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Cultural Sociology

6(2) 251270

The Author(s) 2012Reprints and permission: sagepub.

co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/1749975512440224cus.sagepub.com

The Art/EthnographyBinary: Post-ColonialTensions within the Field ofAustralian Aboriginal Art

Laura FisherUniversity of New South Wales, Australia

AbstractAn Art/Ethnography binary informs a range of discursive engagements with Australian Aboriginal art.

Ethnography is usually associated with colonialism, primitivism and regarded as circumscribing the

art, while Art is posited as unequivocally progressive and good. This article will discuss the activities

of various Indigenous and non-Indigenous actors in the Aboriginal art world, and explore the way

the Art/Ethnography binarys reiteration by these actors instantiates the way this field is shaped by

the tensions that arise from Australias condition as a settler state with a marginalized Indigenouspopulation. It will show that the trope of Art versus Ethnography has a multifaceted operative power

that reflects remote and urban Aboriginal artists differential participation within the field, and the

complex relationship between two objectives that politicize it: the desire for recognition on the part of

Indigenous actors, and the desire for post-colonial redemption on the part of non-Indigenous actors.

KeywordsAboriginal/Indigenous art, art discourse, ethnography, Indigenous activism, post-colonialism,

sociology of art, post-colonial, Australian

. . . our exhibitions convey a progressive attitude towards current contemporary art practices

striving for dynamic combinations often involving both black and white perspectives. With

respect to Aboriginal culture, Fire-Works places a strong emphasis on the contemporary rather

than the ethnographic. (Fireworks Gallery, 2007)

Introduction

Australian Aboriginal art is popularly described as having journeyed from Ethnography

to Art.

1

This narrative implies that forms of Aboriginal cultural production that were

Corresponding author:

Laura Fisher, School of Social Sciences, University of NSW, Sydney, Australia.

Email: [email protected]

440224CUS6210.1177/1749975512440224FisherCultural Sociology2012

Article

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252 Cultural Sociology6(2)

once only of interest to anthropologists who sought a greater understanding of Indigenous

society have finally acquired the same exalted status as Art produced and exhibited

within the Western gallery system. While this may be historically true, the Art/

Ethnography binary, or the anti-Anthropology stance, that has become a motif of recent

Aboriginal art discourses reflects a far more complex contestation of discourses, identi-ties and aspirations than this account suggests. This article will discuss the colonial and

institutional conflicts that are the reference points of its articulation, and consider the

way the art worlds differentiation of urban and remote Aboriginal artists has contributed

to its formation. It will argue that this opposition has a multifaceted operative power that

has been shaped by Indigenous peoples struggles for empowerment both within the

state and within the art world and by the responses of non-Indigenous people to those

struggles. Indeed, the very realm of Art, and the very identity of Artist have come to

be politicized and treated as sites of Indigenous activism and advocacy in the Aboriginal

art world. As will be discussed, Art has become a domain within which the marginaliza-tion and oppression Indigenous people experience in Australian society can be con-

fronted and combated, and where individual and collective forms of emancipation and

recognition can be pursued.

Drawing on Bourdieus theory of the field of cultural production and Habermass lit-

erary public sphere thesis, this article seeks to analyse the way the moral questions that

arise from Australias condition as a settler state with a marginalized Indigenous popula-

tion are refracted through the Aboriginal art world. As it appears that the shared territory

between Aboriginal artists from remote and urban areas of Australia is being undermined

by the salience of this opposition, the article will conclude by proposing that, shouldethnographic methodologies be re-evaluated more positively, the scope and efficacy of

the Indigenous aesthetic public sphere may be enhanced. By drawing on such concepts

and offering this critique, this article builds on the rich but still small body of interroga-

tive literature that has explored the complexity of the Aboriginal art movement and mar-

ket (see for example Foley, 2006; Johnson, 2001; McLean, 1998; Michaels, 1994;

Morphy, 2008; Myers, 2002; Thomas, 1999).

The Aboriginal Art Movement

The Aboriginal art world encompasses an extremely diverse body of creative practices.

To understand the reasons for the eclecticism of the category of Aboriginal art it is

necessary to outline the pre-colonial foundations of Indigenous expressive forms, and to

bring the uneven history of colonialism in Australia to bear upon the current forms of

Aboriginal art.2Prior to colonization, a highly complex visual language, in conjunction

with song, dance and performance, articulated and affirmed totemic identities, ancestral

histories, and the moral infrastructure of Indigenous society. These forms narrated the

Dreaming, a temporally unbounded body of religious knowledge that explains the ori-

gin of all life, constitutes the natural environment as the embodiment of the essence of

creation beings, and dictates peoples obligations to care for the land.3Indigenous people

were semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers with ties to strictly differentiated areas of land

(there were hundreds of linguistically distinct nations), and the practical matters of sur-

vival were founded in an inalienable familial, moral and legal order (Sutton, 1988).



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Fisher 253

The first British colonies were established in the south-east of the continent in the late

18th and early 19th centuries, and many Indigenous nations in these areas were wholly

or partially destroyed by frontier warfare, disease and the depletion of food sources. Vast

areas of the desert interior and the northern tropics remained relatively free of European

settlement well into the 20th century. From the early 19th century up until the 1970s,policies of racial segregation and assimilation were instituted throughout Australia,

which often involved the forced removal of entire communities from traditional lands to

centralized missions and towns, and the removal of Indigenous children from their fami-

lies to be placed with white carers or in institutions. A web of intrusive and often punitive

state control sought to expunge all language and cultural knowledge from these wards of

state, with the ideal that Indigenous people of mixed ancestry would eventually blend

in with the white population (Haebich, 2000; McGrath, 1995).

From the first decades of settlement, pastoralists, government officials, navy and

army servicemen, naturalists, anthropologists, museum collectors and travellers acquiredcultural objects from Indigenous people, sometimes by trading them for tobacco and

other goods (Jones, 1988; Taon and Davies, 2004). At the mission stations, Indigenous

wards were often encouraged to produce artefacts, paintings on bark, curios and small

craft and textile items decorated with Indigenous motifs to be sold in the larger towns,

usually to raise money for the settlements (Kleinert, 2002; Moore, 2006).

