Many people wish to bestow someone a book but are insecure concerning their selection. What should be given away as a gift? What is proper, beautiful, enteraining, worthwhile etc.?I recommend the latest publication by the British author, artist and art critic John Berger:
Bento's Sketchbook
The seventeenth-century philosopher
Baruch Spinoza—also known as Benedict or Bento de Spinoza—spent the most
intense years of his short life writing. A sporadic draughtsman, he
also carried with him a sketchbook. After his sudden death, his friends
rescued letters, manuscripts, notes—but no drawings.
For years, John Berger has imagined finding Bento's sketchbook without knowing what its pages might hold, but wanting to see the drawings alongside his surviving words. When one day a friend gave Berger a beautiful, virgin sketchbook, John said “This is Bento's!” and he began to draw, taking his inspiration from the philosopher's vision.
The result is Bento's Sketchbook—an exploration of the practice of drawing and a meditation on how art guides our gaze to the world: to flowers, to the human body, to the pitilessness of the new world order and the forms of resistance to it.
For years, John Berger has imagined finding Bento's sketchbook without knowing what its pages might hold, but wanting to see the drawings alongside his surviving words. When one day a friend gave Berger a beautiful, virgin sketchbook, John said “This is Bento's!” and he began to draw, taking his inspiration from the philosopher's vision.
The result is Bento's Sketchbook—an exploration of the practice of drawing and a meditation on how art guides our gaze to the world: to flowers, to the human body, to the pitilessness of the new world order and the forms of resistance to it.
Hardback, 176 pages
ISBN: 9781844676842
May 2011
£14.99
Writer and critic John Berger donated his archive to the British Library in 2008 but it was not possible to thank him officially for his generosity until he came on 23 May 2011 to give a reading from his latest book, Bento's Sketchbook.
John Peter Berger (born 5 November 1926) is an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text.
Wikipedia
John Berger was born in London in 1926. His many books, innovative in form and far-reaching in their historical and political insight, include To the Wedding (published in a rejacketed edition in April 2009), King, and the Booker Prize-winning novel, G. Amongst his outstanding studies of art and photography are Another Way of Telling, The Success and Failure of Picasso, Titian: Nymph and Shepherd (with Katya Berger) and the internationally acclaimed Ways of Seeing. He lives and works in a small village in the French Alps, the setting for his trilogy Into Their Labours (Pig Earth, Once in Europa and Lilac and Flag). His collection of essays The Shape of a Pocket was published in 2001. His latest novel, From A to X, was published in 2008.
About Looking, published by Bloomsbury in April 2009, is the follow-up to the seminal Ways of Seeing, one of the most influential books on art.
Berger is a Marxist, an advocat of dignity and freedom. He not only is an art critic but a critic generally, politically. He took explicit stands against Israel concerning their suppression of Palestinians. He is outspoken and courageous.
John Berger: a life in writing
'I wanted to write about looking at the world, so this book is about helping people to see what is around us, both the marvellous and the terrible'
Nicholas Wroe, The Guardian, 23 April 2011
John Berger: A und X Ein Gespräch gegen die Abwertung der Welt
Worte sind stärker als Trennungsschmerz: Der englische Schriftsteller John Berger erzählt in „A und X“ eine Liebesgeschichte - und verrät sein Vademecum gegen die Verwundungen der Moderne.
Thomas David, FAZ, 28.01.2011
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