Everyone should read John Berger's Portraits

Hi,

In the last email I sent out I mentioned the book Portraits: John Berger on Artists (by John Berger, Edited by Tom Overton, Published by Verso). Today I wanted to follow that up with this email, typing the praises of this book.

First:

Take a look at this picture, which shows the front and the back of the paperback version of the book.

When do you think these paintings would have been the paintings of the man and the woman on the front and back of the book would have been painted? Seriously, think about it. (They look modern to me.)

They were painted in Egypt during the first century C.E.!

Yeah! I know! It's incredible.

They are called the Fayum paintings, and Berger writes about them in the second chapter of the book. Here is the first paragraph of the essay.

They are the earliest portraits that have survived; they were painted whilst the New Testament were being written. Why then do they strike us today as being so immediate? Why does their individuality feel like our own? Why is their look more contemporary than any look to be found in the rest of the two millennia of traditional European art which followed them? The Fayum portraits touch us, as if they had been painted last month. Why? This is the riddle.

How's that for an opener? (I'm hooked.)

After this Berger goes on to explain what the Fayum portraits were: They were portraits that would be displayed in a person's home after they died. The portrait would hang in the home till the body was buried, and then it would be buried with the body. This makes me imagine them as a sort of transitional object (Wikipedia). What I find fascinating is that this was something an artist made with the full knowledge that it would be buried! Additionally, the artists (and those they painted) were engaged in a process that must have had both of them reflection on their own mortality in a very present and significant way.

What must that have been like, for both the person being painted and the painter doing the painting?
Where some painters better than others?
What might it have been like to sit for one of these paintings, to be painted in preparation for your death?
What might it have been a painter of these paintings, to help people get ready to die?

These are some of the questions Berger considers in this masterfully written essay.

Among the several hundred known portraits, the difference of quality is considerable. There were great master-craftsmen and there were provincial hacks. There were those who summarily performed a routine, and there were others (surprisingly many in fact) who offered hospitality to the soul of their client

(After I typed this out I reread the words... it made me think of therapists and other non-medically trained people who help people live well so they might die feeling they have lived well.)

Second:

Let's take a look at a few more amazing combinations of words, shall we? I won't say much about them, I just want you to show you some of the sentences that Berger constructs.

Before most works of art, as with trees, we can see and assess only a section of the whole: the roots are invisible. (p.12)

Why does a man paint himself? Among many motives, one is the same as that which prompts any man to have his portrait painted. (p. 56)

The sculptures impressed me not so much because of their quality --at that time many other things interested me more than art-- but because of their strangeness. They were foreign-looking. I remember arguing with my friends about them. They said they were crude and corse. I defended them because I sensed that they were the work of somebody totally different from us. (p. 319)

I could go on and on. There is SO MUCH amazing stuff here that is just a joy to read!

Third:

After Reading Berger's writing on Vincent van Gogh (pp. 267-275) I bought the book Lust for Life, By Irving Stone (Amazon) I've been meaning to read for some time. F

Fourth:

I'm writing this after doing some travel (to Maimi for the Lacanian Compass -- Clinical Study Days, which was wonderful). I returned to lots of snow, my regular teaching responsibilities, tasks that need doing so I can re-start my own clinical practice, projects that need attention at AU where I'm teaching, and projects that need attention at the house that my partner and I are renovating (and hopefully getting to the point where we can move into it before the first of March).

Seriously, it's total pandemonium here in my life. But I'm having a good time with all of it.

Related to InForm:Podcast:
I had pre-recorded many episodes of InForm :Podcast , but I'm the last of the pre-recorded episodes will go out next week. So I'm going to need to do lots more recording at some point over the next week. The next series of shows have been outlined (i.e. I have notes for what I'd like to talk about), so that's good.

Thus far I've been going for an ultra-stripped down style (no music, mimimal production, etc). I'm thinking of trying to add a little more production... Not much because I need to keep the time that goes into producing the show very light (see above). The reason I'm thinking of upping the ante on the production is that when I listen back to the shows I can hear issues with the audio, and that makes me frustrated. I also want the show to be entertaining AND informative enough for those who listen to it.

The audience seems to be growing, which is very gratifying to me. If you listen to the show, and you like it, it would be helpful if you subscribed to it. It would also help if you left an iTunes review. And there is, of course, the option of supporting the work via Patreon.

My next sub-project will be to create a better website for what I'm thinking I'll be calling the InForm:Community. More on that in future emails for me. (Preview of InForm:Community.)