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.

Erin Hogan embarks on a solo journey across the American West in search of Land Art. The 2008 book is deeply reflective of current anxieties for arts in Australia, with funding cuts, a world in turmoil, and an internal search for place in an uncertain world.

I was working in a bookstore when Poor Artists hit the shelves and it was one that was mildly contentious in where it should be shelved. Fiction or non-fiction, in the art section or in biography? Poor Artists is like nothing I’ve ever read before in its structure. Co-authors Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad (who I’ll call G&Z from here on out) remind us at the start of the book that this is a piece of art criticism, but I see it more specifically as criticism of the culture that surrounds art instead. Which I guess is exactly what art criticism is.  G&Z have been running a UK-based arts and culture commentary site The White Pube for ten years and published Poor Artists as a somewhat expansion of that in 2024.