Unaustralian Art: Ten Essays on Transnational Art History

UnAustralian Art: Ten Essays on Transnational Art History proposes a radical rethinking of Australian art. Rex Butler and ADS Donaldson do not seek to identify a distinctive national sensibility; instead, they demonstrate that Australian art and artists have always been engaged in struggles and creative exchanges with the rest of the world. Examining Australian art as much from the outside in as the inside out, Butler and Donaldson's methodology opens Australian art history to an encyclopedic multitude of hitherto excluded stories--from Australian expatriates who lived and worked overseas to artists who came from elsewhere and continued to make art in Australia. Beginning with the impressionist John Russell at the turn of the century in France and ending with the great Anmatyerre artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye in the late twentieth century, the book presents new research detailing the artistic connections between Australia and New Zealand, France, Britain, Germany, Asia, North America, South America, and the Pacific. This book asks us to reconsider who an Australian artist is and has been. In a world of increasing global connectedness, this new history of UnAustralian art is a history of the present, helping us understand the Australia of the twenty-first century.

Author: Rex Butler, A. D. S. Donaldson
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 10/03/2023
Pages: 275
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.06lbs
Size: 9.92h x 7.01w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780909952105

About the Author

Rex Butler is a professor of art history and theory at Monash University. He is the author or editor of eleven books, including Stanley Cavell and the Arts: Philosophy and Popular Culture. ADS Donaldson is an artist and art historian who lives in Sydney, New South Wales. His work is represented in collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and other state museums, university art galleries, and private collections.