What can one say to the trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW? Stop it or you’ll go blind?
The intensity of the ideological self-indulgence would be amusing if it weren’t also so sad.
But, alas, they couldn’t bring themselves to award the Archibald Prize to the best picture when there was the irresistible temptation of a work by a black artist whose subject was a black woman. As a bonus, they got a reference to the Lismore floods.
Progressive signalling and compassion all at once!
In the process, they have gratuitously insulted Robert Hannaford yet again. His self-portrait is clearly the outstanding work in this year’s exhibition, far better than the winner on any set of criteria: it demonstrates much greater mastery of the technical art of painting, but also and more importantly it is superior in character, sense of inner life and humanity.
I have been in touch with many professional artists over the past week and the quality of Hannaford’s painting was obvious to all of them.
To overlook Hannaford again feels pointed, like a deliberate act of cruelty as well as stupidity. But it seems the trustees simply couldn’t bear to select an artist who happened to be male and white. It is as though, in some perverse logic, Hannaford had to be made to pay for all the imagined wickedness of humans who fall into those two categories.
He becomes a scapegoat immolated by rich and privileged people to make a show of dubious contrition for their own privilege.
But beyond the personal insult to a distinguished artist who has too often been overlooked in favour of third-rate pictures, the trustees have made it clear they have no interest in supporting good art; they are only concerned to make vacuous political gestures, in the process once more rewarding the most over-rewarded categories of artists in Australia today.
The result is a travesty, and it is further evidence to support my suggestion that the Archibald be transferred to more competent judges. It should be selected and judged by a panel – however constituted – of professional portrait painters, the kind that people actually commission when they want a good portrait.
These painters could be counted on to choose both the finalists and the eventual winner on more solid criteria than rich would-be progressives whitewashing their wealth with smug ideological choices.
Christopher Allen is The Australian’s national art critic
Gallery puts female artists in the frame
Ethel Carrick Fox and Anne Dangar, the two subjects of the National Gallery of Australia’s latest exhibition of women in art, are of a very different calibre.
Dancers cried, laughed hysterically and slammed into walls
Pina Bausch blew up pre-existing notions of dance, attracting devotees and haters in equal measure. Now her famed German dance company is in the hands of choreographer Boris Charmatz.