Seeing Like John Berger
Megan O’Grady reviews a new Berger biography, Deana Lawson appropriates surveillance photographs, and Paddy Johnson answers the question: Do I need an agent?
The writer and critic John Berger — that “anarchist-angel,” as essayist Megan O’Grady calls him in a review of his new biography — very much shaped the way we see. Berger himself had asked the novelist Tom Overton to wait until his death to write his biography; arriving nearly a decade after, the result is perceptive, illuminating, and an aesthetic work in its own right.
It’s good reading when paired with Channelle Chevelle Russell’s review of an exhibition of Deana Lawson’s photographs at Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan. Lawson turns her camera’s gaze to beauty-supply surveillance photos of customers, which are often pinned behind the counter to deter theft. The gallery does not allow visitors to take photographs of the exhibition.
The resulting questions are deeply Bergerian, if I may: Who gets to look? Who gets looked at? Who has the power to determine what an image means?
—Lisa Yin Zhang, associate editor
John Berger in His Own Bruised Time
These days, we tend to take his ideas for granted: that art — making it or contemplating it — creates knowledge. That by foregrounding the processes by which we see, we can discover the mechanisms and deceptions through which we make meaning. And, of course, that it’s important to know who is footing the bill. John Berger, who died in 2017, was famous not for challenging the Western canon but for making its revelations feel so evidently connected to everything else about life. His essays often read like personal letters, offering to us the gift of our own passions and imaginations. | Megan O’Grady
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A Magnetizing Force: Salvaged Metal Meets Colorful Paint Skin
American artist Kennedy Yanko’s first-ever institutional solo exhibition in Paris opens on October 15, 2026, at the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine. Curated by Matthieu Poirier, Ce qui nous rassemble, which translates to “That which unites us” in English, engages Yanko’s contemporary sculptures in dialogue with a charged architectural history.
News
- Artist Tammy Nguyen will present the foreword to her debut opera Timaeus and The Teacher at the 61st Venice Biennale’s closing program on November 13 and 14, capping off an eventful edition of the international contemporary art festival.
- Actor Johnny Depp gets his first major exhibition in the UK at London’s Halcyon Gallery, despite the debatable quality of his work. [Deadline]
San Antonio’s Centro de Artes Celebrates 10 Years with “Mercado/Material”
Curated by Mia Lopez, 16 artists transform everyday objects into bold explorations of Latinx identity. On view in San Antonio from October 16 through March 7, 2027.
From Our Critics
Who’s the Thief in Deana Lawson’s Photography?
I wonder what the women standing perpetually accused and anonymous might say about the sale of their stolen images. | Channelle Chevelle Russell
Read MoreRichard Dadd’s Strange and Delicate Worlds
Though he is known primarily for his work of fantastical landscapes and mystical woodland creatures, a new retrospective tells the full story. | Olivia McEwan
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Art Problems: Do I Need an Agent?
Artist agents are not the panacea we imagine them to be, but AI agents won’t solve all your problems, either. Paddy Johnson breaks it down. | Paddy Johnson
Read MoreMore From Hyperallergic
Why Pageant Is Suddenly All the Rage
In a world skewed toward artifice, the East Williamsburg performance space’s commitment to confronting, rather than escaping, one’s conditions in art feels like a renaissance. | Phillip Pyle
Read MoreRed Hook Open Studios Rises From the Ashes
Dispelling fears that last year’s blaze pushed artists away for good, this year’s edition proved that the Brooklyn neighborhood’s artistic community is as strong as ever. | Aaron Short
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A Hyperallergic Halloween
Join us on October 28 in Brooklyn, NY for an evening of spooky cocktails, devilish delights, an art-themed costume contest, and more.
Hyper Links
- Turns out ChatGPT’s been signing fake New Yorker cartoons with real artists’ names. Chat, keep my name out of your mouth. [Creative Bloq]
- How do you write (another) biography of Leonardo Da Vinci? [London Review of Books]
- Marlena Myles made a map of Lenape Manhattan that New York Magazine rejected. [Instagram]
- How New College in Sarasota, Florida, became the battlefront of Ron Desantis’s culture war. [n+1]
Member Comment
—Maggie Parr on "Roy Lichtenstein Has Lost His Luster"
From the Archive
Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Never-Ending Quest for Beauty
Natalie Dykstra meticulously combs through archival material to fashion a biography of the inimitable, complex arts patron, who ordered her private letters to be destroyed after her death. | Lauren Moya Ford
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