Permanent Red

By John Berger,

Book cover of Permanent Red: Essays in Seeing

Book description

Essays on seeing by the author of the classic Ways of Seeing book.

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Why read it?

1 author picked Permanent Red as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I keep returning to this collection of essays because of the elegantly stark prose style and Berger’s willingness to go against popular opinion. Who else would choose to place modernist titans like Jackson Pollock, Naum Gabo, and Paul Klee in a chapter entitled “Artists defeated by the difficulties”?

My reason for including Permanent Red here is the first chapter, “To Be an Artist,” in which Berger asks the reader to imagine lying beneath a tree on a summer day. Describing the geometry of the leaves and branches and the play of form and space, he reflects on what it means…

From Marcus' list on fiction about art and artists.

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