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Prodigious British author and art critic John Berger has died aged 90

Berger’s Ways of Seeing programme changed the face of art criticism.

BRITISH ART CRITIC, Marxist intellectual and prodigious author John Berger has died aged 90.

Berger’s pioneering 1972 book and the BBC series it spawned, Ways of Seeing, ushered in a political perspective to art criticism and is seen as one of the most influential art programmes ever made.

Simon McBurney, the British actor and a friend of Berger’s told The Associated Press that Berger died Monday at his home in the Paris suburb of Antony. McBurney said Berger had been ill for about a year.

Berger was the author of art criticism, novels, poetry, screenplays and many less classifiable books.

 

He consistently challenged traditional interpretations of art and society and connections between the two.

When he won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1972 for his novel, G, he pledged to give half his reward to the Black Panthers.

- With reporting by Rónán Duffy

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