107-028 Australian Art: Colonial to Pop

Usually 25 points of first-year art history, see Prerequisites.

This subject engages with key aspects in Australian art from European settlement to 1968. It aims to show ways of interpreting Australian art through a focus upon subject matter and the relationship of art to historical events. Topics considered will include the perceptual values known as the picturesque and the sublime in topographical and landscape painting respectively; the concept of Terra Nullius and how the indigenous inhabitants were imaged; the colonial portrait; women artists of the 19th century; nationalism that infused the art of Australian Impressionism, Australian artists abroad; neo-classicism and the 'stampede of the lower gods'; the gaze, homo-eroticism and the Anzac legend; modernism in Sydney and Melbourne and the growing awareness of new European movements such as expressionism, cubism, and surrealism; the art polemics of the 1940s; Australian Pop art and the swinging 60s.