In a curious way this is probably done out of respect for him: as though to say ‘He was brilliant despite that - so let’s charitably forget it.’ Yet, in fact, to do this is to deny all that Antal was.” To make such a denial about Berger should no longer be possible after the publication of Landscapes: John Berger on Art. No doubt avoiding this disfavored topic makes eulogy easier, but it reminds me of something Berger wrote about Frederick Antal: “the importance of his Marxism tends to be underestimated. Most of the writers currently rushing to canonize him, however, avoid dwelling on the heart of Berger’s point of view - his Marxism.
For more than half a century, he has been our greatest art critic - as well as a superior novelist, a poet, and the star and screenwriter of one of the best art documentaries ever made, Ways of Seeing. Berger’s politics were deemed so objectionable that his publisher was compelled to withdraw his first novel, A Painter of Our Time (1958), from circulation.Īt 90, Berger is harvesting a sudden flowering of praise. Nor was the hostility limited to such comic passive-aggression. Once, the British Council issued a formal apology to Henry Moore because Berger had suggested his latest work showed a decline. EARLY IN HIS CAREER, John Berger’s weekly art criticism for the New Statesman provoked outraged letters and public condemnation.
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