When he was a youngster, the artist Yves Berger performed frequent ping pong video games along with his father, the artwork critic and essayist John Berger, within the hayloft of their house. John was in his 60s on the time, and Yves remembers that the carefully matched opponents would typically attain a type of sleek unity when their actions and rhythms would fall in sync. And with every swing of the paddle, John and Yves would say, “Over to you!” as they despatched the ball backwards and forwards throughout the desk.
This phrase makes a becoming reappearance in Over to You: Letters Between a Father and Son (2024), composed shortly earlier than John’s dying in 2017. The guide presents a dynamic and at instances tender alternate of concepts and pictures between father and son, who have been then dwelling within the suburbs of Paris and Haute-Savoie respectively. As of their video games of ping pong years earlier, every volley or letter builds on the final, responding to its vitality and questions whereas additionally forging new instructions. The result’s an ever-evolving meditation on artwork and picture-making by two people who’re linked by blood and, maybe greater than something, by artwork.
Over to You begins with John’s first letter. He encloses photos of Rogier van der Weyden’s “The Annunciation” (c. 1434), Francisco de Goya’s “La maja vestida” (c. 1800–1807), and Vincent van Gogh’s “Still Life with Bible” (1885), writing to Yves that “both of the last two are an invitation.” In response, Yves attaches a photograph of Chaïm Soutine’s visceral portray “Le Bœuf Écorché” (1924) and writes, “How we wish … To overcome the isolation we feel in our flesh.” From there, the letters transfer fluidly, touching upon ideas associated to portray, like gentle and the panorama, and musing on artwork’s intersection with doubt and the passage of time. Alongside the best way, John and Yves go artworks backwards and forwards by principally Western, principally male artists like Max Beckmann, Nicolas Poussin, Caravaggio, Giorgio Morandi, and Édouard Manet, exploring resonances between makers and pictures.
Drawing by John Berger of flowers of vervain from round 2010, pencil and pastel on paper (© The Property of John Berger)
Over two years of correspondence, the skin world not often crops up of their universe. At one level, John writes, “(My God! Look at what’s happening in Israel and in Palestine; every pomegranate is bleeding…),” however no different modern battle leaves a mark. Yves observes that border management police have searched and forcefully eliminated a second Black man throughout his practice journey from Milan to Geneva, however he rapidly returns to his ideas on photographing his portray course of. In reality, each of the Bergers’ feedback are contained inside parentheses, signaling a transparent separation between the occasions of the world they inhabit and the realm of artwork and concepts that they so freely transfer in.
A extra private tone comes by within the fifth and last part of the guide, the place drawings and prints made by the lads throughout completely different time intervals alternate for a number of pages. One of the shifting is a delicate pencil sketch of John made when Yves was solely 10 years outdated. Maybe it’s misguided to search for indicators of the Bergers’ connection outdoors of artwork: In spite of everything, as this guide makes clear, artwork was their language for all times, and for love.
Yves’s 1986 charcoal drawing of John, who wrote within the backside proper nook: “Yves. 10 ans. Portrait de son pere” (© Yves Berger)
John Berger, “Pomegranate” (2005), watercolor on paper (© The Property of John Berger)
John’s 1991 charcoal drawing of Slash, the lead guitarist of Weapons N’ Roses, given to Yves, then age 15, a fan of the band (© The Property of John Berger)
John’s ink and pastel drawing of untamed sorrel leaves, which he gave to Yves in 2016, the yr earlier than John died. Collectively they determined it might be the place to begin of this alternate. (© The Property of John Berger)
Over to You Letters Between a Father and Son (2024) by John Berger and Yves Berger is revealed by Pantheon Books and is offered on-line and thru unbiased booksellers.
