A. D. S. Donaldson

A Chain of Ponds: On German and Australian Artistic Interactions

This essay traces the long artistic history that has existed between Germany and Australia, at least since the middle of the last century. We begin with the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf-educated Eugene von Guerard, who was the first head of an Australian art school and the first director of an Australian art gallery, and end with the Sydney artists Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley’s Freiland (1992–3), a work about the refugee Turkish population in Berlin after the fall of the Wall. What we seek to show here is that a globalised world art has always existed, and that any Australian provincialism was only the correlative of an art history conceived in terms of nation. There never really was—or was only—an Australian art. Indeed, the very idea of an Australian art was only ever possible because of Australia’s relationship to cultures like Germany’s.

Against provincialism: Australian-American connections 1900–2000

Abstract This article offers an analysis and critique of Terry Smiths well-known essay “The Provincialism Problem”. Against Smiths argument for the “subservience” of Australian art vis-a-vis American, we sketch a long history of Australian-American artistic interaction throughout the twentieth century, and indeed the involvement of many highly-placed Australian artists in American art. We suggest that from a “contemporary” perspective not only does a whole new history of Australian art come into view but we can see that the “provincialism problem” never existed.

Stay, go, or come: A history of Australian art, 1920-40

The complementary and parallel account of Australian art, a history of what has been excluded during the period 1920 to 1940 is discussed. The period of 1920 to 1940 witnessed s new alliance of artists of various aesthetic and ideological hues who were able to focus their efforts and cast them against a common enemy.