by Jon Lackman | 17 August 2006 | Books
Ian Wilson’s new popular book on the rock art of northwest Australia is drawing attacks, notably from the reclusive expert Grahame Walsh. At issue: the painters’ artistic, political and cultural relationship to the present-day aborigines, and the proper balance of conservation and exhibition. Articles include Robin Hanbury-Tenison’s in the TLS (“Some of Wilson’s hypotheses are rather bizarre, such as the links he sees with Artemis of Ephesus and European Earth Mother myths”) and Nicolas Rothwell’s in The Australian (“It is, in essence, the radical account developed by Walsh, but with a few very strange, conjectural add-ons … One hardly knows whether to laugh or weep on being confronted with such a bizarrely multiplicit book”). Via Arts & Letters Daily.
