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'Bernard Smith (1916–2011) was unquestionably one of Australia’s greatest humanist scholars and its finest art historian. His European Vision and the South Pacific, 1768–1850 (1960) was a foundational text of post-colonialism, and in Australian Painting (1962) he set out the definitive history of Australian art to that time. Antipodean Perspective: The Selected Writings of Bernard Smith presents twenty-six art historians, curators, artists and critics, from Australia and overseas, who have chosen a text from Smith’s work and sought to explain its personal and broad significance. Their selections reveal Smith’s extraordinary range as a scholar, his profound grasp of this nation’s past, and the way his ideas have maintained their relevance as we face our future.' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Darryn Ansted Review of Rex Butler and Sheridan Palmer (eds), Antipodean Perspective : Selected Writings of Bernard Smith
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Journal of Biography and History , April no. 3 2020; (p. 209-212)
— Review of Antipodean Perspective : Selected Writings of Bernard Smith 2018 anthology criticism 'A new book on the seminal Australian art historian Bernard Smith recognises that he remains one of the most interesting figures in Australian art history. Antipodean Perspective, edited by Rex Butler and Sheridan Palmer, is a guided tour of Bernard Smith’s persistent, fine-grained, analytical and expert accounts of art and its cultures. Born in 1916, Smith ascended from a bleak beginning to the pinnacle of art history scholarship in Australia. In 1955 he became a lecturer at the University of Melbourne and in 1967 he became director of the Power Institute of Fine Arts in Sydney. This text traverses Smith’s major contributions to the field during his long academic life. In it, 28 leading scholars and artists supplement carefully chosen excerpts from Smith’s books, papers, speeches, autobiography and manifesto with passages that explain how his writing influenced the course of their own thoughts and speculate on what his passages on art represent today.' -
Painting into the Eye of the Light : Evoking Bernard Smith
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 405 2018; (p. 53-54)'The editors begin their introduction to Antipodean Perspective with some ground clearing: ‘The putting together of a series of responses to an important scholar’s work is a classic academic exercise. It is undoubtedly a worthy, but also necessarily a selective undertaking. In German it is called a Festschrift …’ The Festschrift continues to be, in academic circles especially, a way of honouring the work, contribution, influence, and originality of this or that scholar or, sometimes, of a university librarian or outstanding teacher.' (Introduction)
-
Darryn Ansted Review of Rex Butler and Sheridan Palmer (eds), Antipodean Perspective : Selected Writings of Bernard Smith
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Journal of Biography and History , April no. 3 2020; (p. 209-212)
— Review of Antipodean Perspective : Selected Writings of Bernard Smith 2018 anthology criticism 'A new book on the seminal Australian art historian Bernard Smith recognises that he remains one of the most interesting figures in Australian art history. Antipodean Perspective, edited by Rex Butler and Sheridan Palmer, is a guided tour of Bernard Smith’s persistent, fine-grained, analytical and expert accounts of art and its cultures. Born in 1916, Smith ascended from a bleak beginning to the pinnacle of art history scholarship in Australia. In 1955 he became a lecturer at the University of Melbourne and in 1967 he became director of the Power Institute of Fine Arts in Sydney. This text traverses Smith’s major contributions to the field during his long academic life. In it, 28 leading scholars and artists supplement carefully chosen excerpts from Smith’s books, papers, speeches, autobiography and manifesto with passages that explain how his writing influenced the course of their own thoughts and speculate on what his passages on art represent today.' -
Painting into the Eye of the Light : Evoking Bernard Smith
2018
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 405 2018; (p. 53-54)'The editors begin their introduction to Antipodean Perspective with some ground clearing: ‘The putting together of a series of responses to an important scholar’s work is a classic academic exercise. It is undoubtedly a worthy, but also necessarily a selective undertaking. In German it is called a Festschrift …’ The Festschrift continues to be, in academic circles especially, a way of honouring the work, contribution, influence, and originality of this or that scholar or, sometimes, of a university librarian or outstanding teacher.' (Introduction)
