Jaynie Anderson - The Legacies of Bernard Smith

THE LEGACIES OF

BERNARD SMITH

//

ESSAYS ON

AUSTRALIAN ART, HISTORY

AND CULTURAL POLITICS

THE LEGACIES OF

BERNARD SMITH

//

ESSAYS ON

AUSTRALIAN ART, HISTORY

AND CULTURAL POLITICS

Edited by Jaynie Anderson,

Christopher R. Marshall and Andrew Yip

The Legacies of Bernard Smith: Essays on Australian Art, History and Cultural Politics

Edited by

Jaynie Anderson, Christopher R. Marshall, Andrew Yip

First published in Australia in 2016 by Power Publications, in association with the Art Gallery of New South Wales

Power Publications

Power Institute Foundation for Art and Visual Culture

University of Sydney

NSW 2006 Australia

www.powerpublications.com.au

Power Institute Foundation for Art and Visual Culture and the individual authors, 2016

This work is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this work may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Managing editors Marni Williams and Julie Donaldson

Design Analiese Cairis

Production Cara Hickman

Copyeditor Belinda Nemec

Proofreader Amber Cameron

Title: The legacies of Bernard Smith:

essays on Australian art, history and cultural politics

editors: Jaynie Anderson, Christopher R. Marshall, Andrew Yip

ISBN: 9780994306432 (paperback)

Subjects: Smith, Bernard, 19162011Criticism and interpretation.

Art appreciationAustralia.

Art and societyAustralia.

Art--Political aspectsAustralia.

Art criticsAustralia.

Art historiansAustralia.

FestschriftenAustralia.

Other Creators/Contributors:

Anderson, Jaynie, editor.

Marshall, Christopher R., editor.

Yip, Andrew, editor.

Dewey Number: 709.2

Cover image:

Christopher Pease, Target, 2005

Courtesy the artist and the Nelson Family Collection

Back cover:

Bernard Smith in his study, Fitzroy, 1987 (detail)

Photograph by Alex Bolton.

Bernard Smith Private Collection

opposite:

Francis Reiss, Portrait of Bernard Smith,

15 December 1993

ILLUSTRATIONS

: Port Jackson Painter,

A partial view of Sydney Cove taken from the sea side before the Surgeon Generals house, 179095 (detail)

Pencil, ink and wash on paper, 32 45.4 cm.

Watling Collection, National History Museum, London

: Rupert Bunny,

Self-portrait, c. 1920 (detail)

Oil on canvas, 65.1 50.4 cm.

National Gallery of Victoria,

Melbourne. Felton Bequest, 1927

: Grace Cossington Smith,

The sock knitter, 1915 (detail)

Oil on canvas, 61.8 51.2 cm.

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

: Professor Bernard Smith (with megaphone) leading the more than 200-strong ratepayers and citizens protest march against Leichhardt Council along Glebe Point Road, The Glebe, 10 March 1971 (detail)

Page 191:

Photograph by Alec Bolton.

Courtesy National Library of Australia, Canberra.

. Bernard Smith, The advance of Lot and his brethren, 1940

Oil on canvas, 71 86 cm.

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

. Christopher Pease, Target, 2005

Oil on canvas, 100 180 cm.

Courtesy of the Nelson Family Collection

. Lin Onus, They took the children away, 1992

Fibreglass and pigment, 4 figures, dimensions variable.

Private collection

. Bernard Smith with his daughter Elizabeth Heathcote, and in the background Gail Feigenbaum (Getty Research Centre, Los Angeles) and Rdiger Joppien (Hamburg), at the Comit International dHistoire de lArt congress Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration and Convergence, Government House, Melbourne, January 2008

Courtesy of the Australian Institute of Art History, University of Melbourne

. Bernard Smith in his study in the Abbey Art Centre, 1950

Courtesy of Bienchen Ohly

. E.H. Gombrich in London in the 1950s

Courtesy of the Literary Estate of E. H. Gombrich

. William Hodges, Landing at Mallicollo [Malakula], one of the New Hebrides, c. 1776

Oil on panel, 24.1 47 cm.

National Maritime Museum, London

. George Baxter, The massacre of the lamented missionary the Rev. J. Williams and Mr Harris, 1841

Baxter print, 214 320 mm.

National Library of Australia, Canberra

. Labour recruit from Malaita, Solomon Islands, wearing ceremonial dress with bead belt featuring the Union Jack, photographed in Fiji, c. 1880s

Albumen print, 198 146 mm. British Museum, London

. Sculpture known as the Blue man, Malo, Vanuatu, collected during the voyage of the Korrigane in 1935

Wood with blue, white and green pigment, 300 cm.

Muse du Quai Branly, Paris

. Tene Waitere, Pouhaki, c. 1922,

Carved tree trunk, 800 cm.

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge

. Rdiger Joppien and Bernard Smith in Hamburg, after the publication of the third volume of The Art of Captain Cooks Voyages, 1988

Courtesy of Rdiger Joppien

. Leveill (after Bisson Brothers), Kaour & Kaour-Iga natives of Torres Strait, 1846

Lithograph after daguerreotype, 28.4 35.8 cm.

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Tony Gilbert Bequest Fund 2013

. Henry Barnes, Echidna skeleton and Natural history specimens sent from the British Museum to the Australian Museum, c. 1864 Albumen silver photographs enclosed in a letter from Gerard Krefft to Richard Owen,

21 October 1864, Richard Owen Correspondence, vol. 27, ff.35.

Natural History Museum, London

. John McGregor, James Hector, c. 1863

Carte-de-visite, 9 5.7 cm (print).

Alexander Turnbull Library,

Wellington, The Webster Collection

. Rupert Bunny, Self-portrait, c. 1920

Oil on canvas, 65.1 50.4 cm.

National Gallery of Victoria,

Melbourne. Felton Bequest, 1927

. Peter Purves Smith, Drought, 1939/40

Gouache on paper, 48.8 40.2 cm.

National Gallery of Australia,

Canberra. Gift of anonymous donor, 1986

. Ola Cohn, Head of a virgin, 1926

Bronze, 44.6 15.8 23.1 cm.

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Courtesy of the Centre for Adult Education & Box Hill Institute

. Ida Kar, Bryan Charles Francis Robertson, 1958

Vintage bromide print, 230 198 mm.

National Portrait Gallery, London

. The British art critic Peter Fuller (19471990), photographed in 1988 by Jane Bown

Courtesy of Jane Bown/The Observer

. Sidney Nolan, Carcass, 1953

Enamel on board, 90.8 121.3 cm. Nolan Collection, managed by Canberra Museum and Gallery on behalf of the Australian Government

. Eric Wilson, Hospital theme the sterilizer, 1942

Oil on hardboard, 81.3 47 cm.

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

. Grace Cossington Smith, The sock knitter, 1915

Oil on canvas, 61.8 51.2 cm.

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney