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Books by andrew mcnamara

Bauhaus Diaspora and Beyond: Transforming Education through Art, Design and Architecture, Jul 17, 2019

Bauhaus Diaspora and Beyond: Transforming Education through Art, Design and Architecture presents... more Bauhaus Diaspora and Beyond: Transforming Education through Art, Design and Architecture presents an extraordinary new Australasian cultural history. It is a migrant and refugee story: from 1930, the arrival of so many emigre, internee and refugee educators helped to transform art, architecture and design in Australia and New Zealand. Fifteen thematic essays and twenty individual case studies bring to light a tremendous amount of new archival material in order to show how these innovative educators, exiled from Nazism, introduced Bauhaus ideas and models to a new world. As their Bauhaus model spanned art, architecture and design, the book provides a unique cross-disciplinary, emigre history of art education in Australia and New Zealand. It offers a remarkable and little-known chapter in the wider Bauhaus venture, which has multiple legacies and continues to inform our conceptions of progressive education, creativity and the role of art and design in the wider community.

Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack: More Than A Bauhaus Artist, 2021

Foreword to first English language biography of Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack

Migrations: Migration processes and artistic practices in a time of war: From the 20th century to the present (Migracoes - Processos migratorios e praticas artisticas em tempo de guerra: do seculo XX a actualidade), 2017

A signicant number of central European and German refugees and émigrés sought refuge from war an... more A signicant number of central European and German refugees and émigrés sought refuge from war and fascism in Australia during the inter-war and post-World War Two years. While many historical accounts of Antipodean modernism stress its distance from French avant-garde sources, this generation of refugees and émigrés brought local practitioners into direct contact with aspects of the modernist endeavour. In particular, these refugees and émigrés introduced an approach to modernism that was cross- disciplinary and derived its inspiration from a systematic approach to arts education. This conception tended to highlight the common elements between art, design and architecture.While there have been numerous, individual studies of this generation, this paper foreshadows a much larger research project that aims to link these individual histories into one coherent study. In this paper we offer an indicative sample of a select number of case studies in order to highlight some of these commonalities, such as a commitment to reform education, a systemic interdisciplinary approach to modernist art education and, nally, colour-light explorations in art, design and architecture that arise as a consequence of these educational philosophies.

Migrations: Migration processes and artistic practices in a time of war: From the 20th century to the present (migrações: processos migratórios e práticas artísticas em tempo de guerra: do século xx à actualidade), 2017

A signicant number of central European and German refugees and émigrés sought refuge from war and... more A signicant number of central European and German refugees and émigrés sought refuge from war and fascism in Australia during the inter-war and post-World War Two years.While many historical accounts of Antipodean modernism stress its distance from French avant-garde sources, this generation of refugees and émigrés brought local practitioners into direct contact with aspects of the modernist endeavour. In particular, these refugees and émigrés introduced an approach to modernism that was cross-disciplinary and derived its inspiration from a systematic approach to arts education. This conception tended to highlight the common elements between art, design and architecture. While there have been numerous, individual studies of this generation, this paper foreshadows a much larger research project that aims to link these individual histories into one coherent study. In this paper we offer an indicative sample of a select number of case studies in order to highlight some of these commonalities, such as a commitment to reform education, a systemic interdisciplinary approach to modernist art education and, finally, colour-light explorations in art, design and architecture that arise as a consequence of these educational philosophies.

Surpassing Modernity: Ambivalence in Art, Politics and Society , 2018

For the past thirty to forty years, cultural analysis has focused on developing terms to explain ... more For the past thirty to forty years, cultural analysis has focused on developing terms to explain the surpassing of modernity. Discussion is stranded in an impasse between those who view the term modernity with automatic disdain-as deterministic, Eurocentric or imperialistic-and a booming interest that is renewing the study of modernism. Another dilemma is that the urge to move away from, or beyond, modernity arises because it is viewed as difficult, even unsavoury. Yet, there has always been a view of modernity as somehow difficult to live with, and that has been said by figures we regard today as typical modernists.

McNamara argues in this book that it is time to forget the quest to surpass modernity. Instead, we should re-examine a legacy that continues to inform our artistic conceptions, our political debates, our critical justifications, even if that legacy is baffling and contradictory. We may find it difficult to live with, but without recourse to this legacy, our critical-cultural ambitions would remain seriously diminished.

How do we explain the culture we live in today? And how do we, as citizens, make sense of it? This book suggests these questions have become increasingly difficult to answer.

