White Aborigines: Identity Politics in Australian Art

by Ian McLean

Overview

This highly original book shows that Australian art, and the writing of its history, has since settlement been in a dialog (although often submerged) with Aboriginal art and culture; and that this dialog is inextricably interwoven with the struggle to find an identity in the antipodes. McLean argues that the colonizing culture invested far more in indigenous aspects of the country and its inhabitants than it has been willing to admit. He considers artists and their work within their cultural context, and in light of contemporary theory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521120678
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/01/2009
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Ocean and the Antipodes; 2. Artful killings; 3. The art of settlement; 4. The bad conscience of impressionism; 5. Aboriginalism and Australian nationalism; 6. The Aboriginal renaissance; 7. Aboriginality and contemporary Australian painting; 8. Painting for a new republic; Postscript: The wandering islands; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Ian McLean's White Aborigines is a lucid and intelligent investigation of the ways in which relationships between Aborigines and non-Aborigines have been represented in Australian art from 1788 to the present. At the same time as McLean explores the historical dialogue between Aboriginal art and white Australian art he also addresses difficult questions about cultural affiliation and reconciliaton in present-day Australia." Carrie Dawson, Antipodes

From the Publisher