How to Write Art History from an Antipodean Perspective

Abstract

Abstract Classic histories of Australian art begin their narrative with the art of first contact, such as Bernard Smith's European Vision and the South Pacific (1969), or his history of Australian Painting 1788–1960, first published in 1960, till the standard text today. European Vision and the South Pacific remains an extraordinary thesis, in which the art and nature of the new world is shown to have been represented, according to the norms of Europeans. It is almost certainly the first great statement of crossing cultures in art history. Smith's Australian Painting, by contrast, although unsurpassed, has come under increasing criticism for presenting such a partial view of painting, omitting sculpture or anything three dimensional, or anything indigenous, or anything ancient. It is a cliche that Australians have the longest living tradition of art anywhere in the world, and yet no history of Australian art exists that accepts this statement as a premise. Hitherto ignored in all accounts of Australian ar...