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Vere Gordon Childe's theory of craft specialisation was an important influence on Arnold Hauser's book The Social History of Art, published in 1951. Childe's Marxist interpretation of prehistory enabled Hauser to establish a material foundation for the occupation of the artist in Western art history. However, Hauser's effort to construct a progressive basis for artistic labour was complicated by art's ancient connections to religion and superstition. While the artist's social position and class loyalties were ambiguous in Childe's accounts of early civilisations, Hauser consigned artists to the lower echelons of society. This relegation did not imply that Hauser had a low regard for artistic skills. Quite the opposite, the artist's inferior social status enabled Hauser to distance artists from the ruling class, and consequently, to separate artistic handiwork from the dominant ideology that works of art manifested.

This article examines the concept of civilisation in Australian public discourse, focussing on some recent political uses. Rhetoric defending Australia's traditional attachment to Western civilisation has focussed on three themes — the role of the British heritage in Australian public life, the moral foundations of Australia's "Judeo‐Christian" belief system, and the rational principles of the Enlightenment. Although the language of civilisation is not confined to centre‐right political discourse, it has been most vocal among conservative‐leaning commentators. This article highlights examples of civilisation and its uses in the contemporary Australian context and attempts to give meaning to civilisation in light of debates about Australian history and national identity. I argue in the course of this article that civilisation is differentiated from culture, and that the culture‐civilisation distinction correlates with left‐right political leanings.

The concept of the Formalesque preoccupied Bernard Smith during the last decades of his life. First propounded in Modernism's History (1998), the Formalesque is a proposed period style describing the art of the 20th century. Yet, despite his ambitions for the Formalesque as a new classification for modern art, the idea failed to appeal to academic art history. This paper does not attempt to salvage the Formalesque from art-historical obscurity. But it does argue Smith's work on this topic is relevant by virtue of the contribution it makes to debates about modernism and art history. Although Smith's thesis emphasizes the necessity of period styles and the perennial development of art history, paradoxically, the Formalesque also highlights the limitations of art history. If the Formalesque has a place in art historiography, it belongs to a speculative discourse describing the end of the history of art.