Rethinking Australia's Art History

This book aims to redefine Australia's earliest art history by chronicling for the first time the birth of the category "e;Aboriginal art,"e; tracing the term's use through published literature in the late eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Susan Lowish reveals how the idea of "e;Aboriginal art"e; developed in the European imagination, manifested in early literature, and became a distinct classification with its own criteria and form. Part of the larger story of Aboriginal/European engagement, this book provides a new vision for an Australian art history reconciled with its colonial origins and in recognition of what came before the contemporary phenomena of Aboriginal art.