A Painter of Our Time
by John Berger
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From John Berger, the Booker Prize-winning author of G., A Painter of Our Time is at once a gripping intellectual and moral detective story and a book whose aesthetic insights make it a companion piece to Berger's great works of art criticism. The year is 1956. Soviet tanks are rolling into Budapest. In London, an expatriate Hungarian painter named Janos Lavin has disappeared following a triumphant one-man show at a fashionable gallery. Where has he gone? Why has he gone? The only clues may show more lie in the diary, written in Hungarian, that Lavin has left behind in his studio. With uncanny understanding, John Berger has written oneo f hte most convincing portraits of a painter in modern literature, a revelation of art and exile. show lessTags
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I read A Painter of Our Time in a disjointed way which did the book no favours. However, it is fair to say it's a hard slog. Beauty and a rather wry humour abound. But it is essential to the story that it contains a lot of Marxist analysis of the place of art in revolution, as well as in the capitalist environs which provide the physical setting. One moment we are following the charmingly amusing story of the butcher who wants Janos to do a nude portrait of his wife. The next we are in this:
Today every painter worthy of the name is his own master, his own pupil and perhaps finally his own debaser, his own mannerist. We each have to decide everything for ourselves. We each have to choose what is inconceivable for us. As artists - andshow more
this is the curse that is upon us - we must each visualise our own city, ourself as its centre. It is bitter for me to admit this, I who, as a man, believe in the collective, in the revolutionary class not the revolutionary individual.show less
rest here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2018/10/27/a-painter-of-our-time-by-...
The novel was narrated as diary entries of the painter as he unravels the world of colors that he creates, locked away from all. His struggle as he transforms mere blobs of color on canvas into forms and shapes conveying a meaning, a story; adding life to them each day.
In a clash between the Chaos of Modern Art and Romance of Classicism, the protagonist clings to the latter and tries to depict order in the chaotic world today, belonging to the genre (as coined by the author) : "DESPERATE OPTIMISM".
In a clash between the Chaos of Modern Art and Romance of Classicism, the protagonist clings to the latter and tries to depict order in the chaotic world today, belonging to the genre (as coined by the author) : "DESPERATE OPTIMISM".
129-1
Oct 16, 2022Spanish
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Author Information
150+ Works 17,145 Members
John Peter Berger was born in London, England on November 5, 1926. After serving in the British Army from 1944 to 1946, he enrolled in the Chelsea School of Art. He began his career as a painter and exhibited work at a number of London galleries in the late 1940s. He then worked as an art critic for The New Statesman for a decade. He wrote fiction show more and nonfiction including several volumes of art criticism. His novels include A Painter of Our Time, From A to X, and G., which won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Booker Prize in 1972. His other works include an essay collection entitled Permanent Red, Into Their Labors, and a book and television series entitled Ways of Seeing. In the 1970s, he collaborated with the director Alain Tanner on three films. He wrote or co-wrote La Salamandre, The Middle of the World, and Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000. He died on January 1, 2017 at the age of 90. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- A Painter of Our Time
- Original publication date
- 1958
- Epigraph
- Life will always be bad enough for the desire for something better not to be extinguisged in men.
Maxim Gorky - Dedication
- To Liz, my wife
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- Members
- 201
- Popularity
- 160,546
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (3.92)
- Languages
- 5 — English, German, Greek, Hungarian, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 13
- ASINs
- 8