When the Whitlam Labour government introduced its self-determination policy in

1972, Indigenous people in remote regions were encouraged to return to their traditional

lands, a move made possible by welfare support. This outstations movement, along

with other initiatives such as the formation of the Aboriginal Arts Board and a LandRights commission (both in 1973), instigated a cultural renaissance spearheaded by

visual arts practice (Altman, 2005a: 4). In 1972, the Papunya Tula Artists Cooperative

was founded by Aboriginal men in the government settlement of Papunya, a settlement

which had been established in 1959 to administer a number of central desert tribes.

Members of the Cooperative began producing saleable acrylic paintings of their

Dreamings, drawn in part from sacred sand and body paintings. In the following decades,

art production spread to other parts of the desert (and was taken up by women), while the

bark painting tradition flourished in Arnhem Land. During the 1970s and early 1980s,

two government bodies, the Aboriginal Arts Board, and Aboriginal Arts and Crafts PtyLtd, facilitated the sale and exhibition of Aboriginal artworks, and underwrote the fledg-

ling art centres (Johnson, 2007; Peterson, 1983).

The art currently produced in remote regions of Australia usually has continuity with

forms of pre-colonial cultural production such as body and sand painting, painting on

rock walls and the interior of bark shelters, carved wooden tools, weapons, decorated

sacred objects and woven objects (Sutton, 1988). Aboriginal artists from urban and non-

remote regions of Australia are more engaged with Western art forms and genres (some

are art-school graduates), though they may also maintain, reclaim and reinterpret histori-

cal practices. Thus Aboriginal art today encompasses painting with acrylics and natural

ochres on canvas and linen; paintings on bark; locally specific art forms such as pearl

shell and emu egg carvings, possum-skin cloaks, hollow log coffins and carved or woven

spirit figures; and fine crafts which include shell necklaces, painted ceramics, and vari-

ous forms of fibre art. Printmaking and fabric design have been introduced in a number

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of communities, while many urban Aboriginal artists work with photography, digital

technologies, video and installation. Didgeridoos and other musical and craft items con-

tinue to be widely circulated within the tourism market (though not always produced by

Indigenous people), while historic artefacts are increasingly valued on the auction mar-

ket (Kleinert and Neale, 2000).Currently there are approximately 100 Aboriginal art centres that facilitate art produc-

tion across the country, usually located in remote areas. Modelled to some degree on

Papunya Tula Artists, these are usually artists cooperatives with a communal structure,

managed by art centre-coordinators employed by the artists. The coordinator (in almost

all cases a non-Indigenous person) mediates between the artists domain and the demands

of the international art market. Many artists also sell directly to dealers, wholesalers and

other intermediaries who visit the artists or are based in centres such as Alice Springs, the

largest town in central Australia with a large, transient Indigenous population (Senate

Standing Committee on Environment, Communications, Information Technology andthe Arts, 2007).

Aboriginal art entered a contemporary art paradigm following the inclusion of artists

from Papunya and Arnhem Land in exhibitions such as the 1979 Sydney Biennaleand the

1981 and 1983 Australian Perspectas, and the acquisition of Aboriginal artworks by

state galleries in the 1980s (Caruana, 2003; Murphy, 1981, 1983). At this time, Aboriginal

artists from urban areas also began forming collectives and exhibiting, as will be outlined

below. In the mid-1990s, Sothebys began staging exclusive Aboriginal art auctions,

cementing the arts place in the Australian fine arts market. Auction houses monopolize

the secondary market for Aboriginal art, and the record prices achieved for Aboriginalartworks are fast encroaching upon those achieved for non-Indigenous Australian works,

due in part to the interest of overseas collectors (Australian Art Sales Digest, 2008). State

art galleries now have Aboriginal art on permanent display with dedicated departments

and curators, and major exhibitions of regional styles and individual artists have taken

place since the 1980s. Key overseas exhibitions that attracted serious collecting interest

include Dreamings, which toured North America in 19881989 (Sutton, 1988), and

Aratjara,which toured European Art Museums in 19931994 (Weeks, Hilty and Hauffe,

1993). There are now over 300 vendors of Aboriginal art in Australia, ranging from

tourist-oriented retailers to dealers of Aboriginal Fine Art. Aboriginal art comprisesapproximately 15 per cent of artworks sold by Australian auction houses and commercial

galleries annually, and the annual value of Aboriginal fine art has grown from $2.5 mil-

lion in 1980 to current estimates of $100$300 million (Altman, 2005a: 8; Australian

Bureau of Statistics, 2001).

Having sketched the field in question, a final point to be made is that while the cate-

gory of Aboriginal art is remarkably heterogeneous, there is a clear differentiation

between Aboriginal art produced in remote regions of Australia on the one hand (that is,

the desert areas and the tropical regions and islands of Northern Australia) and the towns

and cities of urban and rural Australia on the other. As the outline above makes clear, this

differentiation reflects the consequences of Australias colonization process. Yet the cat-

egory of Aboriginal art withstands this polarity because prominent actors and discourses

within the art world vigorously affirm an Indigenous/non-Indigenous, or black/white

opposition, and foreground the artists status of having Indigenous heritage, and having



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Fisher 255

survived the destructive/assimilationist colonial project. This is clearly demonstrated in

the establishment in 2007 of an inclusive Indigenous Art Triennial at the National Gallery

of Australia, the first of which was titled Culture Warriors. As we will see, the political

implications of the urban/remote distinction, and the efforts to dissolve that distinction

by advocating the legitimacy of all Aboriginal art forms, are highly salient to the rhetori-cal weight of the Art/Ethnography binary within this field.

