'I wanted to write about looking at the world, so this book is about helping people to see what is around us, both the marvellous and the terrible'
Nicholas Wroe
On Good Friday in 2008 John Berger went to the National Gallery in London to look at, and to draw, Christ Crucified by the early renaissance artist Antonello da Messina, a work he describes as "the most solitary painting of the scene that I know. The least allegorical." Berger placed his small shoulder bag on the attendant's chair in the corner of the room and began to draw with ink, wetting his index finger to smudge the lines and correct mistakes. Before long the attendant returned and asked Berger to remove his bag. Berger placed it on the floor at his feet and resumed drawing. The attendant said he couldn't leave it on the floor. Berger explained that if he held it he would be unable to draw. The dispute escalated, and at some stage Berger exclaimed "fuck". A supervisor was called who told Berger he had insulted a member of staff doing his job and had "shouted obscene words in a public institution". He was escorted from the building: "I take it you know the way out, sir."
Berger tells the anecdote in his new book published next month, Bento's Sketchbook (Verso), which also contains his, hastily completed, drawing of the crucifixion. In the book the episode has a palpably allegorical tinge that – with all the correcting of the drawing – hints at wider notions of human error. But at face value it is emblematic of Berger's career as combative art critic, radical writer and consistent challenger of institutional power. Here you have a snapshot not only of his relationship with art and the art world, but also of his relationship with society and authority in general.
Recounting the story at his home in Haute-Savoie in the French alps, Berger smiles at the comic aspects of the grand old man of British art being summarily booted out of the National Gallery. But he nevertheless displays a lingering anger at what he sees as the underlying reasons for the confrontation. "They kept saying it was a matter of security," he says, sneeringly elongating the word in the idiosyncratically French-inflected accent he has acquired after living there for almost 50 years. "Security. A word that these days seems simultaneously both to conceal so much and to reveal so much."
