Art that never was : representations of the artist in twentieth-century Australian fiction

Abstract

This thesis traces the development of the artist figure as a leading character in twentieth-century Australian novels. In Australia there have always been complex interconnections between the worlds of art and literature, perhaps the most obvious being the cluster of artists and writers centred on the journal Vision, co-edited by Norman Lindsay’s son Jack with Kenneth Slessor, who was heavily influenced by Lindsay. Slessor’s poem “Five Bells”, an elegy for his artist friend Joe Lynch, later became the subject of a mural painted for Sydney Opera House by John Olsen. Although this and other connections between poetry and art are of interest, this thesis concentrates on fiction only.