TWO NEW BOOKS DOCUMENT THE EXTRAORDINARY WORK OF ART HISTORIAN BERNARD SMITH

Two books about the towering presence of Bernard Smith have just been released by Power Publications , coinciding with the centenary of his birth . They seek to answer the question Who Was Bernard Smith?!

Often regarded as the father of Australian art history, Smith began life as a ward of the state. Smith had a major influence on Australian cultural life, from the publication of Place, Taste and Tradition in 1945 until his death in September 2011.

Each of his various publications nurtured an Antipodean view, whether in an art historical or anthropological way, and opened up new fields in Australian scholarship.

Smith had many ‘portfolios’ over his long and extremely busy life:- He worked as an education officer and touring exhibitions manager at the then National Art Gallery of New South Wales, a lecturer in fine arts at the University of Melbourne, a scholar at the Warburg Institute , compiler of The Antipodean Manifesto, founding professor of the Power Institute for Art and Visual Culture at the University of Sydney, President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, a benefactor, collector, curator, author, autobiographer, and political activist.

Smith didn’t create the discipline in Australia but he is remembered as Australia’s first true art historian, with a breadth of knowledge and experience few could parallel. His magnum opus, European Vision and the South Pacific (1960) is still seen as a major turning point in the study of colonial exploration in the Pacific, its importance acknowledged by no less an authority than Edward Said, who can claim to have established our current postcolonial perspectives.

His history of Australian painting ( Place Taste and Tradition , first produced 1945 revised 1979 ) is still regarded as a classic and then there is his many years of work on the voyages of Captain Cook. As a researcher at the Warburg Institute, he helped lead the way for expatriate Australian public intellectuals in London. As a scholar of Cook’s voyages and the Pacific, he argued forcefully that people from Europe and the Pacific had exchanged much more than the Bible and syphilis.

Smith also advocated for the preservation of the architectural heritage of Sydney, especially Glebe where he lived , and in so doing came up with the term ‘Federation style’. He had his portrait painted by Albert Tucker ( 1985) and ( defiantly nude!) by Carmel O’Çonnor for the Archibald Prize in 2002 . Smith’s Place Taste and Tradition can perhaps be regarded as the first fully articulated work of Marxist art criticism, and it’s also where the term “postmodernism” is first heard. The book inspired a generation of art historians, and also led to Robert Hughes’ The Art of Australia, which relied heavily on Smith’s work.  Smith would later update the book with his Australian Painting.

Hegel’s Owl: The Life of Bernard Smith by Sheridan Palmer is a densely researched biography with an excellent opening table of contents, a meticulously compiled index and bibliography and is divided into nine chapters.

Palmer is an independent scholar and writer. Her previous publications include Dean Bowen: Argy-Bargy and Centre of the Periphery: Three European Art Historians in Melbourne. Palmer mostly examines Smith’s life chronologically. Suggested by Smith himself Hegel’s Owl is an extraordinary, insightful biography. It is slightly smaller than The Legacies and includes illustrations as well in both black and white and in colour.

Both books are at times written in somewhat high, imposing and dry academic style as is to be expected, thouggh other parts are breathlessly vivid and exciting.

Palmer writes and gives us a real feeling and understanding of Smith as a well rounded character – his harsh up-bringing and childhood , his two marriages and also all his academic work and career and the assorted challenges he faced throughout his long life. In the early chapters Palmer remarks on Smith’s feelings of exclusion as an adopted foster child and how this influenced his understandings of Marxism and colonialism, modernism and Romanticism. Palmer also strives to do justice to Smith’s major intellectual achievements. We learn about Smith’s friendship with various Australian artists ( eg Arthur Boyd , Noel Counihan ,Sidney Nolan , Brett Whiteley), his patronage and collection of Australian art ( eg Grace Cossingtgon-Smith ) and the establishment of the Kate Challis RAKA Award for Indigenous Creative Arts.

The Legacies of Bernard Smith can be regarded as a companion book – it is a wide- ranging collection of articles examining Smith’s life and influence in assorted fields. The Legacies of Bernard Smith bristles with footnotes and citations. A thick, medium sized book it has a most useful table of contents at the front and an excellent index at the back. It also has a brief biography of all the contributors and the editors.

There are some fascinating illustrations both in colour and black and white. It is divided into four parts with several essays in each section and examines Smith’s legacies in Australian art history, photography, musicology, Pacific art studies, Australian studies and Indigenous art. It features twenty two essays across a range of disciplines,( (including a chapter by his granddaughter) , and includes never before published material drawn from the Art Gallery of NSW’s archives as well as Smith’s private records. It was inspired by a collaborative international conference convened in 2012 between the Universities of Melbourne and Sydney, and the AGNSW after his death. Smith is placed in context in the art world and his pioneering work re considered .

Summing  up, two wonderful new works that take a fascinating look at a major figure in Australian and international art history.

Hegel's Owl the Lif of Bernard Smith
Hegel’s Owl the Lif of Bernard Smith

HEGELS’ OWL- THE LIFE OF BERNARD SMITH by Sheridan Palmer
• $60.00S PAPERBACK (9780994306425) hardcover not available
• PUBLISHED: August 2016
• SUBJECT LISTING: Art History / Australian and Indigenous Art
• BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION: 424 pp., 60 illus., 6 x 9 in.
• TERRITORIAL RIGHTS: North America Only
• DISTRIBUTED FOR: Power Publications

The Legacies of Bernard Smih book cover
The Legacies of Bernard Smih book cover

THE LEGACIES OF BERNARD SMITH by Jaynie Anderson (Editor), Dr. Christopher R. Marshall (Editor), Andrew Yip (Editor)

Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 372
Published: 1st August 2016
Publisher: Power Publications
Country of Publication: AU
Dimensions (cm): 23.4 x 18.3