Black Artists Bristle At Greer Attack
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday December 6, 1997
The writer Germaine Greer was accused yesterday of jeopardising Aboriginal independence and a $200 million a year export industry for her own self-aggrandisement because of her claim that indigenous art has become "crass, flashy, predictable and 'eartless".
The operator of the Cooee Aboriginal Art Gallery, Mr Adrian Newstead, said Ms Greer was being "emotive, unfair and inaccurate" in her accusations that many Aboriginal artists are painting what white people want them to and the international market now saw it as a "con".
In an article in the Herald today (Spectrum, Page 5), Ms Greer says the famous Papunya paintings of the 1970s were "monuments to a vanished culture." For more than 60 years, Aboriginal artwork has been "the capitulation of Aboriginal creativity to European notions of what art is".
Dealers "raid the pre-literate imagination" and, at the end, the late Emily Kame Kngwarreye, beset by greedy dealers, dragged her brush "back and forth in a ghastly parody of her own style", says Greer.
Miss Queenie McKenzie, an 84-year-old painter from Warmun in the Kimberley who is exhibiting at Cooee, said no-one told her what to paint. It often came in dreams. Using ochre gathered from the land itself, she painted the country of her grandparents so young people could learn their Dreaming.
"I don't interfere in her culture. Why does she want to interfere in my culture?" said Miss McKenzie, who has sold extensively overseas and commands up to $35,000 a painting.
"If she wants to mouth off, she can have a good look. We'll take her to a lubra place and show her the lubra corroboree. Then she'll know what happens."
Mr Newstead said: "Emily was one of the most feisty old women I ever met and she wasn't going to do anything she didn't want."
The co-ordinator of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists' Co-operative, Ms Jodie Chester, said: "There is a problem with the commercial aspect. We call the bastardisation of Aboriginal culture `the dot conspiracy'. People think if it doesn't have dots, or if it isn't on bark, it isn't Aboriginal."
But Ms Greer had not differentiated between fine and commercial art and failed to recognise that there was urban Aboriginal art. Greg Weatherby, an artist now exhibiting at Boomalli, said Ms Greer was like the Independent MP Mrs Pauline Hanson in her denial of Aboriginal culture.
Another Boomalli artist, Ms Elaine Russell, said she felt betrayed as one of a group of Aboriginal women who had greeted Ms Greer in Sydney during her recent visit as an act of reconciliation.
The director of Aboriginal art at Sotheby's, Mr Tim Klingender, said in many communities "absolutely inspirational" works are being painted. "They are totally refreshing and invigorating, world-class works of art which are having a very positive effect on the indigenous people, in that it is providing a strong source of money and giving them a reason to maintain Dreamings and ceremonies and instruct young people."
New records were set recently when a Papunya painting sold for $206,000 and last month a bark sold for $86,000 in New York.
© 1997 Sydney Morning Herald
