The Shape of a Pocket, John Berger

This is a collection of essays and writings by Berger. I haven't read it all in one go but have been dipping in and out, probably for about a year. You can rely on John Berger to be knowledgeable, in-depth and interesting. I find him a bit condescending and authoritative, he seems to be aware that all artists have to read him- but he is worth putting up with - he writes so well and says such good stuff!

These essays were full of ideas. Apparently Degas said that you only have one heart, and there is love and your life's work. Degas (obviously) chose to put his heart only in his work, all the women he knew, and the only way he knew them, was to draw them. For Berger that plays a huge part in the sensitivity of his work. Another essay talks about the Fayum portraits, apparently the earliest portraits found. 'Flawed because very evidently hand-made. More precious because the painted gaze is entirely concentrated on the life it knows it will one day lose. And so they gaze on us, the Fayum portraits, like the missing of our own century'. (You see why we have to read him?- gorgeous)

The best essay I think is one on Frida Kahlo. Berger's idea is that she painted on a surface like skin, which she thought of as skin. Therefore she doesn't paint pain, but paints the feeling of it. Everything she painted was from herself and on herself. 'Frida Kahlo lay cheek to cheek with everything she depicted'

I am just on the last few pages of Peggy Hesketh's Telling the Bees, tell you about that one tomorrow.