Antipodean Autonomy and Contingency

Three recent exhibitions touched on questions concerning the tension between autonomy and contingency that are central to discussion about modernism. While focusing on the development of modern style and its reception in Australia, all three raise questions about modernism and modernity in general. They also address work long overdue for consideration, now fully documented for those who missed their display.

As proud members of the Empire, Australia and New Zealand in the early twentieth century generally looked to Britain culturally. The exhibition Modern Britain offers a picture of this relationship and skirts over cultural transmission. The modern period in Britain is represented by work from the first six decades of the twentieth century, drawn principally from twenty Australasian public collections. This presentation gave occasion to reexamine and bring to light material mostly long held in storage (and therefore largely unseen), which in itself speaks eloquently of the historic complexity of this bi-cultural relationship.¹

Two hundred and fifty works by ninety-three artists comprise this narrative of “tremendous innovation and change.”² Twenty-eight discrete focal sections trace the progress of “evolving aesthetic sensibilities” (MB, 12). Each is introduced by short thematic essays from fifty-six British, Australian, and New Zealand contributors. The exhibition aims “to create a particular exhibition experience for modern Britain” (MB, 13).

Far from a chronological survey of British art, work is presented in a manner that evokes Baudelaire’s momentary view of modern experience. Assembled according to the availability of work owned by Australasian collections, this experience of the art of modern Britain appears as a series of fleeting instants, while also demonstrating that cultural ties exceeded the fragmentary and transitory.

A classic conception of modernity—as a unified set of historical tendencies—underpins the presentation. The picture of modernity that is presented implies dramatic transformation, of self-reflection and expectations of the future. Modernism of the early twentieth century is also portrayed as a focus that essentially isolated and experimented with formal issues. Fundamentally, modernism is the movement that explored the limits of the classical aesthetic forms of realist representation and narrative.

In Baudelaire’s view of an art that portrays modern life, absolute and eternal beauty did not exist. Ironically the modern movement’s obsession with form projected “modern” canons of presentable “beauty,” or ideal form. The ideal form of modern style took many guises—be it cubist, fauvist, or other stylistic interests which modern artists professed in chasing the new—and the modishness that accompanied each change led to further counterreactions. Worldwide, artists sought purity in art. Likewise members of Australia’s artistic establishment rejected modern art. They saw the role of art in Australia as being to bolster authentic Australian vision. Following Federation in 1901, it was thought important that Australian nativist expression be articulated. It was thought this could best be expressed in naturalistic pastoral views celebrating the Australian landscape (which, compared to the European landscape, was still largely unsullied by industrialism). Thus art in Australia could be kept pure, distinct, and autonomous.

Following the First World War, the establishment sought to insulate Australian art from being corrupted by what was viewed as European collapse. Rapidly changing modern styles, without clear standards to judge them, were distrusted as merely promotional products of opportunistic European marketers (seen as principally Jewish art dealers and allied art critics and journalists). Practitioners of modern “international style” were hence regarded as poseurs. When Clarice Zander (1893–1958) toured her innovative exhibitions of contemporary art from Britain in 1933, and Sir Keith Murdoch (1885–1952) sponsored the tour of the 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art in 1939, their important exhibitions outraged establishment audiences. ³ These exhibitions...