Politics, Patriotism and Painting: the acquisition of British pictures by Australian National Galleries, 1860-1949

我的项目通过纠正有关英国艺术品如何以及为什么被收藏在澳大利亚的规范性假设，为解释复杂的文化身份的形成开发了新的方法。我的研究表明，认为收藏实际上是霍布森的选择的普遍观点(澳大利亚画廊购买由控制伦敦的代理人挑选的英国艺术品)并不是对事实的真实反映。事实上，事实恰恰相反：英国艺术品是根据一个逻辑和自主的收购时间表热情获得的，该时间表解释了英国对澳大利亚情况的标准。澳大利亚画廊与欧洲和澳大利亚艺术流派的另一种模式一起观看了英国艺术，这是构建更适合澳大利亚艺术家和他们去画廊的公众的新英国身份的合成过程的一部分。这是一个翻译文化的案例研究，在这个研究中，普世价值是由更广泛的全球化帝国社区中的子群体翻译和重新形成的。现有的理论框架不足以解释英国艺术在全球背景下形成文化认同中所扮演的角色。20世纪70年代的经典后殖民理论已被艺术史学家用来确定现代主义的普遍性“帝国主张”和西方艺术史观点的相关沙文主义(见Griselda Pollock，“关注艺术史：愿景、地点和权力”，1995)。这种二分法未能充分解释文化如何“表现”另类身份，这些身份略有不同，但最终依赖于共同的基础，并在不列颠世界创造了一系列英国身份。我的项目将为这个重要而紧迫的研究问题提供一个解决方案：这个案例研究将对促进英国和澳大利亚另类英国群体之间帝国关系的新思维产生更广泛的影响。由于在其叙事中引入了现代主义，后殖民艺术史使这种关系的研究变得更加复杂。通过促进文体因素和/或地缘政治驱动因素，文化特性问题被搁置一边。这延续了后公法时期澳大利亚政策和关键做法的发展所确立的模式。1950年后，现代主义价值观的兴起和澳大利亚对美国政治忠诚的转变，导致早期对英国电影的收购被戏称为“老式”和“糟糕”。我的项目将从一种不合时宜的遗漏中恢复英国艺术品的收藏，这种遗漏将1950年后时期的价值观强加于对那一天之前时期的历史研究上。收藏康斯特布尔画作的愿望之所以有趣，不是因为它所代表的文化保守主义(例如，它的浪漫主义笔触)，而是因为它所体现的更广泛的价值观和原则。这个项目的主要目的是解释收藏的接受历史和修辞机构。在澳大利亚文化史上的关键时期，从1861年澳大利亚国家美术馆(第一个是NGV)的落成到1949年《伦敦宣言》和现代英联邦的诞生，澳大利亚为什么想要收藏英国艺术品？英国作品的可取性如何随着地缘政治、社会和经济因素的变化而变化？这告诉我们，英国在艺术领域的多重同步身份的演变有什么意义？博物馆研究的学科在很大程度上促进了艺术画廊成为文化政治中的主动代理人，而不仅仅是被动的物品储藏库。因此，澳大利亚艺术画廊的档案和收藏品提供了一个理想的机会，来探索国家认同的概念是如何在对立面的背景下表达出来的，英国艺术品成为构建另类和同等有效的英国认同形式的工具。

My project develops new approaches for explaining the formation of complex cultural identities by correcting normative assumptions about how and why British art was collected in Australia. My research demonstrates that the common idea that collecting was effectively a Hobson's choice (with Australian galleries acquiring works of British art selected by controlling London agents) is not a true reflection of the facts. In fact the opposite was true: British art was acquired enthusiastically according to a logical and autonomous schedule of acquisition that interpreted British standards for an Australian situation. British art was viewed by Australian galleries alongside alternative models of European and Australian schools of art as part of a synthetic process for constructing new British identities more appropriate to Australian artists and their gallery-going public. This represents a case study for 'translating cultures' in which universal values were translated and re-formed by sub-groups within a wider globalised imperial community.Present theoretical frameworks are inadequate for explaining the role played by British art in the formation of cultural identities within a global context. Classic post-colonial theory of the 1970s has been adopted by art historians to identify the universalising 'imperial claims' of modernism and the related chauvinism of Western art historical perspectives (see Griselda Pollock, 'Beholding Art History: Vision, Place and Power', 1995). Such a dichotomisation fails to explain adequately how culture 'performs' alternative identities that subtly differ but ultimately rely on common foundations and create a spectrum of British identities in the British World. My project will provide a solution to this important and urgent research problem: this case study will have a broader impact in promoting a new way of thinking about imperial relations between alternative British groups in the UK and Australia.Post-colonial art history has made the research of such relationships more complicated due to the introduction of modernism into its narratives. Issues of cultural identities have been sidelined through the promotion of stylistic factors and/or geopolitical drivers. This continues the patterns set by post-Commonweath developments in Australian policies and critical practices. The rise of modernist values and shift in Australian political allegiances to America after 1950 led to earlier acquisitions of British pictures being dubbed 'old-fashioned' and 'bad'. My project will recover the collecting of British art from an anachronistic elision that has imposed the values of the period after 1950 on the historical study of the period preceding that date. The desire to collect a painting by Constable is interesting not for the cultural conservatism it represents (for example, its Romantic brushwork) but for the wider values and principles that informed its purchase. The key aim of this project is to explain the reception history and rhetorical agency of collecting. In a crucial period of Australia's cultural history from the inauguration of Australia's National Galleries (the first being the NGV in 1861) to the London Declaration and the birth of the modern Commonwealth of Nations in 1949, why did Australia want to collect British art? How did the desirability of British works change in response to geopolitical, social and economic factors? What does this tell us about the evolution of multiple and synchronous British identities in art?The discipline of museum studies has done much to promote art galleries as proactive agents in cultural politics rather than merely reactive repositories of objects. The archives and collections of Australian art galleries thus offer an ideal opportunity for exploring how concepts of national identity were articulated in an antipodean context with British artworks becoming tools in the construction of alternative and equally valid forms of British identity.