107-028 Australian Art 1840 - 1950

Note

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually 12.5 points of first year art history, see Prerequisites.

Semester

Subject Description

This subject aims to extend ways of looking at and writing about Australian art through a 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; 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 AIF infantryman, the swaggie, the battler, or the bush wife; 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. Students who complete the subject should have an understanding and visual knowledge of the development of the concept of 'Australian art' from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century.