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Ian McLean, ed. How Aborigines Invented the Idea of Contemporary Art: Writings on Aboriginal Art 1980-2006 Brisbane: Institute of Modern Art; Sydney: Power Publications, 2011
How Aborigines Invented the Idea of Contemporary Art is an anthology that investigates the art world's reception of Aboriginal art. Edited and introduced by Ian McLean, now Professor of Art History at the University of Wollongong, it is an impressive contribution to the field. It covers enormous ground, featuring nearly 150 extracts (ranging in length from less than a hundred words to up to 1,800) by ninety-six authors from a cross-section of disciplines, including art historians, anthropologists, curators, art critics, artists, art-centre co-ordinators, and sociologists. Its provocative title and sexy cover (white on hot fuchsia pink) signals the boldness of McLean's approach.
McLean has already authored two important books on Aboriginal art: The Art of Gordon Bennett (1996) and White Aborigines: Identity Politics in Australian Art (1998). In this new book, he turns his focus to 'not Aboriginal art as such, but the ideas that shaped its artworld reception'.1 The anthology traces the shift that occurred from fashioning Aboriginal art as 'primitive fine art' to conceptualising it within contemporary art. As McLean eloquently reveals, this is a journey laced with the burden of modernist and postmodernist theory.
With a vast wealth of material presented, the book demands a close and critical eye; how it frames debates and the space allocated to key critical investigations is crucial in considering its success. McLean begins the anthology by addressing certain questions of editorial premise. He justifies his selective editorial approach on the basis of a desire 'to create an account that could be read from start to finish ... The only way I could conceive of achieving this in a readable way was to select concise, well-formulated excerpts from a large range of texts.'2 It is worth questioning whether or not any reader would in fact approach the text with this intention; anthologies are not typically read as a single narrative. McLean is aware of some disadvantages of his editorial style, acknowledging the possibility that 'the fine-grained subtleties in the original investigations and arguments may be lost'.3 His hope...