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

我的项目通过纠正关于英国艺术品如何以及为什么在澳大利亚被收集的规范性假设，开发了解释复杂文化身份形成的新方法。我的研究表明，人们普遍认为收藏实际上是霍布森的选择（澳大利亚画廊收购由控制的伦敦经纪人挑选的英国艺术品），这并不是事实的真实反映。事实上，事实恰恰相反：英国艺术品是按照一种合乎逻辑的、自主的收购时间表热情收购的，这种时间表将英国的标准解释为澳大利亚的情况。澳大利亚画廊将英国艺术与欧洲和澳大利亚艺术流派的另类模型一起视为构建更适合澳大利亚艺术家及其画廊公众的新英国身份的综合过程的一部分。这代表了一个“文化翻译”的案例研究，在这个案例中，普遍的价值观被更广泛的全球化帝国社区内的子群体翻译和重新塑造。目前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所扮演的角色。20世纪70年代的经典后殖民理论被艺术史学家们用来识别现代主义的普遍化的“帝国主义主张”以及与之相关的西方艺术史视角的沙文主义（参见格里塞尔达·波洛克，“观察艺术史：视觉、地方和权力”，1995）。这种二分法无法充分解释文化是如何“表现”出微妙的不同，但最终依赖于共同的基础，并在英国世界中创造出一系列英国身份的。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：这个案例研究将在促进思考英国和澳大利亚其他英国群体之间帝国关系的新方式方面产生更广泛的影响。后殖民艺术史由于将现代主义引入其叙事，使得对这种关系的研究变得更加复杂。由于风格因素和/或地缘政治因素的推动，文化身份问题已经被边缘化。这延续了英联邦后澳大利亚政策和批评实践的发展模式。1950年后，现代主义价值观的兴起和澳大利亚政治忠诚转向美国，导致早期收购的英国画作被称为“过时”和“糟糕”。我的项目将从一个时代错误的遗漏中恢复英国艺术的收藏，这个遗漏将1950年之后的时期的价值强加于1950年之前时期的历史研究。收藏康斯特布尔画作的欲望之所以有趣，并不是因为它所代表的文化保守主义（例如，它的浪漫主义笔法），而是因为它体现了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代理。在澳大利亚文化史上的一个关键时期，从澳大利亚国家美术馆（1861年第一个是澳大利亚国家美术馆）的落成，到《伦敦宣言》和1949年现代英联邦的诞生，为什么澳大利亚想要收藏英国艺术？英国作品的受欢迎程度如何随着地缘政治、社会和经济因素的变化而变化？这告诉我们在艺术中多重同步的英国身份的演变是什么？博物馆研究这门学科在促进艺术画廊成为文化政治的积极行动者，而不仅仅是被动的物品仓库方面做了很多工作。因此，澳大利亚艺术画廊的档案和收藏提供了一个理想的机会，可以探索国家身份的概念是如何在澳大利亚的背景下表达出来的，而英国艺术品则成为构建另一种同样有效的英国身份形式的工具。

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.