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 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.

◎ 作者介绍

作者：约翰·伯格（John Berger，1926－2017）

英国艺术评论家、小说家、画家和诗人，1926年出生于英国伦敦。1944至1946年在英国军队服役。退役后入切尔西艺术学院和伦敦中央艺术学院学习。1940年代后期，伯格以画家身份开始其创作生涯，于伦敦多个画廊举办展览。1948年至1955年，他以教授绘画为业，并为伦敦著名杂志《新政治家》撰稿，迅速成为英国最有影响力的艺术批评家之一。

1972年，他的电视系列片《观看之道》在BBC播出，同时出版配套的图文书，遂成艺术批评的经典之作。小说《G》为他赢得了布克奖及詹姆斯·泰特·布莱克纪念奖。2008年，伯格凭借小说《A致X：给狱中情人的温柔书简》再次获得布克奖提名。2017年1月2日，约翰·伯格在法国安东尼去世。