Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly (1946), and the Ramingining artists’ Aboriginal Memorial (1988), are the only two Australian works in a new and highly commercial picture book, 30,000 Years of Art: The Story of Human Creativity across Time and Space. The Ramingining installation of 200 painted hollow-log poles, the kind used as containers for human bones, was categorised as ‘Aboriginal Culture’. Nolan’s painting was categorised as an example of ‘Surrealism’, but the caption concluded, sensibly, with the concession that he was more than a Surrealist: ‘Ultimately Nolan never adopted a single idiom, instead exploring different moods and techniques to portray his themes of injustice, love, betrayal and the enduring Australian landscape.’

Published last year by Phaidon, the blockbuster volume of one thousand full-page images was a response to the recent push towards ‘world art history’, currently a hot topic in the international art-history profession. It was convenient for Phaidon to select two works from a museum, the National Gallery of Australia, experienced in servicing requests from publishing houses, but it was nevertheless a pretty good choice for Australia’s most conspicuous appearance in a book of this kind.