Intriguing image mired in confusing allegory
Reveiw by Sebastian Smee, The Weekend Australian
March 25, 2006
MARCUS Wills's striking Archibald winner has a backstory as esoteric as its title: The Paul Juraszek monolith (after Marcus Gheeraerts).
Is it the strongest painting in the show? It's an intriguing image, even a fun one, but it's a little too obscure and gimmicky for my liking.
It's an elaborate allegory, the meanings of which remain far from clear. The image itself -- a giant skull populated by small figures engaged in various activities -- is certainly striking, and well painted, too. But it's not Wills's own.
He has borrowed it from a 16th-century etching and I don't feel he has done enough with it to convince us that the exercise is worthwhile. Though it can be refreshing to have one's idea of portraiture stretched, Wills's painting does so in a way that affords little insight.
Portraiture can easily grow stale, but it benefits from being the most direct and humanly interesting of genres: to dilute it in allegory -- and confusing allegory at that -- seems to me to work against its strengths. For what it's worth, I would have given the prize to John Beard, with Ben Quilty and Tom Carment as runners-up.
Beard's portrait is of the sculptor Ken Unsworth, whose Suspended Stone Circle, which is often displayed at the Art Gallery of NSW, is one of the most popular art works in Sydney -- and whose Stones Against the Sky, known colloquially as ``poo-on-sticks'' is one of the most loathed.
Beard has rendered Unsworth's head with an accumulation of white, translucent brushstrokes emerging out of a black ground: it's a ghostly, compelling image that doesn't aim to startle but rather commands quiet and prolonged attention.
Quilty's painting is more instantly arresting: it's a double portrait of the 2000 Archibald winner Adam Cullen called Cullen -- before and after. The style is splashy, colourful and virtuosic; the paint so thick and gloopy you long to push it around with your hands. Its two parts, however, work better individually than together.
Unlike its attention-seeking rivals, Carment's work, called simply Professor Muecke, is small. Though it is executed with modesty, even hesitation, it is the most humanly alive portrait of all.