Modernism and Australia: Documents on art, design and architecture 1917-1967

Abstract

This first anthology of writings about modernist art, design and architecture in Australia reveals the raw nerves that modernism exposed. In more than two hundred documents—talks, letters, debates, public manifestos and private diaries—the main players of the period convey in their own words the tensions, aspirations and paradoxes behind the reception of modernism. Each document is introduced by informed editorial comment. Overturning many key assumptions about Australian culture, this book reveals that Australia was not in a "time-lag," but had an up-to-date engagement with international trends and developments in modernism. The documents show a willing acceptance of modernism in the commercial realm (design, fashion, interior decoration), yet they also chronicle the dogged institutional resistance that greeted modernism, particularly in the fine arts.