Sweat—the sub-tropical imaginary

Does heat have a cooling effect on culture? Sweat argues the reverse: culture thrives in the subt... more Does heat have a cooling effect on culture? Sweat argues the reverse: culture thrives in the subtropical zones. While acknowledging that the subtropical generates ambivalence being cast as alternately idyllic or hellish Sweat nonetheless seeks to develop the specific voices of subtropical cultures. The uneasy place of this sweaty discourse is explored across art, literature, architecture, and the built environment. In particular, Sweat focuses on the most commonly experienced situations, the everyday house. While it addresses subjects from Japan, Brazil, and France, Sweat centres on Brisbane, Queensland long in the shadow of Sydney and Melbourne in the Australian cultural psyche due to its enduring and self-conscious attention to subtropical living. Edited by Andrew McNamara, with contributions by Atelier Bow-Wow, Susan Best, Chris Brisbin, Susan Carson, Julie Ewington, Catherine De Lorenzo and Deborah van der Plaat, Tracey Moffatt, Courtney Pedersen, Mark Pennings, Julian Raxworthy, Mark Taylor, and Andrew Wilson

An Apprehensive Aesthetic: the legacy of modernist culture

Art continues to bemuse and confuse many people today. Yet, its critical analyses are saturated w... more Art continues to bemuse and confuse many people today. Yet, its critical analyses are saturated with daunting analyses of contemporary art's exhaustion, its predictability or its absorption into global commercial culture. In this book, the author seeks to clarify this apprehensive perception of art. He argues it is a consequence not only of confounding art-works, but also of the paradoxical impetus of a culture of modernity. By positively reassessing the perplexing or apprehensive features of cultural modernity as well as of aesthetic inquiry, this book redefines the ambitions of art in the wake of this legacy. In the process, it challenges many familiar approaches to art inquiry in order to offer a new understanding of the aesthetic, social and cultural aspirations of art in our time.

Modern times: the untold story of modernism in Australia (with Ann Stephen and Philip Goad)

Richly illustrated and beautifully designed, Modern Times - The Untold Story of Modernism in Aust... more Richly illustrated and beautifully designed, Modern Times - The Untold Story of Modernism in Australia reveals how modernism transformed all aspects of Australian culture across five tumultuous decades from 1917 to 1967. The influence of modernism was far-reaching. "Modern Times" looks at all things modern and as diverse as art, advertising, photography, film, fashion, the body, architecture, interiors, recreational sites such as the new swimming pools and fountains, milk bars and auto culture.Modernism embodied the utopian possibilities of the twentieth century. It transformed Australian cities into complex metropolises and offered access to new cosmopolitan cultures. This is the first time that such diverse material has been brought together in one volume.

Modernism and Australia: Art, Design and Architecture 1917-1967 (2007)—with Ann Stephen and Philip Goad

This first anthology of modernist art, design and architecture in Australia reveals the raw nerve... more This first anthology of modernist art, design and architecture in Australia reveals the raw nerves that modernism exposed and highlights the role of migrants, expatriates, travel and mass reproduction in the reception of modernism in Australia. In more than two hundred documents—talks, letters, fiery debates, public manifestoes and private—the main players of the time (1917-67) convey in their own words the tensions, aspirations and paradoxes behind the reception of modernism. Each document is put in context and accompanied by expert commentaries from the editors. The collection overturns many key assumptions about Australian culture, revealing not a 'time-lag' in reception, but an up-to-date engagement with the latest overseas trends and developments. It shows a surprising acceptance of modernism in the commercial realms (design, fashion, interior decoration), yet chronicles the dogged institutional resistance that greeted modernism, particularly in the fine arts.

Papers by andrew mcnamara

Modernism and the Medium: On Greenberg and Weber

Fordham University Press eBooks, 2007

McNamara, Andrew E. (2007) Modernism and the medium: On Greenberg and Weber. In: Morgan Wortham, ... more McNamara, Andrew E. (2007) Modernism and the medium: On Greenberg and Weber. In: Morgan Wortham, Simon and Hall, Gary (Eds.) Experimenting : essays with Samuel Weber. Fordham University Press, United States of America, New York, pp. 159-182.

Art and thought

Australian and New Zealand journal of art, 2004

An analysis of the latest literature on the relationship between art and thought as found in the ... more An analysis of the latest literature on the relationship between art and thought as found in the volume, Art and Thought (2003). The book considers how "art thinks." This review essay examines the lively and dense proposals for reconsidering this relation. In turn, it asks what happens when art thinks differently than we might expect?

