shout Archie 26 times
With 26 not so weeny pictures of his mate Paul Jursaszek popping in and out like maggots in a highly populated human head, Marcus Wills knocked off this year’s Archibald Prize.
The thing itself is too big to reproduce here, and there are no really good close ups to substitute. Instead, you can find a mingy version of the whole picture here; mingy because I suspect the thing is much darker than the original, planing off the picture some basic tools of the trade – viz, light and contrast.
The shape of the head is copied assiduously from the Allegory of Iconoclasm, by Marcus Gheerhaets the Elder, and I hope the exhibitors manage to collar a reproduction from the British Museum, because the historical references are powerful. There is a clunky version of that here I guess that image is copied from the original BM product that Wills used, since it is a Melbourne website.
So what else was clever, or entrancing, or just plain nifty?
Not much really – the finalists seem to be generally dreary, and I prefer last year’s bunch.
But I did think this was an interesting picture of a man at a certain stage of life, apparently successful, but perhaps adrift:
That is Phil Noyce, film director, by Kerrie Lester. At least I can tag this so Google can find it under his name. Maybe.
This is lovely:
Troubled but effective actor Garry McDonald, with his contradictoriy demons.
This is completely traditional, but seems to capture something of the man – Tim Flannery by Robert Hannaford.
Most of the pictures are bloodless compared to the winner of the Packing Room Prize, awarded by the staff in the bowels of the Art Gallery of NSW who actually handle the pictures.
I would like to think this picture of Scott Cam by Michael Mucci is true to life. Scott is a carpenter turned lifestyle TV presenter; Mucci knew him when they were kids and tried to catch the essence of this “Working Class Man”.
March 26th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
Great post, David. I think the winner is a wonderful painting. I’d say clever, but I never mean clever as a term of disapprobation — but that’s how most people read it.
I heard Robert Hannaford speak about realism at an opening a few years ago, and he is very clued-up and very passionate about his own commitment to this kind of representation. He entered a superb portrait of Robert Dessaix a few years ago that had been done in very much the same spirit; realist and traditional and yet slightly uncanny in its immediacy of presence, as though the person had materialised in the room — in a weird way the opposite of realism, almost occult. I do like this portrait of a South Australian icon by another South Australian icon — not something you often get to see.
August 15th, 2006 at 6:55 pm
webfirhg