107-028 Myths and Legends: Australian Art 1860-1945

Note

Availability

Credit Points

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually 12.5 points of first year Art History

see Prerequisites

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

The history of Australian art has been written in terms of the myth of the European settlers only gradually becoming able to 'see' the Australian landscape as it really was. This subject aims to extend ways of looking at and writing about Australian art by a new focus on subject matter and the relationship of art to historical events. Topics considered may include: a study of the sublime and Picturesque Landscape types, their domestication and nationalisation; how the indigenous inhabitants were imaged; the development of a colonial culture of public and private patronage; the types and legends developed by artists, such as the digger, the A.I.F. infantryman, the swaggie, the battler, or the bush wife; the self-conscious construction of the artist's self-image; the institutionalisation of the 19th century pastoral landscape trope; the development of new types of imagery in the inter-war period; the growing awareness of new European movements such as Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism; and the art polemics of the 1940s.

Assessment

A classpaper of 1500 words and a take-home examination of 2500 words

Prescribed Texts

• T Bonyhady, Images in Opposition. Oxford 1985.
• I Burn, National Life and Landscape. Bay Books 1990.