In the early 1970s at Papunya, a remote settlement in the Central Australian desert, a group of Indigenous artists decided to communicate the sacred power of their traditional knowledge to the wider worlds beyond their own. Their exceptional, innovative efforts led to an outburst of creative energy across the continent that gave rise to the contemporary Aboriginal art movement that continues to this day. In their new book, anthropologist Fred Myers and art critic Terry Smith discuss six Papunya paintings featured in a 2022 exhibition in New York. They draw on several discourses that have developed around First Nations art—notably anthropology, art history, and curating as practiced by Indigenous and non-Indigenous interpreters. Their focus on six key paintings enables unusually close and intense insight into the works’ content and extraordinary innovation. Six Paintings from Papunya also includes a reflection by Indigenous curator and scholar Stephen Gilchrist, who considers the nature and significance of this rare transcultural conversation.

"“Fred R. Myers and Terry Smith’s shared knowledge of the history of Papunya painting as an art movement is invaluable. Smith’s authority as a historian and theorist is unmatched. Equally compelling is Myers’s anthropological research with the Pintupi: his writing on the reception of the art is unparalleled. Their conversations bring the reader to the gallery floor as these two great minds think through this art.”" - Double Nation: A History of Australian Art