As contemporary readers and digital users navigate an attention crisis defined by infinite scrolling and constant disruption, critic A.O. Scott highlights the enduring relevance of British art critic, novelist, and polemicist John Berger.
Writing in The New York Times ahead of Berger's centennial on November 5, Scott examines how Berger—who died in 2017—devoted much of his life to exploring the theory and practice of looking at paintings, animals, and the natural world. For Berger, attention was a matter of cultural survival, linking memory and judgment to a deeper understanding of history and existence.
Berger famously anticipated how modern image saturation and photography would create an eternal present that discards memory, cautioning that losing memory erodes the continuities of meaning and judgment. Nearly a decade after his passing, his foundational works—such as the book and BBC series Ways of Seeing and the essay collection About Looking—continue to find renewed attention alongside recent biographical publications and reissues.