“Degas was obsessed by the art of classical ballet, because to him it said something about the human condition. He was not a balletomane looking for an alternative world to escape into. Dance offered him a display in which he could find, after much searching, certain human secrets.”

English art critic, novelist, painter and poet

John Berger was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. He lived from 1926 to 2017, and spent more than fifty years in France. He is best known for his writing on art and for fiction that won wide attention, especially his Booker Prize winning novel G. Berger’s essay collection Ways of Seeing, written alongside the BBC series of the same name, became a landmark in art criticism and is still widely read. His work moves between visual culture, fiction and poetry, often returning to questions of how art is seen and understood.