The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 marked the end of the so-called Victorian era in Britain and her colonies. On this continent, Federation established Australia on the unceded lands of over 250 First Nations. The new century brought profound social change, and political losses and gains. Two calamitous and far-reaching wars shifted the seat of global economic power and cultural influence away from the British Empire.

The United States emerged as the new global superpower following World War II, in an era that some historians have termed The American Century. It was characterised by exponential population growth and global migration, space exploration, a nuclear arms race, and intense proliferation of mass media and pop culture. Civil rights, nationalist, and decolonial movements galvanised, encouraged by international solidarities. Questions of identity became amplified in this newly mobile and interconnected world.

Art naturally reflected these complex conditions and ideas. Aesthetic pleasure and explorations of the human condition remained key preoccupations, and artists increasingly harnessed art’s potential as a means of political resistance and economic self-determination.

In Australia, the first decades of the 20th century saw an increasing influence of international styles, especially Art Nouveau and Art Deco. A dynamic studio art pottery movement evolved, drawing upon the ceramic traditions of Britian and Asia, while a new wave of professional women artists established themselves as important exponents of modernist ideals. In Arnhem land and the Western desert, artists adapted ancestral stories and traditional techniques onto both bark and canvas supports, propelling the flourishing First Nations art landscape of today.

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