Aboriginal Dot Painting

Modernism's Final Frontier

In his 1980 book, The Shock of the New, Robert Hughes wrote that Modernism was finished. After two decades of waiting for a new art style to emerge, Hughes declared no new style would be coming. Arguably, he made his pronouncement too early because in his Australian backyard, a new style was emerging that most certainly had the characteristics of Modernism. In the 1970s, a white school teacher north of Alice Springs, Geoffrey Bardon, encouraged Aboriginal children to use acrylics to paint a mural using the traditional body and sand painting techniques of their culture. The fusion style that the children created quickly spread amongst Aborigines in the region and produced great names like Clifford Possum and Anatjari Tjakamarra. Dot painting then spread to other Aborigines living throughout Australia.

Dot Painting did not spread into Australian art schools. Contrary to misconception, this was not because Aborigines put any taboo on non-Aborigines painting in dots. To the contrary, Aborigines created Dot Painting workshops where tourists could learn the technique. Had they received an invitation, many would have taught in art schools.

The style was visually different from anything else already in existence. Dots had been previously used by Georges Seurat in his pointillism and those copying Suerat had created paintings with visual similarities to the Dot Painting. The main difference; however, was in perspectives. The Aboriginal paintings used an aerial perspective. This allowed the paintings to be like a blend of maps, historical movements of people, and stories told across time. Pointillism paintings were just singular scenes from a moment in time presented in a unique way.

The meaning of the dots is unknown. Initially, this was because the art was said to contain tribal secrets that could not be shared with outsiders. As a result, buyers never asked too deeply about any of the meanings. When the style spread to other Aborigines who had no background in Dot Painting, whatever meaning the dots had was not shared. Consequently, the meaning of the dots became whatever the artist individually decided. On company logos and even on the QANTAS airplane, the dots seemed to be used purely for decorative purposes. In some abstract paintings, the dots seemed to just contribute to an intensity of colour and emotion seen in a Jackson Pollock painting. Generally speaking; however, dots are more likely to be used by male artists and lines by female artists. This would suggest that there is some kind of relationship to gender identities.

Wunala Dreaming - (Artwork was a collaboration between a team of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal artists)

Even if Hughes had seen Dot Painting emerge, it is likely he would have maintained his belief that Modernism was finished if he were like most art writers. Generally, Dot Painting is defined as traditional. For example, in 1994 the organisers of Cologne Art Fair refused to exhibit the Dot Paintings, and all other Aboriginal work, because they defined it as "folk" art and not the contemporary art that the fair exhibited. Likewise, the Cooinda Gallery, which deals in dot art, states:

"it is their 'language', and tells of the time of the Dreaming when the Ancestors roamed the countryside shaping the country into what we see today. These acrylic on canvas works are merely a new medium for ancient storytelling which originally used feathers, sticks and stones and natural pigments in the desert sands, to relay and celebrate their dreamings."

In truth, ephemeral art painted on sand and bodies in which the audience is part of the story telling is vastly different to that created by an individual artist painting on a canvas that is subsequently sold in a gallery. While past techniques had an influence in the style’s creation, the same could be said of Pablo Picasso's Cubism, which may have been influenced by African art and Paul Cezanne's post impression. As well as Picasso's style being derivative of pre-existing art forms, Picasso used it to tell the ancient Greek stories. Again, the incorporation of ancient stories did not result in Cubism being defined as traditional. In short, all Modernist styles owed something to art already in existence.

As well as excluding the Dot Painting from Modernism through its definition as “folk” art, Dot Painting was excluded because it has had little influence outside of the Aboriginal world. This made it easy for galleries to define it as a culturally specific artform. As a result, when world art historians write about the influential artists of the 20th century, no Aborigines are mentioned. Even if Australian art historians wrote of influential Australian artists, none would be Aboriginal. (Aboriginal artists would be discussed in a separate category.) Things would have been very different if Dot Painting had expanded beyond the Aboriginal world. If an expansion had occured, the likes of Clifford Possum and Anatjari Tjakamarra may have been spoken of as icons of world art history alongside names like Picasso or Pollock. As it is now, they are names that may be discovered if someone specifically researches Aboriginal art.

Clifford Possum Napperby Lakes, 1994

There are various explanations for why Dot Painting had little influence outside of the Aboriginal world. Writing for the Age newspaper in 2006, art critic Robert Nelson said it was because white Australians didn't want to steal Aboriginal culture. In his own words:

"Aboriginal art has also had little influence on the art of white Australians. It cannot easily do this, because as white Australians are educated in Aboriginal art, they become respectful and recoil from the temptation to appropriate the idioms and stories that belong to traditional owners. White artists, in my experience, are extremely sympathetic to indigenous rights and, even from a distance, acquire the discourses of decolonisation. They aren't going to pinch the intellectual or spiritual property of Aborigines."

