Dallas Public Library

About looking, John Berger

eng

illustrations

no index present

non fiction

About looking

23583170

John Berger

As a novelist, art critic, and cultural historian, John Berger is a writer of dazzling eloquence and arresting insight whose work amounts to a subtle, powerful critique of the canons of our civilization. In About Looking he explores our role as observers to reveal new layers of meaning in what we see. How do the animals we look at in zoos remind us of a relationship between man and beast all but lost in the twentieth century? What is it about looking at war photographs that doubles their already potent violence? How do the nudes of Rodin betray the threats to his authority and potency posed by clay and flesh? And how does solitude inform the art of Giacometti? In asking these and other questions, Berger quietly -- but fundamentally -- alters the vision of anyone who reads his work

[Pt. 1] Why look at animals? -- [Pt. 2] Uses of photography: -- The suit and the photograph -- Photographs of agony -- Paul Strand -- Uses of photography -- [Pt. 3] Moments lived: -- The primitive and the professional -- Millet and the peasant -- Seker Ahmet and the forest -- Lowry and the industrial north -- Ralph Fasanella and the experience of the city -- La Tour and humanism -- Francis Bacon and Walt Disney -- An article of faith -- Between two colmars -- Courbet and the Jura -- Turner and the Barber's Shop -- Rouault and the suburbs of Paris -- Magritte and the impossible -- Hals and bankruptcy -- Giacometti -- Rodin and sexual domination -- Romaine Lorquet -- Field