Download or read book Backgazing Reverse Time in Modernist Culture written by Paul Giles and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-14 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume trace ways in which time is represented in reverse forms throughout modernist culture, from the beginning of the twentieth century until the decade after World War II. Though modernism is often associated with revolutionary or futurist directions, this book argues instead that a retrograde dimension is embedded within it. By juxtaposing the literature of Europe and North America with that of Australia and New Zealand, it suggests how this antipodean context serves to defamiliarize and reconceptualize normative modernist understandings of temporal progression. Backgazing thus moves beyond the treatment of a specific geographical periphery as another margin on the expanding field of 'New Modernist Studies'. Instead, it offers a systematic investigation of the transformative effect of retrograde dimensions on our understanding of canonical modernist texts. The title, 'backgazing', is taken from Australian poet Robert G. FitzGerald's 1938 poem 'Essay on Memory', and it epitomizes how the cultural history of modernism can be restructured according to a radically different discursive map. Backgazing intellectually reconfigures US and European modernism within a planetary orbit in which the literature of Australia and the Southern Hemisphere, far from being merely an annexed margin, can be seen substantively to change the directional compass of modernism more generally. By reading canonical modernists such as James Joyce and T. S. Eliot alongside marginalized writers such as Nancy Cunard and others and relatively neglected authors from Australia and New Zealand, this book offers a revisionist cultural history of modernist time, one framed by a recognition of how its measurement is modulated across geographical space.

Download or read book Imagining the Antipodes written by Peter Beilharz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-08-22 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bernard Smith is widely recognised as one of Australia's leading intellectuals. Yet the recognition of his work has been partial, focused on art history and anthropology. Peter Beilharz argues that Smith's work also contains a social theory, or a way of thinking about Australian culture and identity in the world system. Smith enables us to think matters of place and cultural imperialism through the image of being not Australian so much as antipodean. Australian identities are constructed by the relationship between core and periphery, making them both European and Other at the same time. This 1997 work is a book-length analysis of Bernard Smith's work and is the result of careful and systematic research into Smith's published works and his private papers. It is both an introduction to Smith's thinking and an important interpretive argument about imperialism and the antipodes.

Download or read book The Antipodeans written by Deborah Clark and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1959 in Melbourne, seven artists and an art historian came together "to defend and to champion ... the place of the image in art". The group comprised Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd, David Boyd, John Brack, John Perceval, Clifton Pugh, and Robert Dickerson, who, as the "Antipodeans", held just one exhibition together at the Victorian Artist's Society in August 1959. Bernard Smith, the only non-painter of the group, drafted "The Antipodean Manifesto" which accompanied the exhibition. The Antipodeans defended the figurative image against abstraction -- and contemporary Australian art as opposed to European modernism. They worried that art was losing its humanistic values, that it was becoming obsessed with abstract decoration at the expense of recognizable signs and symbols, that while making great claims for its spiritual depths, it threatened to alienate a broad cross-section of the public. Forty years later, this volume shows the work of artists from the original Antipodean group in the context of abstract art of the period, and demonstrates that at the end of the century, both the Antipodeans and their abstract antagonists have taken on the status of classics.

Download or read book Antipodean China written by Nicholas Jose and published by Giramondo Publishing. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Antipodean China is a collection of essays drawn from a series of encounters between Australian and Chinese writers, which took place in China and Australia over a ten-year period from 2011. The encounters could be defensive, especially given the need to depend on translators, but as the writers spoke about the places important to them, their influences and their work, resemblances emerged, and the different perspectives contributed to a sense of common understanding, about literature and about the role of the writer in society. In some cases the communication is even more direct, as when the Tibetan author A Lai speaks knowingly about Alexis Wright's novel Carpentaria, and the two winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Mo Yan and J.M. Coetzee, discuss what the Nobel meant for each of them. The collection also includes writing by some of the best Chinese and Australian writers: novelists Brian Castro, Gail Jones, Julia Leigh, Yu Hua, Sheng Keyi and Liu Zhenyun, poets Kate Fagan, Ouyang Yu, Xi Chuan and Zheng Xiaoqiong, and translators Eric Abrahamsen, Li Yao and John Minford. In the current situation of hostility and suspicion between the two countries, this collection presents what may be seen, in retrospect, as an idyllic moment of communication and trust.

