the end of the Second World War to his death in 2017, in the context of at least the major features of his life, if not really the nitty-gritty details, and of the broader political and intellectual culture. Not sure why exactly I was drawn to read this – I've seen Berger cited in things I've read, but I knew almost nothing about him and have never read any of his work. I also don't know much about art, and have no intention of doing the volume of reading on the topic that would be required to change that in any substantial way. Nonetheless, it's a book I've had my eye on for a couple of years, and I'm glad I read it. It provides, for one thing, an entry into aspects of the history of the left in the second half of the 20th century, and I'm always up for reading about that. As well, while I have spent relatively little time reading and thinking about visual art specifically, Berger wrestled with questions of culture and radical politics in a way relevant far beyond that, including – both through the content of his work, but also the example of it – with respect to writing, which is something I have spent rather more time contemplating. I didn't pick it up with this in mind but, as I think I mentioned in a social media post recently, a possible future project when I'm done my current book would involve exploring what it means to do politically useful writing and creative and intellectual work in this moment, and this book certainly got my brain churning when it comes to such questions. Anyway, I have no basis to judge how well or poorly this book treats Berger's life or his work, but I learned from it, it was interesting, and it made me think things, so I think it was time well spent.

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

Amazing to me how someone who clearly spent a lot of time with Bergers texts apparently learned next to nothing about how or why to write from them. Put this book down and pick up literally anything by Berger, it will be a thousand times more edifying.

[Lachlan Magrath · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Every way of looking implies a certain relationship with the world and our actions towards it.” - John Berger

[D]

"The emotions preserved in Berger's writing can be read as a gauge, almost an archaeological record, of leftist hope"

When I first discovered John Berger – long before I watched his pathbreaking BBC series Ways of Seeing – I was immediately struck by the energy, lucidity, and directness of his writing. Berger's words were simple, without pretension. But at the same time they achieved an astonishing feat: demystifying the mystified, deconstructing the constructed. In 'Why Look at Animals?', the first essay of his I encountered, Berger articulated something which I might have already known intuitively but didn't possess the language or confidence to say: in capitalist modernity, he argued, animals are caught in a violent vanishing act. On the one side, modernity produces the animal's disappearance (extinction, factory farming, the migration from the country to the city). On the other, it produces the animal's re-appearance (toys, cartoons, zoos, nature documentaries, conservation). But both work to sever the human's connection to the animal and consolidate our alienation.

'Why Look at Animals?' does not feature in Joshua Sperling's A Writer of Our Time, the first intellectual biography to survey Berger's life's work since his death in 2017. But what emerges across Sperling's meticulously researched book is the idea that Berger's writing could speak to people no matter whenever, however or wherever they came into contact with it. From conversations with Berger's interlocutors, partners, and friends, Sperling reveals the generosity, intellectual curiosity and sincerity of Berger's approach to life and to writing. From his research in the British Library's archives, Sperling uncovers the correspondence Berger had with painters, writers, lovers. And from his close, attentive readings of Berger's many novels, articles, poems and films, Sperling demonstrates the development of a style and a way of seeing across Berger's life.

In fact, Sperling's biography is not a biography in any straightforward sense. What we get instead is a critical working-through of Berger's project. Article by article, text by text, argument by argument, feud by feud, Sperling coherently historicises Berger's publications alongside some of the major political upheavals of the late twentieth century: Britain's 1950s culture wars, the failure of the USSR, the emergence of the New Left, 1968, the counter-revolution of neoliberalism, 9/11. But Sperling never reduces Berger's works to being historical markers that simply register their specific historical conjuncture. Instead, each and every work – whether Berger's first novel A Painter of Our Time, the Booker Prize-winning late modernist novel G, or his films with Alain Tanner – is taken seriously, carefully weighed and analysed on its own terms. Some works come up short, others stand the test of time.

Sperling does not exhaust his subject. The most personal aspects of Berger's life are only gestured to here, never spilled. (This is not a book that's interested in gossip.) There are still books waiting to be written about Berger's life and work. There are still stories to tell. This can only be a good thing.

