Berger, John (1926-2017), was a British novelist and art critic. Berger won the 1972 Booker Prize, the United Kingdom‘s best-known literary award, for his novel G (1972). The story centers on a man who lives only to gratify his sexual interests yet is deeply affected by the historical events of his time.
John Peter Berger was born on Nov. 5, 1926, in London. He studied to be an artist and first worked as a painter and teacher of drawing. He also served as art critic for several British periodicals. Berger’s first novel, A Painter of Our Time (1958), examines the relationship between culture and politics against the background of the London art world. His artistic background and his Marxist political views strongly influenced his writing.
In the early 1970’s, Berger moved to a peasant village in France. He explored changes in peasant life in a trilogy of stories, poetry, and narrative. The trilogy consisted of Pig Earth (1979), Once in Europa (1987), and Lilac and Flag (1990). The works were published together in 1991 as Into Their Labours.
Berger’s other novels include The Foot of Clive (1962), Corker’s Freedom (1964), To the Wedding (1995), and King: A Street Story (1999). His best-known work of art criticism is Ways of Seeing (1972), an examination of art from a social rather than an aesthetic perspective. Keeping a Rendezvous (1991) is a collection of essays and poems, primarily about the visual arts. His other works on art include The Success and Failure of Picasso (1965), About Looking (1980), and The Sense of Sight (1985). Berger wrote a nonfiction account of the life of a country doctor in A Fortunate Man (1967). He also wrote several screenplays. He died on Jan. 2, 2017.
