Andrew McNamara

Biography

Andrew McNamara is an art historian and writer, whose work largely focuses on the modernist legacy for contemporary art and culture. He treats this legacy as contradictory or paradoxical rather than a purely negative or positive phenomenon. His work also seeks to articulate the connections (and differences) between modernist and contemporary practices. Key works include: Modernism & Australia: Documents on Art, Design and Architecture 1917-1967 (2006), Modern Times: The Untold Story of Modernism in Australia (2008), Bauhaus Diaspora and Beyond (2019), all with Ann Stephen and Philip Goad; Undesign (2018); An Apprehensive Aesthetic? The Legacy of Modernist Culture (2009); Surpassing Modernity (2018/19); the exhibition Bauhaus Now (2020-2021). Forthcoming studies include On Dispossession: Ernst Kitzinger, the Dunera and Injustice with Kate Garrett and Seumas Spark; a collection, A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in Oceania, edited with Ann Stephen; as well as a proposed study of the avant-garde in Weimar Germany.