Bento's Sketchbook |
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Author:
| Berger, John |
ISBN: | 978-1-78168-819-9 |
Publication Date: | Mar 2015 |
Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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Imprint: | Verso Trade |
Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | AUD $29.99 |
Book Description:
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The seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza also known as Benedict or Bento de Spinoza spent the most intense years of his short life writing. A sporadic draughtsman, he also carried with him a sketchbook. After his sudden death, his friends rescued letters, manuscripts, notes but no drawings. For years, John Berger has imagined finding Bento's sketchbook without knowing what its pages might hold, but wanting to see the drawings alongside his surviving words. When one day a...
More DescriptionThe seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza also known as Benedict or Bento de Spinoza spent the most intense years of his short life writing. A sporadic draughtsman, he also carried with him a sketchbook. After his sudden death, his friends rescued letters, manuscripts, notes but no drawings. For years, John Berger has imagined finding Bento's sketchbook without knowing what its pages might hold, but wanting to see the drawings alongside his surviving words. When one day a friend gave Berger a beautiful, virgin sketchbook, John said This is Bento's! and he began to draw, taking his inspiration from the philosopher's vision. The result is Bento's Sketchbook an exploration of the practice of drawing and a meditation on how art guides our gaze to the world- to flowers, to the human body, to the pitilessness of the new world order and the forms of resistance to it.