The case of the vanishing mediator: seventies art in Australia

Australian art history is the subject of constant revision. For the last couple of decades, Australian art historians have increasingly revisited standard accounts of the country's artistic development, rereading Australian art according to current precepts. Largely, these researchers are motivated by a desire to engage with issues that, ignored or marginalised by traditional approaches, are now deemed important. Like most traditional accounts of Australian art history, Bernard Smith's foundational Australian Painting 1788-1960 is based on the sense of a chronological continuum that stretches from Australia's annexation by Europeans to the present day. However, as the revised editions of Australian Painting show, such a history becomes divided around the seventies