Bernard William Smith

Bernard William Smith (born 3 October 1916) is an Australian art historian, art critic and academic.

Born in Sydney of Charles Smith and Rose Anne Tierney; married his first wife, Kate Challis, in 1941 and his second wife, Margaret Forster, in 1995.

Educated at the University of Sydney and at the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, University of London; completed a PhD at the Australian National University; taught in the NSW Department of Education, 1935-1944, and then served as an education officer for the Art Gallery of NSW country art exhibitions programme, 1944-1952.

He was a lecturer, then senior lecturer, in the University of Melbourne’s Fine Arts Department, 1955-1963, and art critic for "The Age" newspaper, Melbourne, 1963-1966. Subsequently he was the founding Professor of Contemporary Art and Director of the Power Institute of Fine Arts, University of Sydney, 1967-1977. He was the president of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1977-1980. Currently, he is a professorial fellow in the department of Art History at the University of Melbourne. He is a recipient, Chevalier, of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Books

*"Place, taste and tradition: a study of Australian art since 1788" Sydney: Ure Smith, 1945 (reprinted Melbourne: OUP, 1979)

*"A catalogue of Australian oil paintings in the National Art Gallery of New South Wales 1875-1952" Sydney: The Gallery, 1953

*"European vision and the South Pacific, 1768-1850: a study in the history of art and ideas" Oxford, Eng.: Clarendon Press, 1960 (reprinted 1985)

*"Australian Painting, 1788-2000" Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1962 (updated 1971; updated 1991 with Terry Smith; & update 2001 with Christopher Heathcote)

*"Australian painting today: The John Murtagh Macrossan memorial lecture, 1961" St. Lucia, Qld: Queensland University Press, 1962

*"The architectural character of Glebe, Sydney" (with Kate Smith), Sydney: [http://www.coop-bookshop.com.au/ University Co-operative Bookshop Press] , 1973 (reprinted 1985)

*"Concerning contemporary art: the Power lectures, 1968-1973" (ed.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975

*"Documents on art and taste in Australia: the colonial period, 1770-1914" (ed.) Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1975

*"The antipodean manifesto: essays in art and history" Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1975

*"Art as information: reflections on the art from Captain Cook's voyages" Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1979

*"The spectre of Truganini" Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1980

*"The boy Adeodatus: the portrait of a lucky young bastard" Ringwood, Vic.: Allen Lane, 1984 (reprinted 1985, 1994)

*"The art of Captain Cook's voyages" (with Rüdiger Joppien) 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" (eds Bernard Smith and Alwyne Wheeler), Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988

*"Baudin in Australian waters: the artwork of the French voyage of discovery to the southern lands 1800-1804" (eds J. Bonnemains, E. Forsyth and B. Smith) Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988

*"Terra Australis: the furthest shore" (eds W. Eisler and B. Smith) 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, Vic.: Melbourne University Press at the Miegunyah Press, 1992

*"Noel Counihan: artist and revolutionary" Melbourne; New York: Oxford University Press, 1993

*"Poems 1938-1993" Carlton, Vic.: 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" Melbourne: Macmillian, 2007 (forthcoming)

Selected essays

*'European vision and the south pacific' "Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes" 8 (1950) 65-100

*‘Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner and Cook’s second voyage’ "Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes" 19 (1956) 117-152

*‘Modernism and post-modernism: neo-colonial viewpoint—concerning the sources of modernism and post-modernism in the visual arts’ "Thesis Eleven" 38 (1994) 104-117

*‘Modernism, post-modernism and the formalesque’, "Editions" 20 (1994) 9-11

Sources

*"International Who’s Who" London: Europa Publications, 2000

*"The writings of Bernard Smith: bibliography 1938-1998" (ed. J. Spencer and P. Wright), Sydney: Power Publications, 2000