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Aboriginal art--a sacred black cow? Robert Nelson answers critics of 'bad' Aboriginal art.

Article Excerpt
Aboriginal art is hot and the palette of adjectives is lurid: brilliant, magnificent, mesmerizing, exuberant, perfect, sublime, dramatic, lyrical, beguiling, bold and unique. My favourite is 'ineffable', defined as 'defying expression or description'. Which is precisely the point. There is no critical analysis at all. Frank Campbell, 'Forum', The Australian

Art critics are prejudiced in favour of Aboriginal art, propping it up with superlatives and vacuous praise. That's the impression you get from Frank Campbell's article--'On a Critical Dilemma' in The Australian, 23--24 June. No critic has the guts to stand up and say what needs to be said. All naivety is turned into genius, and untrained messiness is artificially construed as a spontaneous demonstration of deep cultural meaning.

You hear this kind of criticism from disgruntled art journalists from time to time. Where is the identification of bad Aboriginal art, they ask? Our critics have no difficulty having the bottle to lay into white artists who transgress 'defined' aesthetic criteria. So why don't they take a swing at this protected Indigenous species, knock them off their privileged anthropological plinth and declare their work highly fallible? Why don't critics overcome their political correctness and tell...

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