[Dharushana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Accessible and well written. I encountered berger via A Fortunate Man in med school. It was formative in identifying my role as a witness. This work gave me pause and got me to an art museum.

[f · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joshua Sperling nutzt John Berger, um nach dem Sinn des Schreibens zu suchen. Zwar behandelt er auch andere Arbeitsfelder des Mulitalents (den TV- und Filmemacher sowie den Maler), doch steht das Schreiben im Zentrum. Bergers Schreiben ist bei Sperling sowohl ein Medium zur Verarbeitung von Erfahrungen als auch für die Erkundung von Hoffnungen.
Für seine Biografie greift Sperling recht überzeugend auf ein geradezu altmodisches Muster zurück: Die Charaktereigenschaft. Bergers Leben sei von Beginn an von der Suche nach dritten Wegen angesichts von Dichotomien geprägt gewesen.
Im ERSTEN KAPITEL behandelt Sperling Bergers schnellen Aufstieg als Kunstkritiker in den 1950er Jahren. Sein Kunstverständnis und seine politische Überzeugung hätten sich dabei gegenseitig beeinflusst. Der Kommunist Berger trat für einen sozialen und mitreißenden Realismus ein, der zugänglich und massentauglich sein sollte. Diesen stellte er gegen eine schwierige, esoterische und häufig menschenfeindliche Avantgarde entgegen. Kunst solle in einem weiten Sinn nützlich sein. Ein Schlüssel für Bergers Realismusverständnis sei sein emphatischer Traditionsbegriff. Tradition sei eine richtungsgebende Kraft, die gemeinsam errichtet und erhalten werde und offenbare, welche kollektive Anstrengung einer Gemeinschaft möglich sei. Die Originalität des Künstlers bestehe darin, Gemeinsamkeiten zu erkunden und auszudehen, um der negativen Tendenz zur Individualisierung entgegen zu wirken.
Das ZWEITE KAPITEL handelt von der Bergers Zusammenbruch angesichts der sowjetischen Intervention in Ungarn. Um diese politische Erschütterung zu verarbeiten, floh Berger aus London und wechselte in die Fiktion. Nur fiktional und außerhalb des Konkurrenzdruck der Männerzirkel Londons konnte er seine Unsicherheiten und Verletzlichkeiten thematisieren.
Bergers Ringen mit der Moderne in den 1960er Jahren steht im Zentrum des DRITTEN KAPITELS. Anstatt die moderne Kunst entweder zu verdammen oder zu vergöttern, habe Berger angesichts dieser Dichotomie wieder einen anderen Ausweg gesucht. Den Kubismus habe Berger als Schule des Sehens und als praktische Philosophie des künstlerischen Schaffens verstanden. Der Kubismus sei aber auch der künstlerische Ausdruck eines revolutionären Zeitalters gewesen. Auch wenn die Revolution sich nicht durchgesetzt habe, drücke sich in der Kunst immer noch eine revolutionäre Fantasie aus, die in der Gegenwart als Brücke für eine neue Hoffnung bilden könne.
In KAPITEL VIER greift Sperling auf eine weitere Dichotomie zuück, die Berger mit seinem Werk zu überbrücken versuchte: Die Spannung zwischen Erscheinungen und Ideen sowie zwischen Text und Bild. Statt einer Entscheidung für eine Seite, habe Berger immer wieder zwischen den Formen gewechselt und ihre jeweiligen Stärken ausgespielt. Z.B. in den drei Fotobüchern mit Jean Mohr.
In KAPITEL FÜNF beehandelt Sperling Bergers Durchbruch als Romanautor mit seinem umstrittenen Buch G. Dieses sieht Sperling als Übergangswerk, in dem Berger ein letztes Mal sich dezidiert als Modernist probiert und das Individuum ins Zentrum gestellt habe. Danach habe Sex der Liebe, Revolution dem Widerstand Platz gemacht und die Gemeinschaft die herausgehobene Rolle des Individuums ersetzt.
Der Gemeinschaft und Freundschaft geht Sperling in KAPITEL SECHS nach, in dem er die Kollaborationen zwischen dem Regisseur Alain Tanner und Berger thematisiert, die als Arbeitsteilung, als Einheit der Gegenseite, als tonale Komplementarität und als Freundschaft verstanden werden solle. In Bergers Fiktion seit den 1970er Jahren zeigt sich sein Interesse für Gemeinschaften als Utopien. Sowohl im Werk als auch im Leben zeigten sich Kollaborationen und Gemeinschaften für Berger als instabil. In der Vergänglichkeit habe er aber auch einen Teil ihrer Schönheit gesehen.
Das genaue Betrachten, das Wundern über die Realität, das Berger gegen ideologische Starrheit und Theorie ins Spiel gebracht habe, ist Thema des SIEBTEN KAPITELS.
Im ACHTEN KAPITEL behandelt Sperling Bergers lokale Verwurzelung in der Gemeinschaft eines französischen Dorfs. Diese sei Bergers Ausweg aus der Dichotomie zwischen reaktionärem Ausschluss und kosmopolitischer Arroganz gebildet.
Sperling schreibt leidenschaftlich über Berger in einer Sprache und Duktus, die kongenial zum Sujet passt.

