Valeria O. van der Westhuizen
(St.Petersburg State University, Russia)

The Problem of Copyright and the Interpretation of Australian Contemporary Aboriginal Painting.

One of the essential problems of the contemporary painting by Australian aboriginal people is the interpretation of the meaning of their paintings. According to the believes of aboriginal people of Australia, sacred objects must stay sacred but in case it is not so, their true meaning is supposed to be hidden from strangers. Because of elder aborigines’ inability to sometimes pass the sacred knowledge of the designs on time, the latter have started to be copied illegally. This was the reason why Australian indigenous people were fighting for their rights and their own property law, which later was included in the general property law of Australia. Besides, aboriginal artists made their painting more difficult to interpret because of limits they put on revealing the meanings of the designs. Therefore, nowadays the interpretation system of aboriginal paintings has many levels. The superficial and obvious is available to amateurs, the deeper and more profound — to specialists and the very true — to the artists themselves and the members of their families and clans. All this makes it very hard to interpret aboriginal paintings, however it also makes it interesting to work on it, and rewarding. Nevertheless, while making a research on contemporary Australian indigenous paintings, one should always take their property rights and traditions into account.