six paintings from papunya: a conversation

In the early 1970s at Papunya, a remote settlement in the Central Australian desert, a group of Indigenous artists decided to communicate the sacred power of their traditional knowledge to the wider worlds beyond their own. Their exceptional, innovative efforts led to an outburst of creative energy across the continent that gave rise to the contemporary Aboriginal art movement that continues to this day. In their new book, anthropologist Fred Myers and art critic Terry Smith discuss six Papunya paintings featured in a 2022 exhibition in New York. They draw on several discourses that have developed around First Nations art--notably anthropology, art history, and curating as practiced by Indigenous and non-Indigenous interpreters. Their focus on six key paintings enables unusually close and intense insight into the works’ content and extraordinary innovation. Six Paintings from Papunya also includes a reflection by Indigenous curator and scholar Stephen Gilchrist, who considers the nature and significance of this rare transcultural conversation.

Fred Myers is Silver Professor of Anthropology at New York University and author of Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art, also published by Duke University Press.

Terry Smith is Andrew W. Mellon Emeritus Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh and author of Art to Come: Histories of Contemporary Art, also published by Duke University Press.