Six Paintings from Papunya

“While Fred and Terry appreciate that Indigenous art is in tacit dialogue with dominant approaches to categorization, their conversations work to reduce this determinative power. There is no desire to coax these paintings into familiar and complacent categorizations. On the contrary, they are genuinely responding to the intellectual and cultural challenges of the paintings by shaping a critical vocabulary and methodology that can best apprehend them. . . . They show us the richness of Indigenous cultural practices and the tools with which to apprehend them. Indigenous art and culture deserve nothing less.”— - Stephen Gilchrist, from the afterword

“Fred R. Myers and Terry Smith’s shared knowledge of the history of Papunya painting as an art movement is invaluable. Smith’s authority as a historian and theorist is unmatched. Equally compelling is Myers’s anthropological research with the Pintupi: his writing on the reception of the art is unparalleled. Their conversations bring the reader to the gallery floor as these two great minds think through this art.” - Ian McLean, author of Double Nation: A History of Australian Art

"If you want a short, readable, authoritative (non-Aboriginal) account of some of the greatest paintings from the beginnings of one of art’s great traditions of creativity, this is almost as good as it gets." - Iain Davidson, Journal of Anthropological Research