Download or read book Australian Art and Artists in London 1950 965 written by Simon Pierse and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Subtle and wide-ranging in its account, this study explores the impact of Australian art in Britain in the two decades following the end of World War II and preceding the 'Swinging Sixties'. In a transitional period of decolonization in Britain, Australian painting was briefly seized upon as a dynamic and reinvigorating force in contemporary art, and a group of Australian artists settled in London where they held centre stage with group and solo exhibitions in the capital's most prestigious galleries. The book traces the key influences of Sir Kenneth Clark, Bernard Smith and Bryan Robertson in their various (and varying) roles as patrons, ideologues, and entrepreneurs for Australian art, as well as the self-definition and interaction of the artists themselves. Simon Pierse interweaves multiple issues of the period into a cohesive historical narrative, including the mechanics of the British art world, the limited and frustrating cultural scene of 1950s Australia, and the conservative influence of Australian government bodies. Publishing for the first time archival material, letters, and photographs previously unavailable to scholars either in Britain or Australia, this book demonstrates how the work of expatriate Australian artists living in London constructed a distinct vision of Australian identity for a foreign market.

Download or read book Charles and Barbara Blackman written by Christabel Blackman and published by Thames & Hudson Australia. This book was released on 2024-07-30 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ebook has a fixed layout and is best viewed on a widescreen, full-colour tablet. When Christabel Blackman's mother turned ninety, they celebrated by sifting through Barbara's old documents: diaries, photos, manuscripts - and a fragile old folder, tied with a ribbon. This held letters from a love long past between Christabel's parents. It was a portal into a decade of art and love between Charles and Barbara Blackman. Set against the burgeoning cultural art scene of 1950s Melbourne, among the soon-to-become legendary artists of the Heide group, Christabel weaves the story of Charles and Barbara and the influence they had on each other, and on the Australian art world. These handwritten letters vividly conjure the feeling of the time, and breathe life into the names that are now found in galleries around the world. Charles writes descriptive sketches of his encounters and sentiments to his new love Barbara, who is in turn experiencing her own transformations: the loss of her eyesight, life with a matriarchal mother and her growing literary and intellectual ambitions. In this intimate and immersive account, Christabel reveals her parents' unswerving devotion and blazing creativity, and shares insights into the iconic people they were becoming. With over 160 artworks from Charles Blackman, as well as never-before-seen sketches, letters, documents and photos, it is a beautiful and revealing portrait of two people, their art, and a world they changed forever.

Download or read book Volume One written by Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney, N.S.W.) and published by MCA Store. This book was released on 2012 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The work features over 280 works by more than 170 Australian artists drawn from a period of acquisitions which began with the consitution of the MCA in May 1989."--p. 17.

Download or read book The Planetary Clock written by Paul Giles and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theme of The Planetary Clock is the representation of time in postmodern culture and the way temporality as a global phenomenon manifests itself differently across an antipodean axis. To trace postmodernism in an expansive spatial and temporal arc, from its formal experimentation in the 1960s to environmental concerns in the twenty-first century, is to describe a richer and more complex version of this cultural phenomenon. Exploring different scales of time from a Southern Hemisphere perspective, with a special emphasis on issues of Indigeneity and the Anthropocene, The Planetary Clock offers a wide-ranging, revisionist account of postmodernism, reinterpreting literature, film, music, and visual art of the post-1960 period within a planetary framework. By bringing the culture of Australia and New Zealand into dialogue with other Western narratives, it suggests how an antipodean impulse, involving the transposition of the world into different spatial and temporal dimensions, has long been an integral (if generally occluded) aspect of postmodernism. Taking its title from a Florentine clock designed in 1510 to measure worldly time alongside the rotation of the planets, The Planetary Clock ranges across well-known American postmodernists (John Barth, Toni Morrison) to more recent science fiction writers (Octavia Butler, Richard Powers), while bringing the US tradition into juxtaposition with both its English (Philip Larkin, Ian McEwan) and Australian (Les Murray, Alexis Wright) counterparts. By aligning cultural postmodernism with music (Messiaen, Ligeti, Birtwistle), the visual arts (Hockney, Blackman, Fiona Hall), and cinema (Rohmer, Haneke, Tarantino), this volume enlarges our understanding of global postmodernism for the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Nugget Coombs written by Tim Rowse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-09-27 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 2002 biography of H. C. 'Nugget' Coombs, one of the most influential Australians of the twentieth century.

Download or read book In the Wake of First Contact written by Kay Schaffer and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1995 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, colonialism, race, and gender are explored through the cultural representations of an episode of Australian history.

