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“Victors” And “Victims”: Men, Women, Modernism And Art In Australia, Jane Hunt

Jane Hunt

Extract:

It is relatively easy to misread the history of artistic modernism in Australia. Glance at a handful of key sources, and they all seem to tell the story of a battle: in the years between the two world wars the Australian art establishment was run by a band of big bad traditionalists - art historian Bernard Smith likens them to the priests of Leviticus - who were at first irritated and later seriously threatened by a bunch of critical young innovators.