On Cross-Cultural Interpretations of Aboriginal Art

This paper critiques three schools of international art scholarship and their relevance toAustralian Aboriginal art from remote communities. These schools are primitivism,histories of ornament and aesthetic theory. This is with a view to looking beyondaccounts of Aboriginal art as representational, and toward a cross-cultural and sensualaccount of its practice. While primitivism influenced the scholarship on high art, historiesof ornament and aesthetic theory offer new approaches to this art, and new ways ofthinking about Aboriginal painting. The paper partly argues that the extensive influenceof primitivism has prevented these latter areas of study in having much impact on thestudy of Aboriginal art, as critics attend to the inequitable relationship betweenindigenous and non-indigenous societies. Instead, the interest of ornament and crossculturalaesthetics in the visual rather than socio-economic and postcolonial conditions ofartistic production conceives of a more equitable exchange between cultures, and arevised account of modern visual practices.