Research Interests of the Department

Research

French Orientalist art, 1880-1930, including Renoirs Algerian work, and a study of the Algerian oasis resort of Biskra in literature, painting and photography
The art of Matisse, including an essay on his 1906 masterpiece Le Bonheur de Vivre
The interpretation of contemporary Indigenous Australian art. This includes a curatorial project on early Papunya boards and their aftermath, c. 1971 c 1985, for the Actus Foundation of New York (opening at Cornell University Gallery in January 2006)
Contemporary Australian painting

Film Aesthetics: the legitimacy of ‘Film Style’
Realism and Spectacle
American Cinema: Classical Hollywood/Hollywood Renaissance (late 60s to Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, 1979)/Hollywood High Concept Cinema
Auteur Theory, Independence, New Aesthetic Sensibilities
Digital Cinema and Aesthetics: ‘Future Cinema’
Film Production Practice – with a focus on screenwriting as a literary and cinematic form

Italian Renaissance plague images, with a particular focus on the process of intercession and the protective role of images in coping with the experience of bubonic plague.
The imagery and cult of St. Sebastian as 'alter Christus' ('another' or 'second Christ').
St. Nicholas of Tolentino as a 'failed' plague saint.
Reading the body in the late drawings of Michelangelo Buonarotti

The idea of play in 18th century France, particularly as formulated by rococo painters
The importance of gender and age distinctions during the Enlightenment, and the role played by visual images in creating categories
Women's patronage in the 18th century, and how commissioning and collecting as an activity was used for image power and status.

Comparative study of women modernist artists in the pre- and inter-war years from selected British Dominions and new republics (primarily New Zealand, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and tangentially India)
Contemporary feminist art and writing
Contemporary Australian art
Contemporary international art, with particular focus on post-colonial and feminist issues
Electronic media.

European, especially British, art of the Nineteenth Century
Gender, Orientalism, the history and culture of travel
Development of Ottoman art in the Nineteenth Century and cultural exchange with European artists

"The Digital Apparatus" is a research project that will test a range of methodologies for thinking through the relation between technology and thought in film production, criticism and theory. It is particularly interested in the idealist-materialist tussle within general theories of film.
The Go Concept. Richard Smith is co-author of a documentary about sophistication. Seeking AFC O Strand funding of 20,000. Script submitted March 2005. AFC decides on successful applicants in May 2005.