Reviews on Inside Out Upside Down Gallery Site
Archibald Prize 2010
Just before you read this review I'd like to insert a quote from William Holman Hunt, not that I'm a follower of his work but rather that the comment reminded me that I'm firstly a painter and secondly a critic. "The way to criticise is to do something better yourself; to show what you mean. It's the producers we care for, not for men who go about abusing other people". So 2011 will see me putting yet another painting into the Archibald and it will be better than anything I've produced so far, it will not get hung and I'll keep producing paintings just so that one day I can say that my painting is better than anything that has been hung.
Let me say that I'm a little jaded by the Archibald. The disappointing standard for works selected in recent years has perhaps biased me against anything that gets hung. This years work is even more depressing as it has failed to give any examples of excellence. Perhaps I should not be so picky but I really can't see any excuse for selecting some of these works.
Just in case people get the impression that this review contains an element of sour grapes, I'd like to point out that I did not enter a work for this year, specifically so I could produce a review that was less diplomatic. I do not imply by this review that I'm producing a painting of the standard that I expect that the Archibald should be coming close to in its hangings.
My general concerns with these works are that they show clearly that many of the artists are not used to working at the scale of painting they have undertaken. Compositionally why would paintings be so big if if they are a portrait? There appears to be no reasoning behind the sizes. In most instances the size adds nothing to the quality of the presentation or the intent of the image, it simply limits the number of artists that can get wall space. If the painting is of a size then the style of painting should work with that size to enhance the image, few works show any consideration of this essential feature. Is there any reasoning behind sticking a head in a background that does nothing to support the painting as a complete work? Shouldn't a painting that proports to be amongst the best portrait works in the country and is produced in a represenational style at a minimum have flesh that does not look like scar tissue?
I do object to portraiture that is none representational. More importantly I object to portraits that have no purpose other than to be Archibald Prize entries, this is as good as having no purpose. Perhaps this could easily be resolved if the entries had to be not only sat for, but commissioned by the subject.
As to the peg board painting, what can I say, we have seen them before, they are nothing new, they strip the life out of the subject and make them inaccessible and there is little if any high order skill/ imagination in the production. In fact one could say that when one looks at these paintings one recognises the artist but not the subject.
The silhouette painting is amusing and technically highly finished, could easily have been half the size and achieved the same result. As to being a portrait it projects nothing intelligible, which to me indicates that it fails as an image. My view is that if the artists intention is not projected so the viewer can understand or interpret it then the image is a failure.
The winner brings absolutely nothing new to painting, is brush work wise excellent but overall the painting suffers from sucking the life out of the subject. Finish to the point of killing the sitter is not excellence but a parody of it. This can be explained, the image was painted using grisaille, a grey scale or similar underpainting then coloured over. Unfortunately grisaille almost always gives a flat lifeless outcome, so the winner is in a league with such masters as Lord Leighton etc. It is however a good painting that carries it's intent to the viewer.
The green thing is a childish waist of wall space (sorry I dont want to advertise the name of the artist). Why these silly images get picked at the expense of people that produce excellent portraits is beyond me. Pure vane drivel expressing a view that is tiresome at best, if not just childish.
The subjectless paintings, what are they doing there at all? There is no reference to a well known person or artist in these paintings, there is skill but it is in no way superior to works by other artists that were overlooked.
In the first edition of my review I used the web site and commented on the images published to inform the public of what had been selected. I found to my suprise that some paintings did look much better at smaller scale on the screen. Paintings that I admired on the screen were far less effective in real life, while some that I critisised are marginally better. Overall I found nothing to change my mind about my general comments.
One other thing that disturbs me about the Archibald is the reverence shown in the gallery by the public. It is not uncommon to see people walk around stupified by what is on the wall and they leave (if you stand outside the gallery) expressing considerable dissatisfaction with having gone through the suffering again.
