Dieses Buch ist eine Einführung in die Kunst Australiens seit Ankunft der ersten Siedler mit der First Fleet im Jahr 1788. Die Beiträge stammen von renommierten Kunsthistorikern und jungen Wissenschaftlern, die ihr jeweiliges Fachgebiet fesselnd, verständlich und unvoreingenommen darstellen. Die überwiegende Zahl der Kapitel beschäftigt sich mit prägenden Epochen, die mehr oder weniger chronologisch beschrieben werden. Auf bestimmte Regionen und besondere Kunstformen, die andernfalls im weiter gefassten historischen Kontext unberücksichtigt bleiben würden, wird in eigenen Kapiteln eingegangen.

Christopher Allen is Senior Master in Academic Extension at Sydney Grammar School, and National Art Critic for The Australian. He is a Trustee of the State Library of New South Wales and is the author of several books on the history of Australian art and French art in the 17th century, as well as a major postdoctoral work on early modern art theory. Previously, Allen was lecturer in Art History and Theory at the National Art School in Sydney and was an art critic for the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Financial Review.

I Introduction and Historiography 1
1 Introduction 3
Christopher Allen
2 Historiography of Australian Art 16
Molly Duggins
3 Public Art Museums in Australia: A Brief History 51
Gerard Vaughan
II Dwelling in Australia 79
4 Early Sydney: A Land of Wonder and Delight 81
Richard Neville
5 Art in Van Diemen's Land 108
David Hansen
6 Eugene von Guérard and Colonial Art in Melbourne, 1850-1880 141
Ruth Pullin
7 The Promised Land: Painting in Nineteenth-Century South Australia 167
Jane Hylton
8 Crocodiles, Bottle-Trees and Pineapple Fields: Art in Colonial Queensland 187
Glenn R. Cooke
9 Subject and Object: Locating the Portrait in Nineteenth-Century Australia 210
Mark De Vitis
10 The Heidelberg School 230
Georgina Cole
III Dwelling in the World 255
11 Exodus 257
Barry Pearce
12 The Edwardian Period (1901-1918) 275
Anna Gray
13 Color, Commerce and the Culture of Change: Sydney Modernism, 1915-1941 299
Denise Mimmocchi
14 Angry Penguins 324
Jacqui Strecker
15 Australian High Modernism 343
Sasha Grishin
16 Postwar Art: The International Context 361
Mary Eagle
17 Starting the Sixties Art Boom 383
Christopher Heathcote
18 Avant-Gardism and the Triumph of the Postmodern: 1960-1980 402
Richard Haese
IV Artforms and Themes 429
19 Australian Sculpture, Nineteenth and Twentieth Century 431
Michael Hill
20 Between the Real and The Imagined Photography in Australia 458
Isobel Crombie
21 Aboriginal Art's Expanding Field: A New Approach 483
Philip Jones
22 Conclusion: From Postmodern to Contemporary 509
Christopher Allen
Index 524