The Art/Ethnography Binary

Before we examine some examples of the Art/Ethnography4binary, let us first get a

sense of what is generally meant by this opposition. Ethnography in this context refers

to the way tribal artefacts were displayed in natural history museums in the 19th and

early 20th centuries, in which a prevailing evolutionist perspective presented the

Aboriginal race as primitive and approaching extinction. Cultural objects were dis-played as self-evidently illustrative of these assumptions and their worth rested in their

revelation of the practices of a past culture. The primary focus of an ethnographic

framework is seen to be the way cultural traditions are encoded in an object, which

means that objects are presented as authentic exemplars of a generalized community

practice, and tradition is regarded as having strictly determined the character of com-

munity members creative output (Jones, 1988: 156158; Mulvaney, 1982/1983;

Zolberg, 1997: 57). Art, on the other hand, designates a heroically personal, subjec-

tive, and non-utilitarian expression of creativity (Ames, 1991: 7). Accordingly, innova-

tion and the forging of unique styles of expression are highly valued and individualartworks can be celebrated for their artistic merit regardless of the conditions of their

production or the identity of their makers.

These contrasting modes of engagement are invoked in the following instances of the

Art/Ethnography opposition, drawn mainly from non-Indigenous authors writing in

leading Australian newspapers: Art writer Miriam Cosic states that [John] Mawurndjul

is one of the stars of the Maningrida Art movement: a magisterial painter of Kuninjku

Dreaming and an individualist whose genius has helped move indigenous art out of eth-

nography and into the contemporary mainstream (Cosic, 2004a). In another article,

Cosic writes that the art dealer Gabriella Pizzi was one of the first dealers to take indig-enous art out of the ethnographic ghetto and promote it as an intellectual and spiritual

force in contemporary culture (Cosic, 2004b). Curator Judith Ryan writes that The best

Aboriginal works are no longer trapped in an ethnographic category but possess a unique

aesthetic aura born of truth (Ryan, 2006). In Susan Owens article Its about the art

not the ethnography, occasioned by the establishment of a new Aboriginal art dealership

in Paris, gallerist Mary Durack is quoted as saying Aboriginal art has an ethnographic

label in Europe . . . I want to break the constant references to anthropology and history.

Its a significant contemporary art movement (Owens, 2006). Finally, in Nicolas

Rothwells review of John Mawurndjuls retrospective in Basel, he applauds what he

regards as the artists rejection of imagery that is appealing because it persuade[s] the

viewer that it brings them near the heart of something sacred (Rothwell, 2006: 2) in

favour of designs whose spiritual derivation is unintelligible to Western audiences, that

is, reducible to decoration. He argues that:



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Mawurndjul and his fellow masters of North Australian Aboriginal art are thus staking a claim

to be regarded as artists without adjectives, contemporary painters who just happen to be from

a particular cultural background. This momentous decision on their part goes some way towards

dethroning anthropology as the key litmus of indigenous art and may yet herald the beginning

of a legitimate school of critical appreciation of Aboriginal painting. (Rothwell, 2006: 12)

Here, Rothwell suggests an intriguing chain of causality: only when the artists adjust

theirpracticeto a Western-contemporary idiom can anthropology be jettisoned and real

art criticism become possible. It is also worth noting that Rothwells and Cosics remarks

about Mawurndjul posit individualism as the condition of his arts contemporaneity, an

approach that presents the ethnographic focus on community and context as a foil to the

avant-garde motif of the break with tradition.

These statements bear a great deal of truth. Many of the first forms of Aboriginal cultural

production that attracted the interest of Europeans were indeed collected by anthropologistsand presented in museums as historical artefacts. And as Duracks statement implies,

Europeans came into contact with forms of Other material culture as indices of conquest and

empire, and often remain resistant to placing non-Western art in the same category as

European/American art.5 It is also the case that the recognition of Aboriginal art as Art

depended upon the efforts of people like Gabrielle Pizzi. As late as 1997, Pizzi was rejected

in her bid to bring Aboriginal artworks to the Basel Art Fair, because the selection commit-

tee felt that letting in recognisably indigenous works from Australia would open the flood-

gates to Primitive, Tribal and Folk art from all around the world (Throsby, 1997: 32).

The snub is indicative of the obstacles dealers had to overcome in cultivating a market for

Aboriginal art. Indeed, 20th-century Aboriginal art from remote areas occupied an institu-

tional no-mans land for a number of years, not easily encompassed by ethnographic or

aesthetic perspectives, nor deemed collectible by either museums or galleries. Johnson,

referring to the decade following the establishment of Papunya Tula in 1972, writes of the

ten years of neglect and dismissal which preceded the breakthrough of Western Desert

paintings onto the Australian, and now the international, art scene (Johnson, 1991: 19):

These paintings were seen, at best, as anthropological curios, at worst, as tourist kitsch. Over

the same period, the museums (with some notable exceptions) also declined to collect them on

the grounds that they were non-traditional that is, ethnographically speaking, unauthentic.This judgment showed at least a finer appreciation than that of the art experts of the quality of

innovation in these paintings. (Johnson, 1991: 19)

In 1980, when Johnson and her husband offered paintings that they had acquired in

Papunya to the National Gallery of Australia, they were rebuffed with the claim weve

got one of those (Johnson, 2007: 39, 41 [footnote 43]). In 1977, the Australian Trade

Commissioner in New York rejected Aboriginal Arts and Crafts Pty Ltds bid to intro-

duce Arnhem Land artworks into the American market, on the basis that works produced

for sale were regarded by museum directors to be inauthentic and thus not able to beassimilated by the Primitive art market (Morphy, 1994: 214215).

Such exclusions reveal the way institutions negotiate the identities of the objects under

their care, and define the ambit of their patronage in contradistinction to other institutions

(see Karp and Lavine, 1991). Authenticity is the key fault-line in this context, around



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Fisher 257

which perceptions about pre- and post-colonial activity, commercial/non-commercial pro-

duction, and the sincerity of artistic intent coalesce. While bark paintings certainly had a

greater monopoly on authenticity in the 1970s and 1980s, the fact that both the Arnhem

Land barks and Desert acrylic artworks wereproduced for salemeant that they were not

deemed suitable for museum collections. This stain of commercialism also meant thatthey could not be consecrated as Art in the way outsider art forms such as Primitive art

and Asylum art had been, on the basis of the belief that such art objects were produced by

inner necessity, for unique psychological or cultural reasons (see Bowler, 1997: 2829).

