The arts of Africa, Oceania and Native America famously inspired twentieth-century modernist artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Ernst. The politics of such stimulus, however, have long been highly contentious: was this a cross-cultural discovery to be celebrated, or just one more example of Western colonial appropriation?
Highly acclaimed on first publication, and now revised and updated, this revelatory book explores cross-cultural art through the lens of settler societies such as Australia and New Zealand, where Europeans made new nations, displacing but never eclipsing Native peoples. In this dynamic of dispossession and resistance, settler artists and designers have drawn upon Indigenous motifs and styles in their search for distinctive identities, while powerful Indigenous art traditions have asserted the presence of First Nations peoples and their claims to place, history and sovereignty. Cultural exchange is a two-way process, and an unpredictable one: contemporary Indigenous art draws on global contemporary practice, but moves beyond a bland affirmation of hybrid identities to uphold the enduring values and attachment to place of Indigenous peoples.
For anyone with an interest in the current debates about decolonization, Indigenous culture and the history of art, this is essential reading.
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