What's the significance about 1950 anyway? A lot of factors that we take as part of a culture postdate 1950. Like any other culture, Aboriginal art and culture is evolving.

- and why do we have to provide names anyway?  Lascaux cave art was certainly art in every sense, and so is Bradshaw.

You probably haven't seen Bradshaw art up close and personal in the Kimberley. There is no question that it's art, just as modern Aboriginal Art is unquestionably art.  The work of some Aboriginal Artists, such as Queenie McKenzie is quite rightly regarded as fine art .

Works like this one grace the walls of many corporate offices around the world.

muso - that's a good piece of artwork.

surely, everyone would agree on that ?

imp - that's what makes art art.
its what the artist leaves to the viewers imagination

muso wrote on Nov 18^th, 2009 at 10:21am:


Aboriginal art lends itself to kitch, doesn't it? Coasters, tea towels, t-shirts, jumbo jets. The latter is also a good product differentiation ploy. Everything can be kitchified, of course, but there is an awful lot of Aboriginal kitch in souvenir shops.  

Aboriginal art fulfils no aboriginal need, only a burgeois one. You only see the burgeoisie, haunted by bad conscience, gawping at it (not you, Muso, as always). Real Aboriginese are elsewhere.

Soren wrote on Nov 19^th, 2009 at 8:50pm:

You mean like 'Mona Lisa' kitch? Or Dali's 'Soft watches' kitch... Or 'David'  kitch? Or Sistine Chapel kitch? Or Edward Hopper's 'Night Hawk' kitch, or Munch's 'Scream', or his 'Madonna', or Van Gogh's self portraits... Didn't Andy Warhol make that point?

Soren wrote on Nov 19^th, 2009 at 8:50pm:

Just like white people, the aboriginal people have a need to communicate and be understood by other peoples... To communicate their collective cultural memory and to be validated as members of the same species as other races...

Actually, Aboriginal art is very popular in continental Europe where there is no sense of guilt or bad conscience. I would bet that it's only in Australia where there's still a sense of revulsion over Aboriginal art... A persisting contempt for aboriginal Australians and chagrin at any evidence indicating that maybe they're more than worthless.

Soren wrote on Nov 20^th, 2009 at 6:54am:

All art is primarily about communication. To impress and arrest the mind to make a point, as you have conceded.

Soren wrote on Nov 20^th, 2009 at 6:54am:

And they didn't wear silly wigs, either

Soren wrote on Nov 20^th, 2009 at 6:54am:

Art abstracts from life. If all aboriginal arts were doing was drawing a map of waterholes, that's what they'd produce... And they do that as well, produce maps for each other... On rocks etc to indicate the proximity of water. However, that is not all they are capable of and not all they are doing with the art they produce.

All art requires a human artist. That is art's sine qua non... Have you ever seen art produced by cattle?

Soren wrote on Nov 20^th, 2009 at 6:54am:

Yes, all art can be kitchified... But that is an act after the fact, not a factor necessarily inherent in the original work nor the motivation of the artist (Warhol excepted). Hopper did not paint 'Night Hawks' with the expectation it would be redone with James Dean, Elvis Presley and Marylin Monroe as the subjects in the diner. He was presenting the ambient emptiness, the loneliness, of city life... The characters he painted in the diner were 'Joe Anybodys' for a reason. Painting famous people destroys the anonymity he constructed to emphasise his point.

But all that does not make his original painting not art.

aikmann4 wrote on Nov 20^th, 2009 at 7:36pm:


Thank you for registering your complete lack of interest in the subject. Your apathy has been carefully noted and communicated to the relevant authorities.
Thanks you again for taking the time to show no interest.



[edited for typos]