Synopses & Reviews
The pocket in question is a small pocket of resistance. A pocket is formed when two or more people come together in agreement. The resistance is against the inhumanity of the New World Economic Order. The people coming together are the reader, me, and those the essays are about-Rembrandt, Paleolithic cave painters, a Romanian peasant, ancient Egyptians, an expert in the loneliness of a certain hotel bedroom, dogs at dusk, a man in a radio station. And unexpectedly, our exchanges strengthen each of us in our conviction that what is happening in the world today is wrong, and that what is often said about it is a lie. Ive never written a book with a greater sense of urgency.
-John Berger
Synopsis
From Booker Prize-winning author John Berger, a collection of essays that explores the relationship of art and artists and includes examinations of the work of Brancusi, Degas, Michelangelo, and Frida Kahlo, among others.
The pocket in question is a small pocket of resistance. A pocket is formed when two or more people come together in agreement. The resistance is against the inhumanity of the New World Economic Order. The people coming together are the reader, me, and those the essays are about-Rembrandt, Paleolithic cave painters, a Romanian peasant, ancient Egyptians, an expert in the loneliness of a certain hotel bedroom, dogs at dusk, a man in a radio station. And unexpectedly, our exchanges strengthen each of us in our conviction that what is happening in the world today is wrong, and that what is often said about it is a lie. I've never written a book with a greater sense of urgency.
-John Berger
About the Author
John Berger was born in London in 1926. His many books, innovative in form and far-reaching in their historical and political insight, include the Booker Prize-wining novel G. His new collection of essays The Shape of a Pocket has been published in 2001. John Berger now lives and works in a small village in the French Alps.
Table of Contents
1. Opening a Gate
2. Steps Towards a Small Theory of the Visible (for Yves)
3. Studio Talk (for Miquel Barceló)
4. The Chauvet Cave
5. Penelope
6. The Fayum Portraits
7. Degas
8. Drawing: Correspondence with Leon Kossoff
9. Vincent
10. Michelangelo
11. Rembrandt and the Body
12. A Cloth Over the Mirror
13. Brancusi
14. The River Po
15. Giorgio Morandi (for Gianni Celati)
16. Pull the Other Leg, It's Got Bells On It
17. Frida Kahlo
18. A Bed (for Christoph Hänsli)
19. A Man with Tousled Hair
20. An Apple Orchard (An Open Letter to Raymond Barre, Mayor of Lyon)
21. Brushes Standing Up in Jars
22. Against the Great Defeat of the World
23. Correspondence with Subcomandante Marcos:
—I. The Herons
—II. The Herons and Eagles
—III. How to Live with Stones
24. Will It Be a Likeness? (for Juan Munoz)