A. O. Scott on John Berger

A. O. Scott, in his “The Man Who Taught Us How to Pay Attention” (The New York Times Magazine, October 18, 2026), says of John Berger, “For him, attention was not a passive, individual state but rather an action.” I like that. To me, that’s what Berger’s photography essays are – acts of attention. See, for example, his excellent “Paul Strand” (included in his 2013 collection Understanding a Photograph), in which he says of Strand,

His best photographs are unusually dense – not in the sense of being overburdened or obscure, but in the sense of being filled with an unusual amount of substance per square inch. And all this substance becomes the stuff of the life of the subject. Take the famous portrait of Mr. Bennett from Vermont, New England. His jacket, his shirt, the stubble on his chin, the timber of the house behind, the air around him become in this image the face of his life, of which his actual facial expression is the concentrated spirit.

I think what Scott means when he says Berger’s attention is a form of action is that it involves more than just looking. Scott says, “We don’t just see what’s in front of our eyes. We interpret it, looking for patterns and meanings and associations. How we do this depends on where we are, who we’re with and how we see ourselves.”

I like Scott’s emphasis on art’s subjectivity. He says, 

Even as the world of commodities is ruled by equivalence, part of the allure of a painting lies in its uniqueness. A Caravaggio is not the same as a Courbet. You can’t swap Picasso for Francis Bacon. What that means is that art — even art that is anonymously made or consumed en masse — is personal. Somebody made it. Somebody sees it.

I also agree with Scott’s view that “Right now, we’re in the midst of an attention crisis, individually and collectively snared in an infinite scroll of disruption and distraction.” He says, “We’re in danger of forgetting how to look.” Our eyes are glued to computer screens, as mine are right now as I type this. We seem to prefer virtual reality over the real thing. I constantly have to remind myself to close the laptop, put the phone away, get out there in nature, in the real world, and see what’s going on.  

Credit: The above portrait of John Berger is by Mike McQuade.

April 10, 2023 Issue

I see in this week’s issue that Kelly Reichardt has a new movie out. Titled Showing Up, it’s about a sculptor in Portland, Oregon. Richard Brody calls it “an instant classic of life in art.” He says, 

Working with the cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, Reichardt films as if in a state of rapt attention, reserving her keenest ardor and inspiration for the art itself: as Lizzy sculpts and assembles and glazes and even just ponders, the film’s visual contemplations seem to get deep into Lizzy’s creative soul. ["Goings On About Town: On the Big Screen"]

Sounds good; I think I’ll check it out. Reichardt directed one of my all-time favorite films – Wendy and Lucy (2008). Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott listed it as one of their “25 Best Films of the Century So Far” (The New York Times, June 19, 2017). See also Jonathan Raban’s excellent review of it, “Metronatural America” (The New York Review of Books, March 26, 2009; included in his great 2010 essay collection Driving Home). 

"Not Parasitic, But Primary": On the Art of Criticism (Contra Brody and Robbins)

Garry Winogrand, "Gas Pumps, Santa Fe, New Mexico" (1955)

Michael Robbins, in his Equipment for Living: On Poetry and Pop Music (2017), says, “Criticism is parasitic literature.” Richard Brody said the same thing a few years ago: “Criticism is a parasitical operation” (“How To Be A Critic,” newyorker.com, August 22, 2012). I can see why they think so: critical writing is a response to other people’s work. The critic appropriates the work of another in a work of his own. But I object to likening this process to that of a parasite. Great critics don’t suck life out of their subjects; they breathe it into them. For me, criticism isn’t parasitic; it’s symbiotic. T. J. Clark analyses Picasso’s The Blue Room as a vision of space (“Space is intimate. The rug heads off abruptly into infinity, but the sheet on the unmade bed laps over it and leaps toward us and asks to be touched”) and I see it with new eyes. James Wood writes, “Saving the dead – that is the paradoxically impossible project of Austerlitz,” thereby providing a key to Sebald’s broody masterpiece. Geoff Dyer reads a Garry Winogrand photo of seemingly nothing (it’s a picture of gas pumps near Santa Fe, New Mexico), noting “the red and white of Coke machine and T-shirt; the Mobil gas pumps and lights; the red-lettered ‘HUNTER’ against the white background of the billboard; and, framed by blue sky, the ‘LISTERINE’ sign in the stripey colours of toothpaste,” and suddenly I’m marvelling at Winogrand’s ingenious eye for colour. I could list dozens of such examples – criticism that is as creative and original and stimulating as the work it examines. Laura Kipnis speaks for me when she says (quoting A. O. Scott), “Criticism is an art in its own right. Wait, not just an art, one that may supersede all other arts! It’s larger and more encompassing – ‘not parasitic, but primary’ ” (“Critical Condition,” Bookforum, Feb/Mar 2016).