John Berger and a truism

Hi, just read this passage and I loved it so I wanted to put it here. He summed up how I have been feeling about painting for a good few years, and probably ever, in a charming dialogue between artist and subject matter. I hope you relate to this too. Thank you John Berger for being such an inspiration! This is dedicated to painters everywhere.

' How did you become what you visibly are? asks the painter.

I am as I am. I'm waiting, replies the mountain or the mouse or the child.

What for?

For you, if you abandon everything else.

For how long?

For as long as it takes.

There are other things in life.

Well, find them and be more normal.

And If I don't?

I'll give you what I've given nobody else, but it's worthless, it's simply the answer to your useless question.

Useless?

I am as I am.

No promise more than that?

None. I can wait forever.

I'd like a normal life.

Live it and don't count on me.

And if I do count on you?

Forget everything and in me you'll find - me!


The collaboration which sometimes follows is seldom based on good will: more usually on desire, rage, fear, pity or longing. The modern illusion concerning painting (which post-modernism has done nothing to correct) is that the artist is a creator. Rather he is a receiver. What seems like creation is the act of giving form to what he has received.'

taken from

'Steps Towards a small theory of the visible (for Yves)' by John Berger, 2001