Bernard William Smith

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Bernard William Smith (b. 3 October 1916) is an Australian art historian, art critic and academic.

Born in Sydney of Charles Smith and Rose Anne Tierney; married his first wife, Kate Challis, in 1941 and his second wife, Margaret Forster, in 1995.

Educated at the University of Sydney and at the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, University of London; completed a PhD at the Australian National University; taught in the NSW Department of Education, 1935-1944, and then served as an education officer for the Art Gallery of NSW country art exhibitions programme, 1944-1952.

He was a lecturer, then senior lecturer, in the University of Melbourne’s Fine Arts Department, 1955-1963, and art critic for The Age newspaper, Melbourne, 1963-1966. Subsequently he was the founding Professor of Contemporary Art and Director of the Power Institute of Fine Arts, University of Sydney, 1967-1977. He was the president of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1977-1980. Currently, he is a professorial fellow in the department of Art History at the University of Melbourne. He is a recipient, Chevalier, of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

[edit] Books

  • Place, taste and tradition: a study of Australian art since 1788 Sydney: Ure Smith, 1945 (reprinted Melbourne: OUP, 1979)
  • A catalogue of Australian oil paintings in the National Art Gallery of New South Wales 1875-1952 Sydney: The Gallery, 1953
  • European vision and the South Pacific, 1768-1850: a study in the history of art and ideas Oxford, Eng.: Clarendon Press, 1960 (reprinted 1985)
  • Australian Painting, 1788-2000 Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1962 (updated 1971; updated 1991 with Terry Smith; & update 2001 with Christopher Heathcote)
  • Australian painting today: The John Murtagh Macrossan memorial lecture, 1961 St. Lucia, Qld: Queensland University Press, 1962
  • Concerning contemporary art: the Power lectures, 1968-1973 (ed.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975
  • Documents on art and taste in Australia: the colonial period, 1770-1914 (ed.) Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1975
  • The antipodean manifesto: essays in art and history Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1975
  • Art as information: reflections on the art from Captain Cook's voyages Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1979
  • The spectre of Truganini Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1980
  • The boy Adeodatus: the portrait of a lucky young bastard Ringwood, Vic.: Allen Lane, 1984 (reprinted 1985, 1994)
  • The art of Captain Cook's voyages (with Rüdiger Joppien) Melbourne: Oxford University Press, three volumes, 1985-1987
  • The death of the artist as hero: essays in history and culture Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988
  • The Art of the First Fleet and other early Australian drawings (eds Bernard Smith and Alwyne Wheeler), Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988
  • Baudin in Australian waters: the artwork of the French voyage of discovery to the southern lands 1800-1804 (eds J. Bonnemains, E. Forsyth and B. Smith) Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988
  • Terra Australis: the furthest shore (eds W. Eisler and B. Smith) Sydney: International Cultural Corporation of Australia, 1988
  • The critic as advocate: selected essays 1941-1988 Melbourne: Oxford University Press Australia, 1989
  • Imagining the Pacific in the wake of the Cook voyages Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press at the Miegunyah Press, 1992
  • Noel Counihan: artist and revolutionary Melbourne; New York: Oxford University Press, 1993
  • Poems 1938-1993 Carlton, Vic.: Meanjin, 1996
  • Modernism's history: a study in twentieth-century art and ideas New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998
  • A pavane for another time Sydney: Macmillan, 2002
  • The Formalesque Melbourne: Macmillian, 2007 (forthcoming)

[edit] Selected essays

  • 'European vision and the south pacific' Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 8 (1950) 65-100
  • ‘Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner and Cook’s second voyage’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 19 (1956) 117-152
  • ‘Modernism and post-modernism: neo-colonial viewpoint—concerning the sources of modernism and post-modernism in the visual arts’ Thesis Eleven 38 (1994) 104-117
  • ‘Modernism, post-modernism and the formalesque’, Editions 20 (1994) 9-11

[edit] Sources

  • International Who’s Who London: Europa Publications, 2000
  • The writings of Bernard Smith: bibliography 1938-1998 (ed. J. Spencer and P. Wright), Sydney: Power Publications, 2000