I asked fifteen performance makers (and two sculptors) I admire to suggest one book about being this thing called an artist. I am taking their recommendation into my year of Leverhulme endorsed reading and thinking time. There are so many good books in the world that choosing one was tough for most people, so here’s a wonderfully long list for you to get stuck into if the mood takes you:
A Collection of Good Books From a Collection of Good Artists
Leverhulme Reading List 2019/20
- Artificial Hells, Claire Bishop
- Stuff Matters, Mark Miodownik
- Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, Translation Ursula Le Guin
- The Patterning Instinct, Jeremy Lent
- Just Kids, Patti Smit
- Learning to Love You More, Miranda July
- Hope in the Dark and A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit
- Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, Michael Azerrad
- Tell Them I said No, Martin Herbert
- Haunted Weather: Music, Silence, and Memory, David Toop
- Dancing In The Streets: A History Of Collective Joy, Barbara Ehrenreich
- Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyper-reality, Umberto Eco
- City, Alessandro Baricco
- And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos and Shape of a Pocket, John Berger
- Certain Fragments : Contemporary Performance and Forced Entertainment, Tim Etchells
- The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life, Twyla Tharp
- Creating a Life Worth Living: A Practical Course in Career Design for Aspiring Writers,Artists, Filmmakers, Musicians and Others, Carol Lloyd
- Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin, Sybrina Fulton
- Verbatim Verbatim: Techniques in Contemporary Documentary Theatre, Will Hammond
- Seeker!: Ken Campbell – Five Amazing Lives, Jeff Merrifield
- The Art of Cruelty, Maggie Nelson
- The Viewpoints Book, Anne Bogart and Tina Landau
- In the City of Shy Hunters, Tom Spanbauer
- Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud
- Making Movies, Sydney Lumet
- Zen in the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigel
- Fair Play, Tove Jansson
- The Future of Feminism, Elizabeth Grosz
- Different Every Time, The Authorised biography of Robert Wyatt, Marcus O’Dair