Visual acuity is not what it seems : on Ian Burn's 'Late' reflections

Institute of Modern Art eBooks, 2010

A whole tradition is said to be based on the hierarchical distinction between the perceptual and ... more A whole tradition is said to be based on the hierarchical distinction between the perceptual and conceptual. In art, Niklas Luhmann argues, this schism is played out and repeated in conceptual art. This paper complicates this depiction by examining Ian Burn's last writings in which I argue the artist-writer reviews the challenge of minimal-conceptual art in terms of its perceptual pre-occupations. Burn revisits his own work and the legacy of minimal-conceptual by moving away from the kind of ideology critique he is best known for internationally in order to reassert the long overlooked visual-perceptual preoccupations of the conceptual in art.

No two ways about it: on the Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri retrospective

Creative Industries Faculty, 2005

Reviews the travelling retrospective of the indigenous artist, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. Also... more Reviews the travelling retrospective of the indigenous artist, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. Also examines some of the prevailing discourses on indigenous art.

Two ways : between tradition and innovation

Can art be simultaneously modern and traditional? This short piece examines the perplexities invo... more Can art be simultaneously modern and traditional? This short piece examines the perplexities involved in seeking to address both cultural parameters at once in indigenous art of Australia.

On APT 6 : Rohan Wealleans performing identity at the disjuncture between customary and contemporary culture

Creative Industries Faculty, 2010

Chapter 7 Modernism and the Medium: On Greenberg and Weber

Fordham University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2022

Illegible echoes : Felix Gonzalez-Torres, the artist-spy

Abstract (E): Art leaves a mark, so thought Felix Gonzalez-Torres, but what kind of mark? Gonzale... more Abstract (E): Art leaves a mark, so thought Felix Gonzalez-Torres, but what kind of mark? Gonzalez-Torres aimed to revitalize this age-old quest within the visual arts by challenging it. He sought to achieve his aims by fabricating a permeable monument; by highlighting ...

Words and Pictures in the Age of the Image: An Interview with W.J.T. Mitchell

Routledge eBooks, Nov 25, 2016

An interview conducted by Andrew McNamara with W.J.T. Mitchell, University of Chicago, editor of ... more An interview conducted by Andrew McNamara with W.J.T. Mitchell, University of Chicago, editor of Critical Inquiry, and author of Iconology (1987), Picture Theory (1994), The Last Dinosaur Book (1998) and What Do Pictures Want? (2005). McNamara and Mitchell discuss a range of issues around the distinction between words and images, visual and verbal texts. This interview was conducted in 1996 and published in Eyeline magazine.

Bauhaus Diaspora and Beyond: Transforming Education through Art, Design and Architecture, Jul 17, 2019

Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack: More Than A Bauhaus Artist, 2021

Foreword to first English language biography of Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack

Surpassing Modernity: Ambivalence in Art, Politics and Society , 2018

How do we explain the culture we live in today? And how do we, as citizens, make sense of it? This book suggests these questions have become increasingly difficult to answer.

Sweat—the sub-tropical imaginary

An Apprehensive Aesthetic: the legacy of modernist culture

Modern times: the untold story of modernism in Australia (with Ann Stephen and Philip Goad)

Modernism and Australia: Art, Design and Architecture 1917-1967 (2007)—with Ann Stephen and Philip Goad

Modernism and the Medium: On Greenberg and Weber

Fordham University Press eBooks, 2007

Art and thought

Australian and New Zealand journal of art, 2004

Visual acuity is not what it seems : on Ian Burn's 'Late' reflections

Institute of Modern Art eBooks, 2010

No two ways about it: on the Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri retrospective

Creative Industries Faculty, 2005

Two ways : between tradition and innovation

On APT 6 : Rohan Wealleans performing identity at the disjuncture between customary and contemporary culture

Creative Industries Faculty, 2010

Chapter 7 Modernism and the Medium: On Greenberg and Weber

Fordham University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2022

Illegible echoes : Felix Gonzalez-Torres, the artist-spy

Words and Pictures in the Age of the Image: An Interview with W.J.T. Mitchell

Routledge eBooks, Nov 25, 2016

Creative Industries Faculty, Aug 1, 2013

Udo Sellbach: Seeing it, still

This essay examines the work of Udo Sellbach showing how aspects of the artist's biographical... more This essay examines the work of Udo Sellbach showing how aspects of the artist's biographical story, including his wartime experiences, are difficult to avoid. At the same time, the essays explains that this focus is too limiting. Only by taking into the nuanced meaning of his title, And Still I See It, can we grasp the full scope of his art.

