Bernard William Smith was an Australian art historian, art critic and academic, considered the founding father of Australian art history, and one of the country's most important thinkers. His book Place, Taste and Tradition: a study of Australian art since 1788 is a key text in Australian art history, and influence on Robert Hughes. Smith was associated with the Communist Party of Australia, and after leaving the party remained a prominent left-wing intellectual and Marxist thinker. Following the death of his wife in 1989, he sold much of their art collection to establish, the Kate Challis RAKA, one of the first prizes in the country for Indigenous artists and writers.
Biography
Smith was born in Balmain, Sydney of Charles Smith and Rose Anne Tierney on 3 October 1916. Born an illegitimate child, he was a ward of the state and raised in fostered care. In 1941, he married his first wife, Kate Challis, who died in 1989. Smith married his second wife, Margaret Forster, in 1995 and subsequently separated. Smith was educated at the University of Sydney. Between 1935 and 1944 he taught in the NSW Department of Education. After that he served as an education officer for the Art Gallery of NSW country art exhibitions programme from 1944. In 1948, he won a scholarship to study at the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, University of London. On his return to Australia in 1951, Smith returned to his position at the art gallery. In 1952, Smith was awarded a research scholarship at the newly established Australian National University, where he completed a PhD European Vision and the South Pacific which was published in 1960 by Oxford University Press. He was a lecturer and then a senior lecturer in the University of Melbourne's Fine Arts Department. In 1959, he convened a group of seven emerging figurative painters known as the Antipodeans, which organised its only exhibition in August 1959 and with them composed The Antipodean Manifesto'. Between 1963 and 1966, he worked as an art critic for The Age'' newspaper, Melbourne. In 1967, the Smiths moved to Sydney, where Smith became the founding Professor of Contemporary Art and director of the Power Institute of Fine Arts, University of Sydney, a position he held until his retirement in 1977. In 1977, the Smiths returned to Melbourne, and Smith became the president of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, until 1980. Later, he was a professorial fellow in the department of Art History at the University of Melbourne. In 1980 he presented "The Boyer Lectures" on the theme of "The Spectre of Trunganini" which was one of the first public condemnations of the Australian government's policy of removing Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, now known as The Stolen Generations. Smith was a recipient, Chevalier, of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He founded the annual Kate Challis RAKA Award, worth, in honour of his first wife.
Books
Place, Taste and Tradition: a study of Australian art since 1788 Sydney: Ure Smith, 1945
The Boy Adeodatus: the portrait of a lucky young bastard Ringwood, Victoria: Allen Lane, 1984
The Art of Captain Cook's Voyages 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, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988
Baudin in Australian Waters: the artwork of the French voyage of discovery to the southern lands 1800–1804 Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988
Terra Australis: the furthest shore 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, Victoria: Melbourne University Press at the Miegunyah Press, 1992
Noel Counihan: artist and revolutionary Melbourne; New York: Oxford University Press, 1993
Poems 1938–1993 Carlton, Victoria: 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: A Guide to Modern Art and Its History Melbourne: Macmillan, 2007
Selected essays and articles
"European vision and the south pacific", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 8 65–100
"Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Cook's second voyage", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 19 117–152
"Modernism and post-modernism: neo-colonial viewpoint—concerning the sources of modernism and post-modernism in the visual arts", Thesis Eleven 38 104–117
"Modernism, post-modernism and the formalesque", Editions 20 9–11
