Jim Berryman

The rhetoric of the new: The Field and the foundations of an institutional avant-garde in Australia

The Field, in 1968, was the first exhibition held at the new National Gallery of Victoria. The exhibition made a bold modernist statement: seventy-four abstract paintings and sculptures by forty young Australian contemporary artists. The Field was a controversial undertaking because it was clearly derived from contemporary New York avant-garde styles. This paper considers The Fields impact and legacy based on the numerous exhibitions it has subsequently inspired. It focuses on The Fields efforts to align Australian art with the international modernist tradition and argues that the exhibition established a new role and identity for the art institution in Australia. The modernist values introduced by The Field had a considerable impact on the Australian art world, far greater than the avant-garde style for which the exhibition is known.

Making personal libraries accessible: the example of the Robert Menzies Collection

This paper describes an experimental project working with the Robert Menzies Collection at the University of Melbourne Library. This heritage collection comprises the books previously owned by Menzies, the former Prime Minister of Australia. Our paper describes the process of recording the contents of the collection and assessing the collection for significant signs of provenance. The article highlights a novel approach to making the contents of a personal library accessible to researchers by using non-traditional library technology. Instead of a straightforward catalogue or index, this project uses a relational database to map and connect the books in Menziess personal library to his life and times. We consider the implications of this approach from library and archival perspectives and consider the challenges and opportunities presented by personal libraries.

Art as document: on conceptual art and documentation

The purpose of this paper is to bring the work of Seth Siegelaub (1941–2013) to the attention of document studies. Siegelaub was a pioneer of the conceptual art movement in New York in the 1960s, active as an Art Dealer, Curator and Publisher. He is remembered by art history for his exhibition catalogues, which provided a material base for intangible works of art.,This paper uses a comparative approach to examine the documents of conceptual art, especially the exhibition catalogues produced by Siegelaub between 1968 and 1972. Drawing on literature from document theory and art history and criticism, it examines several of Siegelaub’s key exhibition catalogues and books.,Siegelaub’s theories of information have much in common with the documentalist tradition. Siegelaub’s work is important, not just for its potential to contribute to the literature of document theory. It also provides a point of dialogue between art history and information studies.,To date, the common ground between art and documentation has been explored almost exclusively from the perspective of art history. This paper is among the first to examine conceptual art from the perspective of document theory. It demonstrates potential for cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Australian National Anthologies: A Study of Poems and Poets

ABSTRACT This article analyses the contents of fifteen Australian “national” poetry anthologies published between 1946 and 2011. The study has three basic aims: to identify the most anthologised poems (as determined by the greatest number of inclusions in all anthologies), to identify poets with the most poems anthologised, and to identify the poets most consistently represented during this period. Based on quantitative data derived from each anthology’s table of contents, this article provides an empirical and analytical account of Australian national poetry anthologies over a six-decade period. The results reveal a core group of consistently anthologised poems and poets. While each anthology is different, there is a degree of consensus among national anthologists regarding the inclusion of “standard anthology pieces”. This article also considers the role of national anthologies in supporting a hierarchy of established literary reputations and perpetuating a poetic tradition in Australian literature.

Gombrich’s critique of Hauser’s Social History of Art

ABSTRACT This article examines E.H. Gombrich’s critical appraisal of Arnold Hauser’s book, The Social History of Art. Hauser’s Social History of Art was published in 1951, a year after Gombrich’s bestseller, The Story of Art. Although written in Britain for an English-speaking public, both books had their origins in the intellectual history of Central Europe: Gombrich was an Austrian art historian and Hauser was Hungarian. Gombrich’s critique, published in The Art Bulletin in 1953, attacked Hauser’s dialectical materialism and his sociological interpretation of art history. Borrowing arguments from Karl Popper’s critique of historicism, Gombrich described Hauser’s work as collectivist and deterministic, tendencies at odds with his own conception of art history. However, in his readiness to label Hauser a proponent of historical materialism, Gombrich failed to recognize Hauser’s own criticism of deterministic theories of art, especially formalism. This article investigates Gombrich’s reasons for rejecting Hauser’s sociology of art. It argues Gombrich used Hauser as an ideological counterpoint to his own version of art history, avowedly liberal and individualist in outlook.

The theme of civilization in Manning Clark’s History of Australia

Abstract This article reinterprets Manning Clark’s A History of Australia as a critique of European civilization in Australia. Clark was preoccupied with the idea of civilization; it was the central theme of his six-volume History. Civilization in Australia was originally composed of three beliefs imported from Europe: Protestantism, Catholicism and the Enlightenment. Their conflict and interaction would shape Clark’s narrative account of Australian history, which he told as the coming of civilization to a barbarous land. However, Clark’s ‘Whig’ view of history was plagued by internal contradictions. Although Clark accepted the inevitability of progress, he was deeply sceptical of its benefits. Clark’s doubts about material progress were most fully realised in his critique of bourgeois liberalism, especially its civilizing mission to recast Australia as a provincial Britain.

Nationalism, Britishness and the ‘Souring’ of Australian National Art

ABSTRACT This article investigates the nationalist historiography of the Heidelberg School, an Australian art movement from the Federation period, known for its iconic representations of national life and landscape. Drawing on recent scholarship of Australian nationalism, it questions conventional accounts of the Heidelberg School in Australian art history, especially those based on Bernard Smith’s radical interpretation of this movement. For Bernard Smith, and the generations of Australian art historians he influenced, the nationalism of the 1890s was a progressive force for national culture. Yet, in the post-Federation decades, national art declined (or ‘soured’) into a reactionary form of insular nationalism. By focusing on the ‘souring’ narrative of Australian national art, this article critiques the nationalist interpretation of the Heidelberg School. It explores an apparent contradiction: the role of Britishness in the construction of a distinctly Australian national art.

Bernard Smith’s Formalesque and the end of the history of art

The concept of the Formalesque preoccupied Bernard Smith during the last decades of his life. First propounded in Modernism’s History (1998), the Formalesque is a proposed period style describing the art of the 20th century. Yet, despite his ambitions for the Formalesque as a new classification for modern art, the idea failed to appeal to academic art history. This paper does not attempt to salvage the Formalesque from art-historical obscurity. But it does argue Smith’s work on this topic is relevant by virtue of the contribution it makes to debates about modernism and art history. Although Smith’s thesis emphasizes the necessity of period styles and the perennial development of art history, paradoxically, the Formalesque also highlights the limitations of art history. If the Formalesque has a place in art historiography, it belongs to a speculative discourse describing the end of the history of art.