In light of these historical fluctuations and inconsistencies, the term Ethnography in

this binary can be seen to have only a tenuous relation to ethnography as a research meth-

odology, or anthropology as a discipline. Rather, it emerges as a rather sloppy referent for

not Art. Indeed, the Ethnography to Art narrative does not take account of the fact that

anthropologists such as AP Elkin, Frederick McCarthy and Charles Mountford promoted

Aboriginal art as Art from the early years of the 20th century, straying far from conven-tional ethnographic preoccupations in their advocacy and befriended and collaborating

with non-Indigenous modernists to bring it to the attention of Australian art audiences

(see Jones, 1988; Kleinert, 2002; Kupka, 1965, for this history).6In recent years, anthro-

pologists such as Eric Michaels, Fred Myers, Marcia Langton, Howard Morphy, Christine

Nicholls and Jon Altman have participated in the field of Aboriginal art as curators, art-

ists representatives, translators, and as writers of catalogue essays, art criticism and art

historical pieces in art journals (see for example Altman, 2005b; Nicholls, 2006).

Therefore the question must be asked: why is the Art/Ethnography binary invoked so

often, or an anti-Anthropology stance adopted so readily, when anthropologists havebeen integral to Aboriginal arts emergence as High Art?

The Amalgamation of Two Conflicts

Arguably, the answer lies in the tense disciplinary relationship that has existed between

Anthropology and Art history/theory, and in the fact that Anthropology is an intellectual

and institutional practice irrevocably associated with colonialism. With respect to the

former, there is a long-standing conflict between formalist-aesthetic interpretations of

cultural objects and the interpretations offered by anthropologists of art. Losche (1999)presents a valuable perspective on the entrenched disciplinary antagonisms that underpin

the conflict. In her attempt to write a book about the relationship between art and anthro-

pology, she found that:

[T]raversing cultures (for example an anthropologist who goes to place x, or an art historian

who investigates time y) is a less complex experience, and easier to encode, than traversing

disciplines. What I mean here is that, as long as one assumes that there is a coherent body of

work called anthropology and art history one can proceed to place ones material into that

edifice of ideas. If, however, one questions the boundaries and outlines of those objects that are

constituted by traditional disciplines, one is in problematic territory. (Losche, 1999: 211)

As Losche (1999: 212) suggests, the key tension between the disciplines is that the for-

mer promotes the idea of the autonomy of art, both in terms of the purpose of its



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production and the viewers experience of its aesthetic qualities, while the latter objects

to the idea that any sphere of human life is discrete from others.7Furthermore, as Morphy

and Perkins (2006: 5) write, a tension remains between the avant-garde view that art

speaks for itself and is open to universalistic interpretation, and an anthropological per-

spective, which requires an indigenous interpretative context.Though much more can be said, this is an adequate explanation of the first of the

conflicts with which Anthropology is engaged. The second conflict revolves around per-

ceptions about Anthropologys complicity with colonial domination and exploitation.

The discourses, images and museum displays produced by anthropologists during the

19th and early 20th centuries provide disturbing evidence of the way Indigenous people

were conceived of and treated by colonial power in Australia. Through their provision of

scientific explanations for the peculiarity and inferiority of the race in evolutionary

terms, anthropologists and associated researchers helped to rationalize the policies to

which Indigenous Australians were subjected (B. Anderson, 2002; I. Anderson, 2003;Mulvaney, 1982/1983). Furthermore, only certain types of Indigenous subjects and cul-

tural objects were considered worthy of anthropological attention. There was (and to

some degree still is) a strong disciplinary bias towards communities that could be

regarded as pure, untouched by Western modernity, a favouring which entailed a de-

authentication of the Indigenous identity of Aboriginal people from the south-eastern

rural and urban regions who had mixed ancestry and whose communities had suffered

colonization most intensively (Moreton-Robinson, 2006: 219; Russell, 2001: 12). For

these reasons, anthropology as a discipline, and ethnography as a practice, have long

been treated with suspicion by Indigenous people.These two conflicts go some way towards explaining the naturalization of this opposi-

tion in Aboriginal art discourses. An apprehension of the second conflict, such that one

can express ones abhorrence of the forces of colonialism by repudiating Anthropology,

establishes a reactive dynamic whereby Art, which stands in opposition to Anthropology

for other reasons, becomes a progressive space of recognition and encompassment.

Political and Artistic Activism and the Rejection ofEthnography

However, the Art/Ethnography binarys traction is also the result of the activities of the

Aboriginal artists and activists from the south-east and urban regions of Australia. By the

1960s, a political movement founded on a sense of shared oppression amongst Indigenous

people nationwide had consolidated itself. Responding to racism, land dispossession,

government discrimination and neglect, and inspired by emancipatory movements over-

seas, Indigenous people from urban and rural areas organized large-scale protests that

garnered popular support and fostered political will to bring about legislative changes. In

some cases urban-based activists built relationships and acted alongside people from

remote regions, but in other cases they engaged the state, in the nations capital and inother urban centres, on behalf of all Indigenous Australians. An outcome of this activism

was that, as McLean writes: Indigeneity (or Aboriginality as it was then called) became

a legitimate identity forged primarily by the experience of colonial dispossession

(McLean, 2002: 35). Despite the fact that Indigenous people comprise only 2.4 per cent



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Fisher 259

of the Australian population, since the early 1970s this national Indigenous identity has

had a robust political presence, enhanced by the responsiveness of some quarters of non-

Indigenous Australian and international society.

