Bottom Shelf: Permanent Red by John Berger
Published in 1960, Permanent Red was John Berger’s first book. The group of essays looks to the future as much as it looks back, a debut worthy of the future Berger would have.
You might be wondering, if we’re reading John Berger, why aren’t we reading Ways of Seeing? Quite frankly, great question and I’m glad you asked. Between the TV series (which I am not opposed to including in Bottom Shelf at some point) and how ubiquitous the text is in studying art and art history at any level, I don’t feel that I had much to add to the discussion. Permanent Red, on the other hand, was Berger’s first book, published in 1960. Reading his early criticism, his thoughts and arguments with himself, there’s a lot to identify with and unpack. Berger is an expansive author, winning prizes for his criticism and even the Booker Prize for his fiction, he’s also an author that feels unwieldy, so the beginning is where I will enter into the bibliographical fray.
My focus for this keeps returning to three chapters: The difficulty of being an artist, Artists defeated by the difficulties, and Artists who struggle. Broken up into sections on Berger’s criticism of specific artists and places, the trio of chapters illuminates what are sometimes the beginnings of what are now long-standing issues in contemporary art – the role of art school, galleries and shows, stagnation of practice, etc. In these chapters, I found myself seeing what artists I would write about in these themes in 2026, what shows I’ve seen have almost missed the mark but not made it, the artistic practices I find a bit sadder for having lost the edge and tension that was there even a year ago. It was also in the names that Berger talks about that I was thinking about legacy, something touched on by the author but more prescient now that the writings are 65+ years old. By virtue of being included in the book, they are remembered, but there’s a divide between household names, ones that would be plastered on the side of the NGV, and those that are thought of fondly, though perhaps not often outside of classrooms and seminars.
Questions for the group:
Reading Berger’s thoughts about art schools, specifically his short work ‘The Plight of the Student’ , what has changed and what hasn’t? Does his final sentence “Students are no longer even considered students; they are considered ‘young artists’.” resonate for you? Should we be calling students young or emerging artists?
On a whole, what has been learned in the 66 years since the book was published? What would he say now?
I knew I made the right choice in picking Berger to read closely and write about publicly when I got to page 16, and was greeted with the underlining of a younger me:
After we have responded to a work of art, we leave it, carrying away in our consciousness something which we didn’t have before. This something amounts to more than our memory of the incident represented, and also more than our memory of the shapes and colours and spaces which the artist has used and arranged. What we take away with us - on the most profound level - is the memory of the artist’s way of looking at the world.
I look at art to understand the world, I write to make sense of myself and that world which is being reflected back to me. Every piece of Berger’s in this collection underscores the connection that art builds. We are enthralled by it, confused by it, sometimes bitterly disappointed by it. Good art is indefinable, but every time I have encountered it I have felt like I somehow understood the world more clearly than before.
My copy of Permanent Red is underlined and annotated and a little creased from every bag I have thrown it in throughout its lifetime. Whenever I’m reflecting on a book I’ve read, I always ask myself three things afterwards, but only one is truly relevant for this book club: would I read it again? For Berger’s Permanent Red the answer is yes, absolutely.
Bottom Shelf is Lowbrow’s monthly bookclub. If you had any thoughts on Permanent Red, or have a suggestion for a future book, please contact Charlotte at bottomshelf.lowbrow@gmail.com
Graphics courtesy of @alicebeyerdesign