When I watch this response I feel sad that Australia does not have a culture of involvement in the arts. A more assertive public would help the Arch greatly. If you do not like the exhibition try telling the judges why and hope to not suffer so badly the following year.
The Review prior to visiting the Exhibition using Internet Images
I decided to produce a review of the images on the web site for the Archibald Prize and then go back to see the full works once the exhibition opens. This review is my initial impression of the paintings. There is no mention of size or the hanging, as these are not available or have not happened yet. This is refreshing for me as I get to concentrate on the paintings even if through viewing them at small size on a screen rather than the real thing. Not being able to see the surface of the works has limited me to broad comments on composition.
The buzz around the Archibald has come and gone, yet the paintings are not even hung. Once more we are treated to the same old, same old. There is nothing in this that is new, it could be called a collection of late twentieth century academic art. Hopefully the judges will try something new next year and just take every tenth painting as it comes across the judging room. The other hundreds of entries could surely not have been as bad as some of these pot boilers.
What we have here is a collection largely composed of the dull the unimaginative and the technically impoverished. Photo realism, childish cartoons, and poorly developed images supported by brand names and pushy galleries. Fortunately the Arch is just an excuse for a party and collecting money from the public as they wonder through the exhibition (eat a meal at the cafe and have a drink). Long gone are the days of this prize contributing anything new to the tradition of art development.
Robert Hannaford contributes what at first pass is a standard work, in his usual style. On second viewing it has to be said that this is well above the standard I have come to expect. If you can imagine a colour scheme and lighting composition from Vermeer, executed in a Sargent style, with the colouring sensibility of a mid career Waterhouse, you will understand my technical interest in a painting that also combines representing all the strength and fragility of a well respected senior citizen. Hopefully this is the first of a renewed vigour that we will see for a long time to come.
Alexander McKenzies contribution is an amusing work that says a lot about the sitter (if it doesn’t then the sitter should be complaining bitterly about what can be interpreted as a very insulting composition). The painting has a touch of mid 19th century romanticism about it, while injecting a darkness more reminiscent of Frank Dicksee’s interiors. This is a competent painting, well executed, well composed and definitely encapsulating the imagination of the artist. I personally prefer this quality of painting to the slicker works presented by the following artists.
The work by Apple Yin is a very competent execution of academic painting but what the subject has to do with the Archibald is a bit beyond my imagination. The topic is a bit hackneyed but may get some attention just because it does not fit with the rest of the exhibition. It reminds me of a sketch by Lord Leighton from the late 1870s.
The painting by Yi Wang while technically well executed is strangely formulaic. A touch too slick, too controlled and static. The attempt at amusement (interaction with the cat) is ineffectual and as this seems to be the differentiator for the design, it undermines what could otherwise have been an excellent work. That is of course apart from the strange perspective of the chair which jars badly in such a fine representational image.
I'm pressed to say anything positive about the rest. Needless to say the ones I will not mention will win the prize. Not unusually my prediction in the last sentensce became a reality on 26 March, Sam Leach has won with a portrait of Tim Minchin (see comments in the review of the actual exhibition).
The winner has some positive aspects it is comparatively small when taken in the context of what normally hanges in the Arch. It is representational and required a technical standard of painting that placed it ahead of many of the works selected for hanging. The subject represents a public persona rather than an effort to uncover the person. It does not slavishly produce a realist photographic impression. My main complaint with this painting is the poor draftmanship of the body, strange shadow use in the composition and the limited pallet that provides a less than interesting overall image.
I have to report at this stage that I've now seen the paintings in the first gallery of the Archibald, they are unfortunately more disappointing than they appeared in the web site images. Regretably the exhibition paintings this year are so under whelming that I will put myself through seeing them all on April 10 and update this rather oddly developing review within a couple of days.
I'll be very interested in the Salon de Refuse (unfortunately I'm not going to get to this exhibition this year) and the Real Refusals exhibitions. These generally have real works, by real artists, not always gallery machines.
author: Neil Miley