cover image Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia

Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia

Christopher Anderson, Philip Jones. George Braziller, $75 (266pp) ISBN 978-0-8076-1201-9

Australia's Aborigines, who have lived on that continent for at least 40,000 years, were until recently considered extremely ``primitive.'' Today, anthropologists recognize their complex social patterns and rich cosmology, their centuries-old contacts with Melanesians and Indonesians, their pioneering of human cremation, rock art, tools and grindstones. So too with Aboriginal artit is slowly gaining recognition as one of the world's great artistic traditions. The Dreamtime of the Aborigines' bark paintings, acrylics, ceremonial objects and sculptures is both the sacred, life-giving dimension of the present and the realm in which ancestral spirits roam the landscape. Sutton, an anthropologist with the South Australian Museum, led a team of experts to put together this astonishing, gorgeous book and the landmark traveling exhibition it showcases. Works reproduced range from geometrical dreamscapes with startling similarities to modern abstract art, through mythic, psychological and erotic symbolism, to contemporary reworkings of the Aboriginal aesthetic in rugs, posters, ceramics and photography. (Nov.)