Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 2017 Emily Kame Kngwarreye : The Impossible Modernist
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Art critic Robert Hughes made the assessment that Aboriginal art was the last great art movement of the twentieth century.1 It started at the Aboriginal community called Papunya, in which Aboriginal men had been painting on canvas for the outside market with great success since the 1980s. The Papunya art style as it became known, sometimes compared to forms of Western modernism - from abstract expressionism to minimalism and even conceptual art - presented a comparison that was rarely taken literally, although some critics of the 1987 Dreamings exhibition in New York did wonder if the Aboriginal artists had been appropriating New York art. But when it came to the late paintings of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, critics really did start to question the relationship between modernism and Western Desert painting, ascribing to her the genius and expressive freedom associated with the masters of Western modernism.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Artlink vol. 37 no. 2 1 June 2017 11313695 2017 periodical issue

    'Welcome to the “trans” issue as it is cryptically called (meaning across and beyond in Latin). The aim of this issue is transnational as much as transcultural: to explore relations between Indigenous contemporary artists across the world. So focused are we on the Australian context for Indigenous art that when it comes to aligning ourselves with international art, in both historic and contemporary contexts, we too often deprive ourselves of that defining peer‑to‑peer agency that permits new perspectives. When we step outside of this internal viewpoint to project ourselves internationally, as in the occasion of the representation of two high‑profile Indigenous artists in the national pavilions of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand for the 57th Venice Biennale, this rite of passage clearly becomes apparent. It is one well‑served by Tracey Moffatt and Lisa Reihana, whose elegant visual narratives demonstrate a form of this trans‑aesthetic, appropriate to taking on Europe and the world.' (Editorial introduction)

    2017
    pg. 42-49
Last amended 16 Jun 2017 08:35:46
42-49 Emily Kame Kngwarreye : The Impossible Modernistsmall AustLit logo Artlink
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