2026-08-26
42 分钟Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet.
I'm senior producer Mia Sorrenti.
What does it mean to really look at a work of art?
And more than 50 years after Ways of Seeing,
what can John Burgess still teach us about the relationship between culture, politics and power?
On today's episode, Tom Overton, writer, editor and researcher, joined Shahid Abari to discuss his new book,
John Berger, From Life, and the ideas, political commitments and collaborations
that shaped one of the most influential cultural thinkers of the 20th century.
Let's join our host, Shahid Abari, now with more.
Hello, I'm Shahida Bari and I'm talking to Tom Overton today about his new book, John Berger from Life.
John Berger was one of the artistic polymaths of the 20th century in our cultural life.
He was a painter, a novelist, a poet, a critic, a broadcaster and perhaps above all other things, a storyteller.
Many people will remember his 1972 television series Ways of Seeing and how that transformed for generations
of people the way that they thought about art, challenging the authority of the museum and the art historian.
On the supposedly neutral act of looking.
But Burge's interests ranged far beyond paintings too.
He wrote about migration and labour, peasants and animals, politics and war.
And he wrote about mortality.
His book, a prize-winning novel, Gee, is an extraordinary book about a country doctor, a fortunate man.
This is just part of a remarkably wide body of work.