Indigenous Art/Colonial Culture

Nicholas Thomas

Tribal art has been one of the great inspirations of 20th-century Western art. Europeans such as Picasso, Matisse, Ernst and Brancusi responded in unforgettable ways to indigenous African, Oceanic and American art. The politics of this relationship, however, are contentious: is it a cross-cultural discovery to be celebrated, or just one more example of Western colonial appropriation?

This fully illustrated, revelatory book proves once and for all that such an either/or is too simplistic. It takes as its focus the distinctive situation of the settler society, in particular in Australia and New Zealand where large numbers of Europeans made their home, but never entirely eclipsed native peoples. Settler artists and designers have drawn on indigenous motifs and styles in their search for national distinctiveness. Yet powerful indigenous art traditions have also been used to assert the presence of native peoples and their prior claim to sovereignty. Moreover, cultural exchange proves to be a two-way process: much contemporary indigenous art draws on modern Western art, while affirming ancestral values and rejecting the European appropriation of tribal culture.

Nicholas Thomas is the author of Oceanic Art, published by Thames and Hudson in the World of Art series.

ISBN 0500 280975