The increased institutional recognition of the burgeoning Aboriginal art movement in

the following decades can in part be attributed to the impact of this activism upon theconsciousness of non-Indigenous public servants and professionals working within the

arts in Australia and elsewhere. In 1982 the director of the Aboriginal Arts Board was

Gary Foley and the committee chairman was Chika Dixon. These men were prominent

Indigenous activists, and their involvement with the Board created the conditions for a

strongly politicized Aboriginal creative arts movement.8As Gary Foley writes:

Here was an example of the necessity of Indigenous people . . . regaining control of their own

affairs and subverting the institutions that affected them. As such it was a continuation of the

ideas and philosophies that had exploded in Australia during the late 1960s and early 1970s.(Foley, 2005: 185186; see also Katona, 2007: 3)

Of relevance here was the orchestration ofAratjara, an extremely successful exhibition

of urban and remote Aboriginal art which toured in Europe in 1993/1994. Foley writes

that Aratjara was born when a Swiss artist called Bernard Lthi approached the AAB in

1984 and expressed the view that Australian Indigenous art should be exhibited in the

modern art galleries of Europe rather than the ethnographic museums where at that time

they languished (Foley, 2005: 186, emphasis added; see also Lthi, 1993: 16). The sub-

title of the exhibition was Art of the First Australians, and many of the catalogue essays

bear the tone of political activism (Weeks et al., 1993).

Some of the artists from urban regions included in this exhibition were, or have

become, leading figures amongst a group of artists who produce politically confronta-

tional work about colonization, racism and Indigenous marginalization. As Neale writes

of their emergence in the 1980s, they were young, articulate and angry, fuelled by dec-

ades of dispossession and displacement (Neale, 2004: 487; see also Onus, 1993). Many

of these artists have used archival material from museum collections, or appropriated

ethnographic modes of seeing the subject, in order to deconstruct the way Indigenous

identity has been imagined within settler society.9They have also criticized anthropologi-

cal discourses and institutional methods in other forums. This is because, in their affirma-tion of their Indigeneity an identity forged primarily by the experience of colonial

dispossession they identify with those who were objectified by ethnographic study.

However, it is also because they remain excluded(having lighter skin, having not had a

traditional upbringing) from this particular valorizing system as inauthentic urban

Indigenous people, an exclusion that is symbolic of their broader social experience of hav-

ing the truth of their Indigenous identity constantly questioned (Thomas, 1999: 220).

Thus artist Richard Bell, in a polemic that accompanied his work Scienta E meta-

physica (Bells Theorum), or Aboriginal Art its a White Thing (2003), criticizes the

Ethnographic approach to Aboriginal art that he suggests associates it with spiritual-ity and the Dreamtime. He suggests that [m]any Urban artists have rejected the ethno-

classification of Aboriginal art to the extent that they dont participate in Aboriginal

shows. They see themselves as artists not asAboriginalartists (2002: 3, emphasis in

original). Similarly, artist Brook Andrew argues that:



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Aboriginal art [is a label that] homogenizes the Aboriginal experience and does not allow for

diverse autonomy in language, ceremony, design and expression, let alone other cultural and

ancestral connections. I prefer my art to be thought of as works created by myself as an artist,

not simply as Aboriginal art. (Minter and Andrew, 2005: 146)

Such positions imply that the Indigenous identity that is evoked by Aboriginal art,

attributed by many to be a fetish for the ethnographic, invokes a hierarchy of legiti-

macy that subordinates artists from urban areas to such an extent that, in some cases, they

would rather be located outside that paradigm altogether.

Ethnography and the Primitive

We can therefore begin to see how the spirit of post-colonial political struggle can under-

pin the rejection of Ethnography and the embracing of Art. It can be demonstrated moreconcretely by highlighting the fact that anti-Ethnography rhetoric frequently associates it

with aprimitivizationof the Other subject, artist and/or art object. Primitivist conceptu-

alizations essentialize and dehistoricize cultures and, as Thomas writes, entail a roman-

ticisation and celebration of . . . communal simplicity, proximity to nature, esoteric ritual,

mystical transgression and spirituality (Thomas, 1995: 15; see also Russell, 2001: 1114).

Such notions are invoked when Richard Bell suggests that Aboriginal art from remote

regions should be marketed by drawing on purely Western construct[s] and argues that

we should [d]emand that it be seen for what it is as being among the Worlds best

examples of Abstract Expressionism.Ditch the pretence of spirituality that consigns theart to ethnography. . . (Bell, 2002: 2, emphasis added; see also Minter and Andrew,

2005: 143).10

Similarly, at a Blakatak forum held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney,11

Brook Andrew censured art historian and curator Roger Benjamin for using the word arte-

fact during his discussion of Aboriginal works. Andrews comment that when anyone . . .

refers to Indigenous art or objects as artefacts I completely have a fit because artefacts are

relics indicates that he feels the term constructs objects as deriving from an antiquated,

rather than a living, culture (Blakatak, 2005: 24). The association of Ethnography with

primitivism is also illustrated in art writer Jennifer Isaacs comment that:

[t]he word ethnographic was not uncommon in the 1970s but today would be used at a curators

peril when presenting contemporary art from any Aboriginal movement or community.

However, on the international stage, notions of antiquity, primordial human visual

communication or cultural practices that extend through millennia constantly enter discourses

indeed, they remain the entry point for significant international collectors. (2002: 549550)

This coupling of Ethnography with primitivism is significant because it is often argued

that the success of remote Aboriginal art is attributable to a primitivistdesire for the

authentic Other within the West (Lattas, 2000; Webb, 2002).12

It is a persuasive argu-ment, particularly as it is widely agreed that only a small proportion of remote Aboriginal

art sold is of high quality (though the question of how to evaluate the quality of

Aboriginal art is far from resolved), and therefore there must be some other explanation

for the arts appeal. Critically, the argument helps to rationalize the disparities between



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Fisher 261

urban and remote artists success as described above: the work of the former is less desir-

able because its makers exist outside the primitivism paradigm. When Ethnography is

associated with primitivism it becomes implicated in this inequity, as the following state-

ment from Neale regarding the marginalization of Aboriginal artists from south-eastern

urban areas in the 1980s indicates: While those from the south remained outside theethnographic gaze, invisibility was assured (Neale, 2004: 489; see also Croft, 2003).

