ABSTRACT
European art history has taken the relationship between painting and vision as one of its central questions. The origins of this tradition can be traced back at least to classical times where one criterion of excellence in painting or sculpture was seen to be in the closeness with which it replicated the actual appearance of things. Reading the history of art through Gombrich’s perspectivalist eye it might be thought that modernism – which can be seen to challenge the presuppositions lying behind illusionistic representation – would have been less concerned with the nature of vision, but thinking thus would be to confuse seeing with what was seen. This chapter discusses two broad questions: the relationship between how the Yolngu see the world and how they represent it, and the way in which Yolngu use visual effects to convey meanings and evoke feelings.
