Clifton Pugh’s ‘Aboriginal’ Epiphany and the Transformation of his Landscape Art (1954–65)

Abstract

This article focuses on two episodes in the Australian modernist artist Clifton Pugh's (1924–1990) artistic career – his journey across the Nullarbor Plain in 1954 and 1956, and his travels to the Kimberley in 1964 – where his experience of the desert environment and its Indigenous inhabitants resulted in a pictorial engagement with aesthetic and sociological forms of Aboriginalism. Pugh's landscapes contributed significantly to national imagery during the 1950s and 1960s, yet his engagement with Aboriginal art, people, and culture has been overlooked. Drawing on the visual record, critic's reviews, and Pugh's statements and interviews, this article argues that Aboriginalism was a crucial element in shaping his expression of a primal Australian landscape and his own existential search for identity as an artist and as an Australian. It not only transformed his landscape art but also his sense of being and belonging in the Australian environment.