Writing Histories of Australian Art Criticism: The Sacred in Art in the Late Twentieth Century

Abstract

In late 1987, as I was coming to the end of co-editing, for a decade, the literary magazine Island, I travelled to Europe for seven weeks to look at art in art museums. In London I read Geoff Dyer's study of the art critic John Berger, Ways Of Telling, The Work Of John Berger. I decided that my future lay in the visual arts, that there was a need for similar studies to be written of Australian art criticism.