Nelson's logic was a little unsound considering that colonisation refers to a one-way flow of culture. Those with power expect others to assimilate their culture. However, when decolonisation occurs, culture flows both ways. In the past, Australian Modernism was very much engaged in the discourses of decolonisation. Around the time of World War 2, artists like Margaret Preston infused Aboriginal elements into their depiction of the Australian identity. Likewise, artists like Sidney Nolan took inspiration from Aboriginal culture when defining his aesthetic. Specifically, he defined his work as: " a confused mix of landscape, animals, and Aboriginal culture, with a kind of Bible overtone."

Outside of the visual arts, most of Australia was similarly engaged in the discourses of decolonisation. Specifically, white Australian rock bands like Goanna and Midnight Oil gained an Aboriginal sound by using the didgeridoo. Likewise, many white supporters of Australian football (AFL) found historical evidence suggesting that their code actually grew out of an Aboriginal sport known as Marn Grook. The possibility that they were playing an Aboriginal game filled them with pride. Finally, the Australian education system's draft 2010 National Curriculum required that indigenous perspectives be taught by Australian teachers and used by Australian students across all disciplines. As a consequence, kids studying art in primary and high school were being taught Dot Painting while students studying art at university were being told that such actions were immoral.

While the morality of cultural exchanges can be debated, what really can't be debated is that the interests of many white people would be damaged if Dot Painting were recognised as a contemporary style and became influential. Specifically, if it were recognised as a legitimate art form for non-Aborigines to learn from, then its cultural power would be enhanced. Aboriginal artists with no degrees in art could become teachers of art or take positions in the art bureaucracy. Not only would this undermine the status put on art degrees, it would also potentially threaten jobs in the institution. However, by placing a taboo on appropriation, Aborigines are confined to a position as producers of art that can be sold in non-Aboriginal society, but who are denied positions involved in the management of cultural production. Ironically, this has also resulted in the "experts" on Aboriginal art, (the people who write books, give lectures, curate, and sell it) being people who wouldn’t have any idea about the feelings involved in its production.

While self-interest partly explains why the style was not adopted in the non-Aboriginal world, perhaps the real reason was that Modernism had ended and had been replaced by Post-modernism, which was defined by its ethic of individualism. Specifically, the modernist project involved artists from European countries, Russia, America, and Australia taking from and contributing to a collection of ideas and styles. Japan had an influence as a result of Japanese prints being embraced in Europe. South America and the South Pacific had an influence through Paul Gauguin. Africa had an influence through Picasso. Aboriginal Australia had an influence through artists like Sidney Nolan and Margaret Preston as well as a direct influence through Albert Namatjira. As a result of the Modernist dialogue, new styles emerged that groups of artists enthusiastically embraced and evolved. After World War 2, individualism took over. Artists were no longer interested in the dialogue. Thousands of new genres developed, but with no one wanting to be influenced by anyone else, the styles remained genres of only one artist. Non-Aboriginal artists in Australia didn't reject Dot Painting because it was Aboriginal, they just weren't interested in learning anyone else’s style, irrespective of where it came from.

As well as not wanting to be influenced by those who painted in a style, Post-Modern artists didn’t want to exhibit with those who painted in a style because to do so would subvert the individualism and ideology that they prided themselves. Specifically, Post-modern artists prided themselves on having a unique process, such as swallowing paints and vomiting them onto the canvas, or using a unique medium, such as dog food. If they exhibited with Dot Painters who attained the sales that they failed to attain, it would devalue the individualism that their own art relied upon. As Peter Timms stated in his book, What’s Wrong with Contemporary Art,

"The claim has often been made that, because urban dwellers are so alienated from their cultural traditions, they value in tribal art what they feel their own art no longer offers. They compensate for the loss of their own collective values by trying to appropriate those from another culture...Enthusiasm for desert community acrylics among collectors and gallery goers in big cities no doubt does reflect a certain longing for art that offers engagement rather than commentary and expresses collective as opposed to individual values. Even if the cultural mythology is largely incomprehensible to outsiders, just knowing it is there, somehow embedded in the dots, stripes and circles, is important in itself. We like Aboriginal art because it tells stories, even if we don’t know what those stories are."

Dot painting was most certainly Modernist in that it was about the dialogue. It was born of a dialogue between cultures and subsequently spread and changed through different cultures. Although the rise of individualism prevented it from having an impact upon the global art world in the same way as Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism, and Abstract Expressionism, it most certainly had all the characteristics that Modernism espoused. Robert Hughes had spoken too soon.