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Steps Towards a Small Theory of the Visible
Series: Penguin Great Ideas
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Steps Towards a Small Theory of the Visible
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Description
We live within a spectacle of empty clothes and unworn masks.
In this series of remarkable pieces from across his career, John Berger celebrates and dissects the close links between art and society and the individual. Few writers give a more vivid and moving sense of how we make art and how art makes us.
GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilisation and helped make us who we are.
Series: Penguin Great Ideas
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On the Shortness of Life
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Meditations
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Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780241472873
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 24 September 2020
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Penguin Classics
Audience: General / adult, Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 9.0mm
Width: 111.0mm
Height: 182.0mm
Weight: 73g
Pages: 128
About the Author
John Berger was born in London in 1926. His acclaimed works of both fiction and non-fiction include the seminal Ways of Seeing and the novel G., which won the Booker Prize in 1972. In 1962 he left Britain permanently, to live in a small village in the French Alps. He died in 2017.
Also by John Berger
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Buy to WinWays of Seeing
Based on the groundbreaking BBC television series, Ways of Seeing by John Berger is an innovative and compelling examination of how we perceive visual art. Published as part of the celebrated Penguin on Design series in Penguin Modern Classics, this book delves into the intricate relationships between art, society, and individuals. The opening premise, "Seeing comes before words. The child...Paperback$3000Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Confabulations
Confabulations is a profound exploration of language and its intrinsic ties to the human experience. Renowned writer and critic John Berger invites readers into a rich tapestry where language, thought, art, music, storytelling, and political discourse intertwine. Berger, whose work has significantly shaped our understanding of visual language, now turns his reflective eye to the fabric of language itself. Within...Paperback$2100Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Portraits
Portraits by John Berger is an intricate and personal history of art that spans from the prehistoric paintings of the Chauvet caves to the revolutionary conceptual artists of the 21st century. Offering an unparalleled journey through the epochs of visual culture, Berger masterfully stitches together a narrative that intertwines the evolution of artistic expression with the socio-political contexts that shaped...Paperback$2499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Buy to WinThe Red Tenda of Bologna
Fifty new books at £1 each, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry. It's an improbable city, Bologna – like one you might walk through after you have died. A dreamlike meditation on memory, food, paintings, a fond uncle and the improbable beauty of Bologna, from the visionary thinker...Paperback$699Unit price /UnavailableBackorderShips early September -
Buy to WinUnderstanding a Photograph
A selection of John Berger's writings on photography, including incredible images, edited & selected by Geoff Dyer. John Berger's writings on photography are some of the most original of the twentieth century. This selection contains many groundbreaking essays and previously uncollected pieces written for exhibitions and catalogues, in which Berger probes the work of photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Foot of Clive
In the centre of a 1960s hospital ward sits a curtained-off bed, guarded by a policeman. In it lies a murderer, hidden from view and likely to die before he can be hanged for his crime. In the closed, regimented society of the ward, his invisible presence fractures and rebuilds the way the other patients see the world. In the...Paperback$2799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
From A to X
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...Paperback$5500Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
Hold Everything Dear
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...Paperback$3699Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
A Fortunate Man
In 1966, John Berger spent three months in the Forest of Dean shadowing an English country GP, John Sassall. Sassall is a fortunate man—his work occupies and fulfils him, he lives amongst the patients he treats, and the line between his life and his work is happily blurred. In A Fortunate Man, Berger's text and the photography of Jean Mohr...Paperback$2799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Corker's Freedom
John Berger brings us this tender and bittersweet novel, Corker's Freedom. It is a book of 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...Paperback$2999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Goya's Last Portrait/A Question of Geography
Goya’s Last Portrait presents the artist struggling to comprehend the relationship between his life and his work. Having painted humanity at its most violent and depraved amid the horrors of war, and also depicted the vibrancy of aristocratic life, Goya faces an overwhelming question: Has he changed the world or merely caught its reflection? The Question of Geography is set...Paperback$2999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Moment of Cubism
John Berger is one of the most passionate and incisive writers on the relationship between art and politics. Whether looking at Vermeer in his studio, or Poussin's poignant meditation on death, the contradictions of Rodin's sculpture, Berger was always able to see the threads that bound the individual life, their passion for creativity and the social and political contexts they...Paperback$2999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks
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