Dorothea Foster Black (18911951), Dorrit as she was known, was born and tragically died in Adelaide and is one of the women artists who introduced and promoted Modern Art in Australia. She is the first woman artist to start, own and run Modern Art Gallery in Australia. This small book is a glimpse of her extensive work and contribution to Australian art.

An "appreciation" written by a common person as a private publication, motivated by the simple beauty of the paintings of the remarkable Dorrit Black, Australian painter.

Dorrit Black is the last major Australian modernist to be the subject of a monograph. Her importance to Australian art has not been revised for thirty-five years, and the book aims to reposition her as a figure of great significance in the development of Australian modernism. The book places Dorrit Black at the forefront of bringing to Australia the revolutionary movement of cubism upon her return to Sydney from Europe in late 1929. Black significantly contributed to the acceptance of modernism in Australia through both her teaching and art practice in Sydney and Adelaide. Although best-known as a print-maker the book highlights her talent as a painter. The power and luminosity of her later Adelaide south coast and Adelaide Hills landscapes are unsurpassed and demonstrate a major shift in modern Australian landscape painting. The book illustrates in colour a selection of her paintings, linocut prints, drawings, watercolours and textiles and the subjects range from portraiture, still life to landscape. The essays are broadly chronological and cover several major themes: Black's formative European period (1927-29), her second Sydney period (1930-33) and her Adelaide period (1935-51).

Between 1870 and 1940, tens of thousands of Australian women were drawn to London, their imperial metropolis and the center of the publishing, art, musical, theatrical, and educational worlds. Even more Australian women than men made the pilgrimage "home," seeking opportunities beyond those available to them in the Australian colonies or dominion. In tracing the experiences of these women, this volume reveals hitherto unexamined connections between whiteness, colonial status, gender, and modernity.

Cubism was a movement that changed fundamentally the course of twentieth-century art. It had far-reaching effects, both conceptual and stylistic, which are still being felt today. Described in 1912 by French poet and commentator Guillaume Apollinaire as 'not an art of imitation, but an art of conception', Cubism irreversibly altered art's relationship to visual reality. 'I paint things as I think them, not as I see them', Picasso said. Cubism and Australian Art examines for the first time the impact of this transformative art movement on the work of Australian artists, from the early 1920s to the present day. The authors argue that by its very nature, Cubism was characterised by variation and change, that the idea of a pure or original Cubism was short lived, and that its appearance in Australian art parallels its uptake and re-interpretation by artists internationally. In the words of French artist Andr Lhote, mentor to several Australians who studied at his Academy in Paris: 'There are a thousand defi nitions of Cubism, because there are a thousand painters practising it'. More than eighty international and Australian artists are showcased with over 300 works, featuring Sam Atyeo, Ralph Balson, Grace Crowley, Frank Hinder, Roger Kemp, Godfrey Miller, Stephen Bram and Daniel Crooks, as well as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Fernand L ger.

*Winner of the American Society for Aesthetics 2019 Outstanding Monograph Prize* Until now, research on art schools has been largely occupied with the facts of particular schools and teachers. This book presents a philosophical account of the underlying practices and ideas that have come to shape contemporary art school teaching in the UK, US and Europe. It analyses two models that, hidden beneath the diversity of contemporary artist training, have come to dominate art schools. The first of these is essentially an old approach: a training guided by the artistic values of a single artist-teacher. The second dates from the 1960s, and is based around the group crit, in which diverse voices contribute to an artist’s development. Understanding the underlying principles and possibilities of these two models, which sit together in an uneasy tension, gives new insights into the character of contemporary art school teaching, demonstrating how art schools shape art and artists, how they can be a potent engine of creativity in contemporary culture and how they contribute to artistic research. A Philosophy of the Art School draws on first-hand accounts of art school teaching, and is deeply informed by disciplines ranging from art history and art theory, to the philosophy of art, education and creativity.

Blooms and Brushstrokes takes you on a unique journey through the history of Australian art, one flower at a time, examining the blooms depicted in still lifes, floral portraits, decorative interiors and botanical illustrations by a long line of Australian artists. Mother-and-daughter team Penelope and Tansy Curtin start this fascinating journey in the late eighteenth century, when the traditions adhering to the Western art canon were transplanted into the newly colonised Australia. They follow it through the rapidly developing artistic styles of the early twentieth century, to the new media of the contemporary period. These works of art also shine a light on the role and importance of plants and flowers in everyday life. They illustrate changing floral fashions, as well as highlighting flowers in their various forms - cut flowers, pot plants and gardens. And along the way you'll encounter many of Australia's most significant artists, including John Glover, Arthur Streeton, Margaret Preston, Grace Cossington Smith, John Brack and Margaret Olley, as well as some of Australia's most beautiful, and sometimes intriguing, native flora, such as the waratah and Sturt's desert pea, not to mention perennial garden favourites like roses, sweet peas and daisies. Spectacular, intimate, engaging and meticulously researched - and full of interesting and quirky facts about the flowers and the artists themselves, Blooms and Brushstrokes is a book for art, flower and history lovers alike.

Grace Crowley has been recognized as a product of European modernism and was one of the leading innovators of geometric abstraction in Australia. Having studied in Paris in the 1920s with one of the leading art teachers, writers and theorists, André Lhote, she returned to Australia having mastered the complex mathematics and geometry of the golden section and dynamic symmetry, that had become a framework for modernism. Through her teaching of these compositional techniques at the most progressive modern art school in Sydney in the 1930s, she became a crucial influence on the group of artists now recognized as the historical forerunners to American colour-field painting introduced to Australia in the 1960s, and Australian abstraction. Through her close friendship with Anne Dangar, who played a critical role in the success of Albert Gleizes’ utopian art colony in rural France, Crowley maintained contact with mainstream European modernism and links to the Abstraction-Creation Group in Paris. During the 1940s and 1950s, Crowley worked with fellow-artist Ralph Balson, and together they developed their own style of geometric abstract art which reflected the spiritual dimensions of Kandinsky and Mondrian. Although undervalued in her own time, the sincerity and uncompromising quality of her work that transcends national boundaries, makes her one of the most important Australian women artists of her generation.

South Australia's contribution to women in Australian art - New environment - Towards Modernism - Wartime and art in cricic - Post war - Changing perspectives.

A Companion to Australian Art A Companion to Australian Art is a thorough introduction to the art produced in Australia from the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 to the early 21st century. Beginning with the colonial art made by Australia’s first European settlers, this volume presents a collection of clear and accessible essays by established art historians and emerging scholars alike. Engaging, clearly-written chapters provide fresh insights into the principal Australian art movements, considered from a variety of chronological, regional and thematic perspectives. The text seeks to provide a balanced account of historical events to help readers discover the art of Australia on their own terms and draw their own conclusions. The book begins by surveying the historiography of Australian art and exploring the history of art museums in Australia. The following chapters discuss art forms such as photography, sculpture, portraiture and landscape painting, examining the practice of art in the separate colonies before Federation, and in the Commonwealth from the early 20th century to the present day. This authoritative volume covers the last 250 years of art in Australia, including the Early Colonial, High Colonial and Federation periods as well as the successive Modernist styles of the 20th century, and considers how traditional Aboriginal art has adapted and changed over the last fifty years. The Companion to Australian Art is a valuable resource for both undergraduate and graduate students of the history of Australian artforms from colonization to postmodernism, and for general readers with an interest in the nation’s colonial art history.