Publication Date: Jul 2018
RRP: $29.95
ISBN: 9781925495669
Format: Paperback
Size: 153mm x 234 mm
Pages: 432
Category: Art History, Australian History

Antipodean Perspective

Selected Writings of Bernard Smith

Edited by Rex Butler and Sheridan Palmer

Also available as an ebook from your favourite retailer.


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.

List of Contributors

Heather Barker
Peter Beilharz
Leonard Bell
Tim Bonyhady
Alisa Bunbury
Rex Butler
Peter Craven
Catherine De Lorenzo
Ian Donaldson
Jane Eckett
John Frow
Charles Green
Emma Hicks
Rüdiger Joppien
Darren Jorgensen
Greg Lehman
Janet McKenzie
Ian McLean
Ronald Millar
Sheridan Palmer
Juliette Peers
Simon Pierse
Geoffrey Quilley
Terry Smith
Catherine Speck
Anthony White
Richard Woodfield
Maria Zagala


Rex Butler

Rex Butler is Professor of Art History and Theory at Monash University, Australia. He writes extensively on Australian contemporary art and critical theory and is the author or editor of 11 books.
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Sheridan Palmer

Sheridan Palmer is an art historian, curator and author of the biography Hegel’s Owl: The Life of Bernard Smith.
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