The art critic and author, John Berger, has reportedly died at the age of 90. He was also a Booker-Prize-winning novelist and has transformed the way we looked at art.
John Berger, who wrote Ways of Seeing, had a profound effect on the way we see art today. The book also had a television series based on it in 1972.
Background
Berger lived in a remote farmhouse in the French Alps for many years and more recently lived in the suburbs of Paris in Antony. It was in Antony where he gave one of his most recent reviews on the Observer’s Kate Kellaway and his view on other things such as Brexit:
“It seems to me that we have to return, to recapitulate what globalisation meant, because it meant that capitalism, the world financial organisations, became speculative and ceased to be first and foremost productive, and politicians lost nearly all their power to take political decisions – I mean politicians in the traditional sense. Nations ceased to be what they were before.”
Reactions
Many have taken to twitter to pay tribute to the writer:
Simon McBurney, actor and director said: “Listener, grinder of lenses, poet, painter, seer. My Guide. Philosopher. Friend. John Berger left us this morning. Now you are everywhere.”
Verso Books, Berger’s publisher said: “Rest in power John Berger (1926-2017) </3”
Susan Sontag had once described Berger to have an incredible ability to make “attentiveness to the sensational world” meet “imperatives of conscience.” Jarvis Cocker had said: “There are few authors that can change the way you look at the world through their writing and John Berger is one of them.”
David Shrigley said on twitter: “Goodbye John Berger. You will be greatly missed. The ever best writer on art.”
Jeanette Winterson said: “John Berger gone. That is hard. He was an energy source in a depleted world.”