portraits

“After viewing a work of art exhibited in a museum or gallery, I try to enter the workshop where it was created. And there I wait, hoping to learn something of the story of its formation. An expectation about the hopes, choices, mistakes, and discoveries inherent in the story. I talk to myself, visualize the world outside the workshop, perhaps call out to an artist I know or who died centuries ago. Sometimes the answer comes from something he did. A conclusion is never reached. Sometimes a new area opens up that surprises us both. Sometimes a dream world appears that takes our breath away – breathtaking, like the revelation of a secret.”

We collect Berger's lifelong writings on art and artists in two volumes: The first is Portraits. The book, presented in chronological order from cave paintings to the present day, is the author's portraits of artists drawn with words. It can also be read as Berger's alternative art history. We will publish the second volume under the name Landscapes.

(From the Promotional Bulletin)