This inequity is symbolic of a poignant struggle for social recognition, and thus embrac-

ing Art as exclusive from and/or in defiance of Ethnography becomes a political act, a

statement of opposition to primitivism and racism, and an injunction that diverse forms

of Indigeneity be respected within wider society.

Political Aesthetic Public Spheres and the Field of

Aboriginal artThese struggles for recognition modulate the Aboriginal art world in a number of ways,

and I now wish to draw on Bourdieus theory of the field of cultural production, and

Habermass literary public sphere thesis, to suggest that the Art/Ethnography binary is in

fact a rhetorical artefact of art world actors negotiations of the political and moral issues

that attend to Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations in Australia. Bourdieus notion of the

artistic field comprises a range of actors: artists, dealers, critics, curators, as well as insti-

tutions, styles, genres and movements, who compete for cultural legitimacy while simul-

taneously contributing to a field-wide consensus regarding what is legitimate (Bourdieu,

1993: 3036). As I hope has become clear, within the Aboriginal art field, urban andremote Aboriginal artists occupy quite paradoxical actor-positions. While measures of

commercial success, exhibition activity and the speed at which artistic forms acquire

legitimacy will identify most urban Aboriginal artists as marginal within the field, if we

look through the lens of actor participation, it is Aboriginal artists from remote areas who

are marginal. These artists may attend gallery openings of their work and take an interest

in other art during their exhibition-associated travels, and they sometimes meet with art

collectors who visit remote Aboriginal art centres. Furthermore, the relationships they

have with the non-Indigenous dealers and art centre coordinators who represent them

involve shared understandings about which styles are popular with buyers, and occasionalexposure to other art forms. Nevertheless, these artists do not have a sustained engage-

ment with Western art, their arts content does not reflect deference to (or avant-gardist

defiance of) a canon, and thus only rarely can it be suggested that remote Aboriginal

artists participate in the domain of artistic position-takings within the field (Bourdieu,

1993: 30).13Indeed, if we follow Bourdieus reading of the way nave French painter Le

Douanier Rousseau was constitutedby the artistic field in order for his paintings to be

deemed Art, a remote Aboriginal artist can be regarded as a creator who has to be cre-

ated as a legitimate producer, one whose art world trajectory depends to a large extent

on how well he or she is produced by impresario figures such as pioneer Aboriginal artdealer Gabrielle Pizzi (Bourdieu, 1993: 61, 177, also 275 [footnote 38]).

In contrast, artists such as Richard Bell and Brook Andrew, and activists such as Gary

Foley, do participate in competitive position-taking within the field. Urban Aboriginal

artists are often vocal, confrontational advocates and critics who participate in the arena



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of commentary and practice regarding representation, collecting and curating, augment-

ing the social critique expressed in their art which an art-literate viewer cannot ignore.

Moreover, the political discourse and spirit generated by their institutional practice,

activism and polemic have become dynamic and influential actors within the field, artic-

ulated by non-Indigenous commentators as well as Indigenous artists, curators and aca-demics (see for example Blakatak, 2005; Croft, 2003; Foley, 2006; Mundine, 2005). The

title of the first National Indigenous Triennial, Culture Warriors, captures this spirit in its

evocation of defiance and resilience.

Indeed, these activists, artists and intellectuals have, it could be argued, established a

robust aesthetic public sphere. For Habermas, social arenas in which emerging aesthetic

forms are shared and discussed have the potential to generate broader spheres in which

individuals engage in dialogue regarding civic matters and thereby supervise the exercise

of state power over the public (Habermas, 1974: 52). As Jones explains, the examples

Habermas presents in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphereare the Londoncoffee houses and salons which in the 18th century became settings where members of

the newly formed bourgeoisie critically debated literature, art and culture (2007b: 7678).

Thus, discussions of aesthetic matters provides the associative fora which are capable

of turning their concerns to matters of state (Jones, 2007a: 9). The committee of artists

and activists on the Aboriginal Arts Board described above constituted a vital and conse-

quential politicized aesthetic sphere, as have art collectives or cooperatives such as The

Campfire Group, Boomalli and ProppaNOW, and events such as the Blakatak and

Black2Blak14forums. However, beyond these concrete examples of public spheres, it

can be argued that urban Indigenous actors (and those non-Indigenous actors who sup-port them) have treated the Art system as a surrogate state, a domain that can be radical-

ized and democratized and compelled to provide the Indigenous subject with the

recognition that the actual state withholds. Richard Bells statement that: I came into art

through politics . . . I discovered, as far as activism goes, theres no better forum than art

may be interpreted in these terms (in Sorensen, 2006: 8). Urban Aboriginal artists have

produced compelling and confronting work about Australian race relations, the colonial

past, and the current marginalization of Indigenous Australians, and their aesthetic inno-

vations compel a cultural elite to engage with such issues. Though it is a distortion to see

this group in terms of Fourth world politics, Paines argument that much of Fourthworld politics is about turning physical powerlessness into moral power and then putting

that to good political account (in Ames, 1991: 9) points to the crux of the issue. These

actors have, by the force of their political will, the intensity of their aesthetic forms and

the moral power of their social critique, compelled art institutions and their attendant

professionals and audiences to create a space for their art and their message.15

Therefore, the journey from Ethnography to Art emerges as a significant emancipa-

tion narrative when considered in light of the experience of urban Aboriginal artists, an

aesthetic strand of a social movement that encompasses a colonized minority struggling

for recognition as a distinct, surviving-but-changing entity. Many non-Indigenous actors

within the art world feel morally culpable when faced with the artists grievances and

objectives, and arguably this means that their competition for cultural legitimacy within

the field of struggles (Bourdieu, 1993: 30) has come to have a significant moral com-

ponent. The Art/Ethnography binary, or the anti-Anthropology stance, is a product of this



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Fisher 263

predicament: it has become a rhetorical hook upon which non-Indigenous actors can

secure their virtuous stance within the field.

