Today's Observer carries an article on Spanish Portraits by John Berger:
Each one of the hundred people painted is looking at the future with a question or declaration. We are walking between their life-experiences in a manner that could never happen if we were walking past photographs, however masterly the photographer. Photos are taken by surprise or take us by surprise. In photos, there is very little waiting-to-be-seen; photos are not attendant. Here, in the long gallery, there is nothing else but a waiting-to-be-seen. Therein lies the nakedness.
In relation not just to the above essay, but generally: The acuity with which Berger is attuned to history as a reservoir of untapped possibilities, promises, expectations; and the steady reproach, the nagging questions which these level at the present. What shines forth from art is not so much some endlessly renamed human nature, as if this were a trusty constant which art endlessly decks out in the fancy dress of different periods. It is rather that certain ‘possibles’ – certain promises, forms of life – are housed in art. These ‘possibles’ are contingent and frail. They indeed depend on history. They can, no matter how precious, rewarding, be lost, fall into disuse, be written of or systematically destroyed. Art is their custodian and a reminder, perhaps, of their frailty, of what is missing from our present, and a troubling augury of what might be. Art’s silent imperative for Berger is perhaps two-fold: on the one hand, the enjoinder to speak to and to hear the Dead; on the other, the command – famously issuing from Rilke’s archaic torso “change your life”.
From the interesting new blog Any Street Corner, John Berger on Susan Sontag:
Susan Sontag - quicksilver darting between past and future to shed light on the otherwise dark present -
and your conscience that travelled almost at the speed of light.
I recall playing ping-pong with you and your fast services, and your laughter, which was always about surprise.
One surprise prompting another. Twenty all. Your service.
And the flick of your wrist, which looked so young, and which long, long before had already been an example for your mind that later grasped the world.
Quicksilver, liquid metal, nickname for Mercury, keeper of eloquence and dexterity, protector of roads, deliverer of the messages we need.
Game and set to you, Quicksilver.