School of Culture and Communication - Theses

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Art criticism in Australia 1970-1984

McAuliffe, Christopher John ( 1986)

My research proceeds from two fundamental assumptions; that art, like all 'reality', is socially and discursively constructed; and that art criticism, as a major element in the institutional discourse on art, plays a crucial role in its constitution. Art is not a finite and unmediated thing in itself to be dissected in the search for a transcendental generative essence, rather, it is to be understood as a domain of discursive practices, the specificity of which rests on material and ideological conditions of possibility. While acknowledging the importance of the material ‘base’ in the determination of these conditions of possibility, I do not consider art to be a mechanistic superstructural reflection of it, a mere ideological mirror of the conditions of production. Furthermore, it should be understood that the material ‘base’, too, is discursively constituted; it is not an essential self-identity but a textual representation. (From Introduction)