Download or read book When Modern Became Contemporary Art written by Charles Green and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-09-19 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a portrait of the period when modern art became contemporary art. It explores how and why writers and artists in Australia argued over the idea of a distinctively Australian modern and then postmodern art from 1962, the date of publication of a foundational book, Australian Painting 1788–1960, up to 1988, the year of the Australian Bicentennial. Across nine chapters about art, exhibitions, curators and critics, this book describes the shift from modern art to contemporary art through the successive attempts to define a place in the world for Australian art. But by 1988, Australian art looked less and less like a viable tradition inside which to interpret ‘our’ art. Instead, vast gaps appeared, since mostly male and often older White writers had limited their horizons to White Australia alone. National stories by White men, like borders, had less and less explanatory value. Underneath this, a perplexing subject remained: the absence of Aboriginal art in understanding what Australian art was during the period that established the idea of a distinctive Australian modern and then contemporary art. This book reflects on why the embrace of Aboriginal art was so late in art museums and histories of Australian art, arguing that this was because it was not part of a national story dominated by colonial, then neo-colonial dependency. It is important reading for all scholars of both global and Australian art, and for curators and artists.

Download or read book Postcolonlsm written by Diana Brydon and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-01-06 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 2004. This is Volume V of Postcolonialism part of a series of critical concepts in literary and cultural studies. This edition includes part eleven on Globalization, Transculturation and Neo-Colonialism; and part twelve on Postcolonial Theory and The Disciplines.

Download or read book Sidney Nolan written by Nancy Underhill and published by NewSouth. This book was released on 2015-06-01 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Digging through the myths around Australia’s most famous artist, many of which he created himself as a masterful self-promoter, this book is the biography that Sidney Nolan deserves. In an authoritative, insightful and often irreverent biography that fully charts Nolan’s life and work, Nancy Underhill peels back the layers from a complicated, expedient and manipulative artistic genius. She carries the story from Nolan’s birth in 1917 to his death in 1992, tracing his early life, his experience as a commercial artist, his involvement in theAngry Penguins magazine, his painting and set design, his difficult marriages and friendships with some of the twentieth century’s most famous figures: Patrick White, Albert Tucker, Benjamin Britten, Robert Lowell, Stephen Spender and Kenneth Clark.

Download or read book John Perceval written by Traudi Allen and published by Melbourne University Publish. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Attractively illustrated book which explores the life and career of this renowned Australian artist from the 1920s to the present. Contains a catalogue raisonn}, list of principal exhibitions, summary of biographical details and an extensive bibliography are included. The hardback is a limited edition.

Download or read book The Necessity of Australian Art written by Ian Burn and published by Power Publications Incorporated (FL). This book was released on 1988 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Permanent Revolution written by Richard Haese and published by The Miegunyah Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1961 the 22-year-old Mike Brown joined the New Zealand artist, Ross Crothall, in an old terrace house in inner Sydney's Annandale. Over the following two years the artists filled the house with a remarkable body of work. Launched with an equally extraordinary exhibition, the movement they called Imitation Realism introduced collage, assemblage and installation to Australian art for the first time. Laying the groundwork for a distinctive Australian postmodernism, Imitation Realism was also the first Australian art movement to respond in a profound way to Aboriginal art, and to the tribal art of New Guinea and the Pacific region. By the mid-1960s Brown was already the most controversial figure in Australian art. In 1963 a key work was thrown out of a major travelling exhibition for being overtly sexual; a year later he publicly attacked Sydney artists and critics for having failed the test of integrity. Finally, in 1966-67, Brown became the only Australian artist to have been successfully prosecuted for obscenity. Brown spent the last 28 years of his life in Melbourne, where his reputation for radicalism and nonconformity was cemented with his multiplicity of styles, exploration of themes of sexuality, and transgressive commitment to the ideal of street art and graffiti. Against a background of the counter-culture and the social and political upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, Brown's art and remarkable life of personal and creative struggle is without parallel in Australian art.

Download or read book Modernism s History written by Bernard Smith and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of twentieth-century visual arts can no longer be written as a succession of avant-garde movements, contends eminent art historian Bernard Smith in this stimulating book. He argues that a return to the concept of period style is inevitable and that modernism--the dominant "style" of art that emerged at the end of the nineteenth century and continued through the 1960s--deserves recognition as a period style. Smith renames this period Formalesque since it is no longer modern and since it emphasizes the formal values of art more than any previous period does. In a wide-ranging reformulation of art history in the twentieth century, the author defines the nature and development of Formalesque--an avant-garde style that arose between 1890 and the First World War, was institutionalized between the world wars, and flourished anew between 1945 and 1960. Identifying the Formalesque period, says Smith, makes it possible also to identify dialectical adversaries, such true oppositional avant-garde styles of the twentieth century as Dada, Surrealism, and the Neue Sachlichkeit. These constitute the formative elements of the modernism--now called postmodernism--that became increasingly dominant after 1960. The author locates twentieth-century artistic movements and developments in a broad cultural context and concludes with a thought-provoking examination of the relation between the Formalesque and European and American cultural imperialism.