Expatriatism : a new platform for shaping Australian artistic practice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries : a case study of six artists working in Paris and London

摘要

Expatriatism has become a fact of life for many Australian artists in the twenty-firstudcentury. For our painters and sculptors in the late nineteenth and early twentiethudcenturies, however, the experience of living and working abroad was a quite newudphenomenon. In the 1880s, with John Russell’s historic journey to Belle-Île, audremote French island off the coast of Brittany, it became an emerging trend. Russelludforged a pioneering path that many Australian artists followed until 1914, when theudoutbreak of the First World War provisionally brought expatriatism to an end.ududThis thesis focuses on Australian artistic expatriatism during the period 1880 toud1930, a highpoint for our early artists’ engagement with the art worlds of Europe.udParis and London, then the two leading international cities to which most foreignudartists flocked, are the principal cultural contexts for the six case studies in thisudthesis. The work of Rupert Bunny, Ethel Carrick, George Coates, Agnes Goodsir,udBertram Mackennal and John Russell is explored in order to investigate the extent toudwhich expatriatism shaped their creative practice in their adopted cultures.ududPast histories of Australian art have marginalised expatriatism because it happenedud‘over there’ rather than ‘here’ and thus did not fit easily into the nationalistic andudgenerally patriarchal narratives the writers constructed. More recent histories,udespecially those written over the past decade, have been more inclusive, and theudsubject of artists working abroad has grown to be a critical issue. The ‘UnAustralianudart’ project considering the history of artistic interaction between Australia and theudwider world by cultural theorists Rex Butler and A. D. S. Donaldson has broken newudground, and their account has been a vital touchstone for this thesis.ududIn addition to reassessing the value of expatriatism for Australian art, this thesis alsoudaddresses two other lacunae, namely the lack of consideration of expatriate womenudartists in most of the earlier histories and the examination of the subject from theudexpatriate viewpoint as opposed to the conventional approach through an Australian lens. Until the 1970s male writers penned the discourse on Australian art, which hadudthe deleterious effect of presenting expatriatism as an exclusively masculineudexperience. This runs counter to my research showing that of all Australian artistsudtravelling abroad prior to 1914 just over a third were women. Furthermore, mostudAustralian literature has presented expatriatism from the homeland perspective, withudlittle consideration of how the artists themselves experienced it. Adopting a methodudpreviously untested, a psychocultural approach, giving a central role to theudinteraction of psychological and cultural factors in the artists’ encounter withudexpatriatism, I explore in this thesis how the major challenges of culturaludassimilation and cultural hybridity impacted on the artists’ experience, and theirudimportance for their art. The research of key contemporary theorists such as HomiudBhabha, Gérard Bouchard, Montserrat Guibernau and Hajar Yazdiha underpins theudinvestigation.ududThis thesis aims to discover and explain the extent to which the six selected artistsudadapted to the host cultures, and how this shaped their artistic practice. I demonstrateudthat each artist assimilated differently, with the degree of merging of his or herudAustralianness with foreignness (or in the case of Ethel Carrick her British–udAustralianness with French culture) the key to his or her success. Just as culturaludhybridity delineated the experience of expatriatism for these artists, so tooudexpatriatism has shaped the history of Australian art. This investigation reveals that itudwas vital in connecting our expatriates with remarkably progressive cultures, andudthrough their experience and influence considerably broadening the local perspectiveudby contributing a more cosmopolitan, cross-cultural approach to art in Australia.