Archibald Prize: Not the best, not the worst, but does fabric stretch the rules of a painting prize?

Head in the sky, feet on the ground, by Julia Gutman has won the 2023 Archibald Prize.

This year’s Archibald Prize-winner, Julia Gutman’s portrait of singer Montaigne, is far from the worst work in a selection that includes several monstrosities and things that punters are meant to scoff at.

But nor is it the best. Most of its appeal comes from the pose, borrowed from a masterful gouache and watercolour by Egon Schiele, Seated Woman with Bent Knees (1917), today in the National Gallery in Prague.

In contrast with the lightness and brilliance of Schiele’s drawing and painting, Gutman’s is heavy and inert.

It’s hard to judge the quality of the likeness, since a glance at Google shows that her subject is always performing and in a state of representation. Perhaps it is recognisable, but it is certainly not a deep or insightful picture, unlike a handful of others of which this could be said.

Again, most of the feeling that one can read into the image at a casual glance can be attributed to the borrowing from Schiele.

The other question is whether this is really a painting and therefore eligible for the prize.

It’s mostly collaged from used fabrics stitched together – a practice for which extravagant claims have inevitably been made: “Gutman uses the medium of textile as a way to negotiate loaded precepts of femininity, tradition and expectation.”

Who needs ChatGPT when art hacks are already capable of cutting and pasting cliches like this?

As for the other two prizes, the Sulman – which is a particularly inept collection of daubs this year – has been awarded to a picture of little doll-like goblins that would be considered childish if it had been by anyone else.

But it is taken seriously because it was done by an old Aboriginal woman.

More significant is the award of the Wynne prize to a painting from the APY Arts Centre Collective, under a serious cloud since The Weekend Australian published a damning investigation, including a video of white assistants painting a picture that would be signed by and sold under the name of one of the collective’s most highly priced artists. But our big public galleries, with a lot to lose both in money and in credibility, have banded together to ignore the allegations and hope the scandal will go away.

The award of the Wynne prize to this lifeless and mechanical painting filled with designer gimmicks is evidence of how far vested interests will stoop in their efforts to deny the truth.

Christopher Allen is The Australian’s national art critic.