A powerful meditation on political resistance and the global search for justice 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 on the poverty and loss of freedom at the heart of such unnecessary suffering. These essays offer reflections on the political at the core of artistic expression and at the center of human existence itself.
i guess there should always be a perspective from the french countryside to balance out fox.
Embrace Berger Too
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 17 years ago
One of the wisest voices of our time, John Berger, has pieced together 17 thoughts or, 'dispatches'(with its military connotations) about the post 9/11 environment which we now, all share. For most of his long life, Berger has sided with the powerless and dispossessed, even taking the step of quitting a high profile career in London, where he seemed to be at the cutting edge of art criticism with his ground-breaking,'Ways of Seeing' made for BBC T.V and never out of print in book form.He relocated in a peasant village in rural France, to immerse himself in what would form the subject of some of his most compelling writing.There has been no diminishing of power in his thought or eloquence as he gains his senior years. The Palestine issue, in particular, gets coverage. And he returne to the pitiless paintings of Francis Bacon for what I suspect will be his final published view of him. And there is a re-contexturalising of the great Piero Pasolini; Berger having just watched his 'La Rabbia'(how and where can I ever get to see this?). I guess, I wish the collection had more in it. But what is there is potent, direct and as usual, poetic. Which leads me to its title; not one of John's pieces, but the publication in its opening pages of a very beautiful poem by one, Gareth Evans. Have a squizz! For more on art visit>rodmoss.com
good but enigmatic
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 17 years ago
I love reading John Berger. He is an original thinker. I don't always agree with his point of view but I love to read it. This book was very moving at times but also very enigmatic. I think that Mr. Berger is such a sensitive man that art criticism offers a safer space, than political discourse,to provide a more succinct point of view. I felt when reading his book the human tragedy that is going on now in the middle east is so hard to believe even when one is a witness to it.
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