[Metin Celâl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joshua Sperling’in çalışması “entelektüel biyografi” diye tanımlanmış. John Berger’in özel hayatıyla değil düşünsel dünyasıyla, sanatçılığıyla, yazarlığıyla ilgileniyor. Özel hayat da ancak bu ilgi kapsamında kitabın konusu oluyor. Sperling, John Berger’in eserleri ile yetinmemiş, yayımlanmamış röportajlardan, elyazmalarından, British Library’de yeni erişime açılmış John Berger Arşivi’nde bulunan belgelerden de yararlanarak yazmış biyografiyi.
John Berger 1926 doğumlu. Sanat eğitimi almış. Kariyerine ressam olarak başlamış. 1940'ların sonlarında Londra galerilerinde eserleri sergilenmiş. Çizim dersleri vermiş. Ressamlıkta büyük bir başarı elde edememiş, belki de bu nedenle ilk fırsatta resimden eleştiriye geçmiş. Sanat eleştirmeni olmuş ve New Statesman'da güncel sanat eleştirileri yazmış, sergileri izlemiş. Yazdığı sert eleştirilerle genç yaşta Londra sanat çevrelerinin en çok dikkatini çeken eleştirmen olmuş. Sanata Marksist bakışı da kuşkusuz onun ilgi ve düşmanlık çekmesine neden olmuş. II. Dünya Savaşı sonrasında, Soğuk Savaş döneminde bu bakışla yazdığı eleştirileri “komünist” olarak yaftalanması için yeterli olmuş. Ama Berger bildiğinden şaşmayan, doğru olduğunu düşündüğü şeyleri yazmaktan çekinmeyen bir kişilikte. Bağnaz değil. Körü körüne bir düşünceye saplanmıyor. Her zaman soruyor, sorguluyor. Marksist bir eleştirmen olarak Kübizme aldığı tavır özellikle dikkati çekicidir.
On yıl sürdürdüğü güncel sanat eleştirmenliği sırasında kaleme aldığı, 1958'de yayımlanan “Zamanımızın Bir Ressamı” adlı ilk romanı hem sanata hem de siyasete bakışını tartıştığı temel metinlerden Joshua Sperling’e göre. Sperling, tek tek John Berger’in tüm yazdıklarını incelemiyor. Belirli eserlerde özellikle yoğunlaşıyor, onları ayrıntılı olarak inceliyor. Bu romanı da o anlayışla ele alıyor.
Roman çeşitli çevrelerden gelen baskılar nedeniyle yayıncısı tarafından satıştan çekiliyor. John Berger’in 1962'de İngiltere'yi terk edip Fransa'nın Haute-Savoie bölgesindeki Quincy'ye taşınmasında ve bir daha ülkesine dönmemesinde kuşkusuz bu gelişmenin de etkisi vardı. Joshua Sperling’in yazdıklarından Berger’in sadece karşıtlarının değil kendi tarafındaki olanların da baskısı altında bunaldığını anlıyoruz. Gönüllü göçmenlik yepyeni bir ufuktur, doğanın kucağında salim kafayla düşünme fırsatı bulması eleştirmenden düşünüre dönüşmesinde onun için önemli bir etken olacaktır.
İngiltere’yi terk etmiş ama tamamen ilişkisini kesmemiş. 1972’de BBC için hazırladığı televizyon dizisi Görme Biçimleri bu bağın en önemli örneğidir. Bu çalışma sonradan kitaplaştığında hem göçmenliğinin en önemli ürünü hem de John Berger’in başyapıtı, kült eseri halini alacaktır.
Joshua Sperling, John Berger’in düşünsel yaşamındaki gelişmeleri izlerken çağının siyasi ve kültürel tarihini de kavramamamızı sağlıyor. John Berger’i merkeze alan bir tarih yazımı bu. Berger’in tarihinde ise pikareks bir aşk romanı olarak tanımlanan G. ile 1972 yılında Booker ödülünü alması önemli olay olarak yer alıyor. Ödülü almış ama ödülü veren şirketin dünya çapındaki faaliyetlerine dikkati çekmiş. Ödülünün yarısını İngiliz Kara Panterler örgütüne bağışlamış, diğer yarısını da göçmen işçilerin hayatlarını ele aldığı ve fotoğrafçı Jean Mohr’la birlikte gerçekleştirdiği Yedinci Adam adlı foto-metinler çalışmasına ayırmış. Fotoğraf resimden sonra en çok yoğunlaştığı görsel sanat alanı olmuş.
İşbirliklerini seven bir yazar. Yönetmen Alain Tanner’la birlikte yazdığı üç film de önemlidir. Edebi eserlere yoğunlaşmayı da ihmal etmiyor. Önemli eserler verirken edebiyat alanında da dayanışmayı ihmal etmiyor. Kooperatif çalışması da hayatında önemli bir yer tutuyor.
John Berger 90 yıllık ömrünü dolu dolu yaşamış. Dünyadaki gelişmelere her zaman duyarlı olmuş ve tepki vermiş. Daha iyi, herkes için yaşanabilir bir dünya için her zaman devrimci, tartışmacı ve kışkırtıcı olmuş. John Berger’in ölümünden sonra yayınlanan ilk biyografi olan Joshua Sperling’in “Zamanımızın Bir Yazarı” John Berger’in sanatı ve eserlerini tüm boyutlarıyla öğrenip çağı içinde doğru bir şekilde konumlandırmamızı sağlarken bu büyük ustanın bilge bir düşünür olarak düşünce yapısını da anlamamızı sağlıyor.

