Author(s): Cameron Hurst and Jeremy George

Art Theory

Norman Lindsay (1879–1969) was a prolific, popular and controversial Australian artist, best known for his children’s book The Magic Pudding, and prints which draw on Greek and Roman myth and C19th literature and philosophy.

Australian culture is indelibly marked by Lindsay’s output, his prominence in the Sydney bohemian intellectual scene, and by The Magic Pudding, which entrances the imagination of generations of Australian children.   But it is marked by the paradoxical conjunctions of Lindsay’s life, too: artistic bohemia and fascistic tendencies, avant-gardism and a fervor for the rule of law, libertinism and conservatism, worship and denigration. Few figures are as divisive as Lindsay.

These essays, by art historians, film critics and cultural commentators are erudite, varied and often incendiary.