The Art/Ethnography Binary and the Difficulty ofWriting about Aboriginal Art

The manner in which such moral imperatives shape the activities of non-Indigenous actors

is well illustrated in the domain of art writing. Remote Aboriginal art is often subject to

quite superficial readings by art writers, or in Smiths words, reviews often [collapse]s

into the telling of condescendingly simple stories of the work, alongside a few lines of

formalist description, both carried by clouds of supportive sounds (Smith, 2002: 152).

Much of the success of remote Aboriginal art has been achieved independently of art criti-

cal discourses (Benjamin, 2000; Webb, 2002: 138). This is partly due to the politicization

of the field as explored above, such that the politics of speaking positions makes the field

impossible for non-Indigenous critics, and few art writers are prepared to strongly criti-

cize remote Aboriginal art forms (Smith, 2002: 152). However it is also due to the sui

generisnature of remote forms. As Lowish points out regarding the insufficient coverage

of Aboriginal art in Australian art history monographs: [m]uch of what is relevant to the

discipline of art history does not correspond easily to the study of Aboriginal art, just as

much that is vital to understanding the complexity of Aboriginal art . . . lies outside the

reach of art history (Lowish, 2005: 63; see also Michaels, 1994; Thomas, 1999: 225). The

following art-historical conventions have little purchase: locating artists within a sanc-

tioned art-historical tradition and lineage of artists, attending to an artists biography andartistic trajectory, and outlining an epochal framework that contextualizes their work. For

art writers to critically engage with remote Aboriginal art in a conceptually enlightening

way, they would need to undertake detailed research into the artists milieu. Few art writ-

ers have done this, and indeed the expertise of anthropologists is often sought precisely

because of their ethnographic practice: they have sustained relationships with artists and

communities from remote regions, can converse with artists in their own language and

thus act as translators and provide nuanced explanations of the art and, from the point of

view of those artists, are trustworthy representatives within the art world.

Despite this, few art writers draw on ethnographic material, and furthermore, as thepopular examples quoted earlier demonstrate, they often adopt an oppositional stance

towards Ethnography, affirming the disciplinary divide that Losche described. These art

writers predominantly employ an Abstract Expressionist idiom in their discussions of

remote Aboriginal art, as exemplified by the following quotations from broadsheet

reviews. Georgina Safe, in her review of an exhibition of young Papunya Tula artists,

writes: The Rockhole Site of Lupulnga, South of Kintoreby Brenda Napaltjarri . . . is

sublime and endlessly satisfying: a lyrical and intricate rendering of concentric circles

connected by streams of creamy dots (Safe, 2004). Nicolas Rothwell writes that at the

2005Desert Mobexhibition two brightly-hued, declarative works signal the arrival ofJimmy Donegan, an artist whose raw, urgent force-fields, superimposed on deep dotted

grounds, bring to mind the example of the celebrated Spinifex artists from the southern

borders of his country (Rothwell, 2005: 14). I would argue that there is a clear explana-

tion for art writers reliance on such language, a language whose revered provenance is



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far removed from the artists actual practice. The conviction that the power of a painting

depends upon the resolution of its internal, formal components in the artists unique way

is an enduring aesthetic ideology of modernism and Abstract Expressionism in particular

(Crane, 1987; Gombrich, 1966: 439445). The canonical weight of such ideas, associ-

ated with artists such as Henri Matisse (Spurling, 2000, 2006) and critics such as ClementGreenberg (1992), provides a refuge for art writers who are unable to formulate an aes-

thetic language that can illuminate remote Aboriginal art forms in light of the artists own

points and intentions. By attending to the design, the richness of a palate, gestural vitality

and so on, art writers are able to locate these highly recalcitrant art objects within a sanc-

tified aesthetic domain which legitimizes them, and which accrues to them the qualities

of excellence associated with that domain.

Thus the eschewing of ethnographic information and the repudiation of Anthropology

and Ethnography serves two purposes here: it affirms the anti-Anthropology stance

adopted by members of the urban Indigenous polity, and it allows writers to demonstratetheir recognition and respect of Aboriginal art forms (and therefore the Indigenous sub-

ject) by aligning those forms with venerated, canonical art of the West. If Western Abstract

art can be appreciated on its own terms, then so should Aboriginal art, the implication

being that the work is diminishedby any dependence on further explanation.

Conclusion

This article has identified three overlapping modalities of the Art/Ethnography binary.

For urban Aboriginal artists and their non-Indigenous advocates, an anti-Ethnography oranti-Anthropology stance signifies the resilience and legitimacy of an eclectic Indigenous

identity that has withstood the colonial project and the discriminating authenticity fault-

line that accompanied it within the cultural domain. For non-Indigenous actors who feel

implicated when confronted by Aboriginal political critique, the opposition allows them

to position themselves virtuously with respect to historical and current racial tensions.

For art writers in particular, it is a means to avoid the difficulties associated with articu-

lating the content of remote Aboriginal art by taking advantage of the sanctuary of a

canonized formalism. The frequent uncritical use of the binary in Aboriginal art dis-

course is the outcome of a synergy of two objectives that politicize the field: the desirefor recognition on the part of Indigenous actors, and the desire for post-colonial redemp-

tion on the part of non-Indigenous actors.

I now wish to advance a tentative critique of this situation. Arguably, remote Aboriginal

artists are reliant on others to articulate the motivations behind their aesthetic forms within

civic discourse and debate. Despite its abstract appearance, much remote Aboriginal art

is politically confrontational: it articulates ongoing claims to land, testifies to the exist-

ence of social structures that have survived colonization and often seeks to educate west-

erners. Kuntjil Cooper, a Pitjantjatjara artist from Irrunytju in Central Australia, declares:

I want to paint the tjukurpa [Dreaming] for my country. . . . When I am gone my grandchildren

will be able to understand their culture when they see my paintings. I want whitefellas to

respect anangu [Pitjantjatjara peoples] culture. When they see these important paintings they

will know that tjukurpa is strong, that anangu are strong. (in Knights, 2006: 43, see also Nelson,

2000; Yunupingu, 1997)



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Fisher 265

From the point of view of Habermass model, the discourse of art writers can enhance the

communicative and politically instigative potential of aesthetic forms that seek to engage

and change public opinion regarding state power. In light of this, the aspirations and artis-

tic intentions of remote Aboriginal artists could be better communicated to art audiences

if an ethnographic methodology was embraced by art writers and other art world actors.Isolated from their adversarial disciplinary bearings, art history/theory and ethnography/

anthropology of art are simply explanatory discourses that enable a deeper understanding

of the art object (Myers, 1994). As Gell (2006) has argued, just as wall text, written mate-

rial, interviews and so on are necessary to illuminate Western conceptual artworks as

vehicles of complicated ideas, so can artefacts and artworks produced by non-Western

artists be enfranchised via the provision of ethnographic material that shows how they

are embodiments or residues of complex intentionalities (2006: 230234).