Text, Oct 30, 2012

Recent experience of practice-led postgraduate supervision has prompted me to conclude that the p... more Recent experience of practice-led postgraduate supervision has prompted me to conclude that the practice-led research method, as it is currently construed, produces good outcomes, especially in permitting practitioners in the creative arts, design and media into the research framework, but at the same time it also generates certain recurring difficulties. What are these difficulties? Practice-led candidates tend to rely on a narrow range of formulations with the result that they assume: (i) the innovative nature of practice-led research; (ii) that its novelty is based in opposition to other research methods; (iii) that practice is intrinsically research, often leading to tautological formulations; and (iv) the hyper-self-reflexive nature of practice-led research. This paper proposes a set of guidelines composed in order to circumvent the shortcomings that result from these recurring formulations. My belief is that, if these shortcomings are avoided, there is nothing to prevent practice-led from further developing as a research inquiry and thus achieving rewarding and successful research outcomes. Originally composed for the purposes of postgraduate supervision, these six rules are presented here in the context of a wider analysis of the emergence of practice-led research and its current conditions of possibility as a research method.

Media International Australia, Feb 1, 2002

The concept of 'creative industries' presents a new idea for the Arts/Humanities faculty predicat... more The concept of 'creative industries' presents a new idea for the Arts/Humanities faculty predicated upon forging a conjunction between the creative arts and cultural industries. It also provides a unique opportunity for the creative arts as we// as the old Humanities faculty to acquire a new role at the centre ofpolicy discussions about the new economy. 'Creative industries', in short. provides arts and humanities with a 'new' industry face suited to the needs of the twenty-first century. Yet, so far, discussions about creative industries have focused upon either their new economy connections or upon their delineation from 'cultural industries ', This fosters the impression that the concept ofcreative industries is forged from the intersection of cultural studies, the new economy and cultural industries alone. What is the place ofthe creative arts within creative industries? Has it any feasible critical role when it is constantly dubbed 'the subsidised arts '? This paper presents a reading that shows that the conception ofcreative industries is actually reliant upon the creative arts -in particular, the legacy of interdisciplinary modernist practice within the visual arts. It will examine how the sometimes anti-art rhetoric ofsome creative industries manifestos evokes this legacy. It then draws out some important socio-political implications of throwing this legacy into this mix that currently constitutes 'creative industries', Let's clarify something immediately: avant-garde strategies are deceptive and never more so than when used to discuss art itself. An apt example is the essay 'Creative Industries -from Blue Poles to Fat' Pipes', Stuart Cunningham and John Hartley presented this paper to the Australian Academy of the Humanities in July 200 I, with a condensed version later appearing in the Academy newsletter. While ostensibly setting out to show that 'creative industries' forges a new possibility out of the dichotomy between the creative arts and cultural industries, the authors first target fine art and the old Arts/Humanities faculty. Fine arts is elitist and a subsidised burden on the public purse, the Humanities faculty flounders due to its lack of contemporary social and economic relevance. Both, they charge, are not only antiquated, but also embody elements 'that were no friend to democratization or popular education'. Disposing of these dinosaurs, the authors pinpoint the duality creative industries must overcome with equally unbridled frankness: 'creative arts are a form of conspicuous waste, cultural industries a form of commercial exploitation'. By forging a new compact from these two traditionally opposed arenas, the concept of creative industries brings art in from the cold and allies it to 'the productive capacities ofcontemporary global, mediated, technology-supported economies' (Hartley and Cunningham, 20ooa, 200 Ib). Their pert challenge to fine art and the Humanities faculty was no doubt felt to be necessary in order to delineate 'creative industries' more effectively and to illustrate the conceptual Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy

Beyond “Beyondness”

Penn State University Press eBooks, Jun 26, 2015

Undesign

Routledge eBooks, Oct 4, 2018

Undesign brings together leading artists, designers and theorists working at the intersection of ... more Undesign brings together leading artists, designers and theorists working at the intersection of art and design. The text focuses on design practices, and conceptual approaches, which challenge the traditional notion that design should emphasise its utility over aesthetic or other non-functional considerations. This publication brings to light emerging practices that consider the social, political and aesthetic potential of "undesigning" our complex designed world. In documenting these new developments, the book highlights the overlaps with science, engineering, biotechnology and hacktivism, which operate at the intersection of art and design.

