AUSTRALIAN ART

• 304 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.
• Bibliography: p. 284-287.
• 2nd revised edition. (Originally published 1945)
• #111024
• Bernard Smith explores the subject of art in Australia with a focus on its history and evolution since the late 18th century.
• Bernard William Smith (1916–2011) was Australia’s most eminent twentieth century art historian and a major thinker in the humanities. His first book Place, Taste and Tradition: a study of Australian art since 1788 is a key text in Australian art history, while European Vision and the South Pacific, first published in 1960, remains a pioneering masterpiece in the art and sciences of empire, imperialism and cultural contact in the Pacific.

• The doyen of Australian art history, Bernard Smith (1916-2011) memorably borrowed the titles of the first two books of the Old Testament, Genesis and Exodus, to characterise decisive periods in the development of art in this country. The terms are used in his first book on the subject, Place, Taste and Tradition (1944), and again in Australian Painting (1962), a fundamental reference work that has been republished in more recent decades with additional chapters, first by Terry Smith (no relation, 1991) and then by Christopher Heathcote (2001).

  These evocative biblical titles refer respectively to the formation of an Australian school of painting at the end of the 19th century and then to the wave of expatriations that took place, perhaps surprisingly, just before and after Federation (January 1, 1901).

• Art, Australian — History