The critical standard Berger generally applied during this period, if it were reduced to a single criterion, would probably be whether or not an artist’s work had contributed to the extension of human capacities. From the early 1950s until after the publication of Success and Failure of Picasso in 1965, Berger focused primarily on the ways in which individual artists respond to social and historical conditions-how these conditions are subjectively translated and how they affect an artist’s work. When Berger began writing criticism more than 20 years ago (he was, for a decade, art critic for the New Statesman), his work was deeply influenced by three marxist art historians then active in England: Arnold Hauser, Francis Klingender and Frederick Antal.

Berger is one of the few marxist art critics in the English-speaking world (perhaps the only one published with any regularity), and the strengths of his criticism, I believe, are largely attributable to his imaginative and often innovative use of marxian method.

This would be greatly to underrate the depth and seriousness of his critical undertaking. ” 1-John Berger is in danger of being condemned to a gadfly role. Judging from the praise accorded his criticism as well as the cries of outrage-“before John Berger manages to interpose himself again between us and the visible meaning of a good picture, may I point out. John Berger, Ways Of Seeing, based on a television series with John Berger (New York: The Viking Press, 160 pages), illustrated, hardbound.

Ways of seeing book