[Leif · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I liked this one more than I did. It's an effective if narrow take on intellectual biography, meaning that much of Berger's life is out of bounds and also that it aims at a popular audience impatient with the more thorough version of Berger's intellectual relationships. As such, I found myself often wishing for more of either of the extremes: I would love to read more about Berger's relationship in and outside of the Marxist tradition of criticism; alternately, I would love to read more about his letters, his friendships, and his personal life to understand how his particular intellectual stance translated or related to him as a person.

That said, Sperling does his job and it is nice to see the structure of Berger's works and intellectual development play out. Much of this is because Berger is such a rich subject for biography! Perhaps becuase the subject is so tantalizing, I found myself wishing for one of the real chunky biographers to take him up: a Deirdre Bair or David Macey, say.

This is best as a teaser then, a taste of what might hopefully come.

[Connie Kronlokken]

"Each of us comes into the world with her or his unique possibility -- which is like an aim, or, if you wish, almost like a law. The job of our lives is to become -- day by day, year by year -- more conscious of that aim so it can at last be realized."

"As soon as one is engaged in a productive process total pessimism becomes improbable. This has nothing to do with the dignity of labour or any other such crap; it has to do with the nature of physical and psychic human energy. Expenditure of this energy creates a need for food, sleep and brief moments of respite. Inexorably, work, because it is productive, produces in man a productive hope."

Berger's views on art and life are a touchstone for me.

[Marilyn Sue Michel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even at 239 pages, much of the material is reworked several times. Berger was an interesting person, multi-faceted artist, who ultimately retired to the French countryside and messed around with the land. He was happy with his choices but they were hardly world-altering.

[Sarah Schulman]

Well written and interesting. Stays within a frame.