Art History, Mar 1, 1992

Everything must be amenable to being mathematically squared and resistant to being squared at the... more Everything must be amenable to being mathematically squared and resistant to being squared at the same time. Max Weber coined the term 'the process of disenchantment' to describe a rationalization of knowledge and belief. This process supposedly eradicated the play of 'mysterious incalculable forces' in knowledge, and thereby in the world, giving rise to the belief that 'one can, in principle, master all things by calculation'. I The prospect of a mastery that could enable the organization of life as though a mathematical equation has fascinated social theorists ever since. Jean Baudrillard, for instance, has credited the Bauhaus with instituting the aesthetic equivalent -if not the very basis -of these rationalizing processes disposed toward pure functionality (in all modes and spheres oflife). In fact, according to Baudrillard, the Bauhaus inaugurated' a synthesis of form and function, of "beauty and utility" , of art and technology'. 2 At first this assertion appears rather odd, as art and aesthetics have long been regarded as that realm of thought and activity devoid of, and even immune to, such clinical functional determination. Yet this scenario of a disenchanted' Bauhaus world' raises important questions concerning the demarcation of art and technology, and the sanctity of the aesthetic. What is the relationship between art and the project of designing an ordered environment of total functionality? How did art, aesthetics and the modernist avant-garde fit in with this technocratic vision? These questions relate directly to 'critical modernist strategies', as Benjamin Buchloh has called them (in reference to Rodchenko's work), which aimed to demystify 'aesthetic production'. Ambitious modernists viewed these strategies as 'scientific models' which would serve as 'a model for cultural practice in general'. The avant-garde, according to Buchloh, failed to clarify how this broad applicability of its practice is ensured 'by the mysterious process of model imitation'. Considering this elision he ponders (almost as an aside): 'how exactly did Mondrian ... expect his paintings to operate as models of the socialist societyi":' Rodchenko maybe, but Mondrian? Yet to understand how rigorous geometric abstraction could be

The Bauhaus in Australia: Interdiscipinary confluences in modernist practices

McNamara, Andrew <http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/McNamara,\_Andrew.html> (2008) The B... more McNamara, Andrew <http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/McNamara,_Andrew.html> (2008) The Bauhaus in Australia: Interdiscipinary confluences in modernist practices. In: Stephen, A, Goad, P, & McNamara, A (Eds.) Modern Times: The Untold Story of Modernism in Australia. ...

Culture is not an Industry: Reclaiming art and culture for the common good

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 2024

A review of Justin O'Connor's book, Culture is not an Industry: Reclaiming art and culture for th... more A review of Justin O'Connor's book, Culture is not an Industry: Reclaiming art and culture for the common good, looking at the legacy of the creative industries discourse and how it has impacted upon so many discussions of art and the humanities as well as discussion of ways around its instrumental parameters.

Art History, 2022

There is a tendency nowadays to refer to Modernism with a capital M. The capital letter invariabl... more There is a tendency nowadays to refer to Modernism with a capital M. The capital letter invariably signals a rebuke. It stands for something remote and critically fossilized; a topic to be treated with disdain or at best ironic indifference.
A review of two books: Sascha Bru, The European Avant-Gardes, 1905-35: A Portable Guide (2018) and Eva Forgács, Hungarian Art: Confrontation and Revival in the Modern Movement (2017).

Critical Reckonings: Global Art and Art History after the West and Eurocentrism

A review of Paul Wood's Western Art and the Wider World. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.

Refugees and émigrés to Australia, 1930-1950: Three cases of light, colour and material studies in the Antipodes under the shadow of fascism and war

Migration Processes and Artistic Practices in Wartime, 2018

A signicant number of central European and German refugees and emigres sought refuge from war and... more A signicant number of central European and German refugees and emigres sought refuge from war and fascism in Australia during the inter-war and post-World War Two years. While many historical accounts of Antipodean modernism stress its distance from French avant-garde sources, this generation of refugees and emigres brought local practitioners into direct contact with aspects of the modernist endeavour. In particular, these refugees and emigres introduced an approach to modernism that was cross- disciplinary and derived its inspiration from a systematic approach to arts education. This conception tended to highlight the common elements between art, design and architecture.While there have been numerous, individual studies of this generation, this paper foreshadows a much larger research project that aims to link these individual histories into one coherent study. In this paper we offer an indicative sample of a select number of case studies in order to highlight some of these common...