107-061 You Beaut Country: Australian Art and Design in the 1950s

Note

Availability

Credit Points

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually 37.5 points of Art History at second/third year, see Prerequisites

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

As the period of modernisation in Australia, the 1950s saw new economic, cultural and geo-political experiences conflicting with existing, relatively stable nationalist mythologies. These conflicts are also evident within the visual arts, be they debates on international abstraction versus local figuration, modernist architecture as utopia or cultural imperialism, or representations of figures of threat and instability such as migrants, aborigines, and new spaces like the suburbs. The subject aims to reopen the case of the 1950s, staging it as a decade of both complacency and panic, of mythology and demonology, of progress and nostalgia. Interdisciplinary methodologies will be used to explore the formation or reconfiguration of national identity in a decade of dramatic social and cultural change.

Assessment

A classpaper of 1500 words, and an essay of 2500 words for 3rd-year. A classpaper of 2000 words, and an essay of 3000 words for 4th-year.

Prescribed Texts

• I Burn et. al, The Necessity of Australian Art. Sydney 1988.
• S Lees & J Senyard, The 1950s. 1987.
• Powerhouse Museum, The Australian Dream. 1993.
• A-M Willis, Illusions of Identity, The Art of Nations. 1993.
• A-M Willis, The Art of Nations. 1993.