On Writing Art History in Australia

Abstract

In this article, presented as the Second Annual Thesis Eleven Centre Lecture in 2003, Bernard Smith discusses the practice of writing art history in, and about, Australia and Europe. Smith defends periodization, and argues for the necessity of henceforth viewing what is typically called modernism as what he calls the formalesque. Further discussion includes problems of classification, the role of theory, and the place of Aboriginal art in white art history. The article thus surveys the condition of art history in Australia, its emergence and consolidation as a discipline, and its present situation as part of contemporary world culture.

Keywords

Antipodes art Australia formalesque modernism

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Beilharz, P. (1997) Imagining the Antipodes - Theory, Culture and the Visual in the Work of Bernard Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

Bryson, N. (1983) Vision and Painting. London: Macmillan .

Gombrich, E. (1950) The Story of Art. London: Phaidon .

Gombrich, E. (2002) The Preference for the Primitive. London: Phaidon .

Pevsner, N. (1953) The Pelican History of Art. Harmondsworth: Penguin .

Sayers, A. (2001) Australian Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press .

Smith, B. (1960) European Vision and the South Pacific, 1768-1850: A Study in the History of Art and Ideas. Oxford: Oxford University Press .

Smith, B. (1998) Modernism’s History. New Haven: Yale University Press .

Waterhouse, E. (1953) Painting in Britain, 1530-1790. Melbourne: Penguin .