Art historian Vivien Johnson has synthesized ethnographic and art historical method-

ologies in her studies of Papunya art practice. Having spent almost 30 years researchingthe artistic output of the community, with much time spent in Papunya, her art histories

are informed by a thorough understanding of the artists biographies, the family networks

through which styles have evolved, and the country and the Dreamings for which those

artists are responsible (Johnson, 2003, 2007). At the museum exhibition Papunya

Painting: Out of the Desert(2007), which was curated by Johnson, lighting and spatial

arrangement were conducive to aesthetic contemplation, yet each work was accompa-

nied by an accessible and informative plaque. Regarding the provision of contextual

information in the exhibition space, she says: Ive never found the explanation of

Papunya paintings stood in the way of being able to have that spiritual experience infront of the painting . . . It just enriches it (Meacham, 2008: 3). Noting that explanations

of meaning have receded as Papunya paintings have been accepted within the High Art

domain, in her catalogue essay she stresses that these paintings are more than just art

(2007: 3940).

Gells and Johnsons approaches highlight the potential for art professionals to extend

the reach of remote Aboriginal artists voices by drawing on ethnographic material.

However, this would depend upon ethnography as a methodology being dissociated from

colonial relations, the authenticity fault-line and primitivism. Currently the policing

effect of the Art/Ethnography binary may actually be affirmingrather than subvertingprimitivist views of remote Aboriginal art, because it encourages purely formalist modes

of engagement that elide the arts politically demanding content. This article has sought

to show that the Art/Ethnography binary is a highly consequential product of the

Indigenous politys struggles for recognition and empowerment. The binarys salience,

despite its spurious nature, indicates that many non-Indigenous professionals are respon-

sive to such aspirations, and my concluding critique seeks to imagine what greater effi-

cacy and moral power the Indigenous aesthetic public sphere might have should

Aboriginal artists from remote regions have a greater voice within it.

Acknowledgement

The arguments presented herein have benefited greatly from the suggestions of two anonymous

reviewers and the editor David Inglis, for which I am grateful. I am also indebted to Paul Jones for

his guidance during the preparation of this article.



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Notes

1. The label Art is ubiquitous in discussions of Indigenous Australian cultural production that

took place prior to the establishment of the Aboriginal art market. However, the Western

heritage of Art as a concept and phenomenon makes it a highly problematic label in suchcontexts, one that misrepresents the cultural producers intentions and the function of those

forms within the producers milieu (Berndt, 1964: 71; Inglis, 2005: 13).

2. In Australia, the terms Aboriginal and Indigenous are used interchangeably as identifiers,

although the latter is inclusive of the communities of the Torres Strait Islands. In this discus-

sion, I will refer to Aboriginal art and artists, as these are the more common art world

phrases. However, I will use Indigenous to refer to the broader social body and identity of

Indigenous Australians.

3. Dreaming is the English word used to refer to this body of religious knowledge, for which

each language group has a different name.

4. Art, Ethnography and Anthropology will be capitalized when they have the status of

paradigmatic Western systems or discourses.

5. See Amato (2006) and Price (2007) regarding the resilience of colonial paradigms in relation

to the new Paris Museum of World Indigenous Art, theMuse du Quai Branly.

6. These modern artists included Margaret Preston, Frances Derham, Karel Kupka and Tony

Tuckson.

7. A view shared by sociologists of art (see for example Bourdieu, 1993: 36; Wolff,

1983: 16).

8. The committee at this time also included prominent Indigenous artists, writers and activists

such as Jack Davis, Jim Everett, Oodgeroo Noonoocal (Kath Walker) and Lin Onus (Weeks,

Hilty and Hauffe, 1993: 9). See also Myers (2002) for a nuanced account of the conflicting

interests that were negotiated by the Aboriginal Art Board.

9. See for example the work of R E A, Fiona Foley, Brook Andrew, Danie Mellor and Judy

Watson.

10. Bell is referring to the kind of Aboriginal art that has iconographic content and/or appears

abstract.

11. A conference series that brought together artists, academics and art professionals to discuss

Aboriginal art and politics.

12. Cf. Rothwells statements above which contrasts the popular appeal of the sacred with criti-cal appreciation of Aboriginal art, associating anthropology with the former.

13. Rather, remote Aboriginal artistic production has communal and familial reference points and

trajectories, and is informed by locally specific social practices and religious beliefs (Dussart,

1999; Perkins, 2003: 61). Furthermore, all of this is affected by the unique economic condi-

tions of remote community life.

14. An annual conference exclusively for Aboriginal artists and art professionals.

15. I must acknowledge that Aboriginal artists and art professionals (see Foley, 2006; Katona,

2007) have experienced and observed a systemic paternalism and suspicion regarding their

conduct amongst non-Indigenous art professionals, and argue that they remain marginalizedwith respect to dominant discourses (such as anthropology). While disempowering, this wari-

ness on the part of some non-Indigenous art professionals in fact reflects the efficacyof the

Indigenous aesthetic public sphere.



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Fisher 267

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Laura Fisher is currently working on a doctoral thesis in the School of Social Sciences at the

University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Her research examines the moral dilemmas

that surround Aboriginal Art and considers the implications of the Aboriginal art movements suc-cess for Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations in Australia.

Cultural Sociology 2012 Fisher 251 70

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