Changing Face of the Nation
By Arts Writer, Victoria Hynes
This year marks a century since a bequest by J.F. Archibald, founder of the Bulletin magazine, launched the inaugural Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Over the past ten decades hence, this annual portraiture award has become the most popular, feted and often controversial exhibition across Australia.
As the final selection of portraits is hung for Archibald 2021, a major companion exhibition called ‘Archie: 100’ will showcase the highlights of the art prize over the past centenary. Painstakingly researched and curated by Natalie Wilson, the Gallery’s Curator of Australian and Pacific Art, she discusses the process of mounting this landmark survey show with Victoria Hynes.
How did you start the daunting process of tracking down the artworks from a century of Archibald exhibitions?
Over the past two decades my colleagues in the Gallery’s library have been keeping tabs on Archibald portraits as they’ve found them – scouring books, exhibition and auction catalogues – so we had a head start, which was fantastic.
Were many of the paintings easy to find and what kind of locations did you find them?
Contacting hundreds of institutions across Australia and New Zealand . . . the Archie 100 team slowly started to get a better idea of which works were still out there. Knowing that hundreds, if not thousands, would still be in private hands, we then sent out a national ‘Call for Works’ through radio stations, newspapers, magazines and other media, to see if people would come forward with information. We received hundreds of emails through this process and found some fabulous works. … There are still so many works unaccounted for, but I hope that the Archie 100 exhibition will bring more out of the woodwork.
The exhibition is divided into themes. Could you describe these and explain how you decided on the themes of the exhibition.
Going through the portraits we had located, patterns started to emerge: the fact that around one sixth of all the portraits are self-portraits, for example. The idea that the artist first looks at themselves, and then expands their view out to their family, friends and other artists, and finally into the broader community led to the development of some of these themes. There have always been controversies associated with the Archibald, and the year William Dobell’s portrait of his fellow artist Joshua Smith won and was subsequently contested – the 1943 Archibald – is central to the story. Another theme arose after looking at the large number of portraits produced during World War II, both by individual artists and as part of the official war art scheme.
The exhibition also considers the cult of celebrity and the notion that fame may be fleeting. One starlet of the 1920s who was a household name at the time – the actress Jessica Harcourt – is no longer remembered. Her portrait, however, endures.
How do the paintings reflect the historic, cultural and social times of their execution? Is it mainly through their chosen subject or style?
Although there was some cultural diversity in sitters portrayed in the Archibald prior to World War II, it is really after the war that we see not only a greater number of émigré artists but also subjects… While Aboriginal subjects appear as early as 1924, in the portrait of David Unaipon by BE Minns, as far as we know the first Aboriginal artist selected for the Archibald Prize was not until 1989. This was Robert Campbell Jnr’s portrait of Aboriginal musician Mac Silva … It took another 31 years for an Aboriginal artist to win the prize, when Vincent Namatjira won last year with his portrayal of Adam Goodes.
Of course, we have seen remarkable changes in the ways artists portrayed their subjects over the past century. In the 1920s works were very much a part of academic tonal realism that was taught in art schools and mastered by artists such as WB McInnes. In the 1920s and 30s we see miniature portraits appear by well-known miniaturists like Bernice Edwell and Ada Whiting. Then they go out of fashion. In the 1930s we begin to see artists who are experimenting with modern modes of expression, including cubism and surrealism. The artists Grace Crowley and Rah Fizelle both exhibited works in the 1933 Archibald Prize, for example. Members of Melbourne’s Angry Penguins – Albert Tucker and Sidney Nolan – also exhibited during the war years. The 1970s saw the ‘big heads’ appear – influenced by photorealist artists in America and England – and today pretty much anything goes.
How did the works through the decades reflect changing trends, such as the gender of the subjects and artists?
That’s a difficult question to answer, as we haven’t found all the portraits. . .The 1950s was a dismal period for women artists, with only a few women making the cut, in particular Judy Cassab. In 1953, for example, from the 72 works selected, just 9 were by women. In the 2020 Archibald prize, of the 55 finalists, 25 were women, but more importantly there were 8 works by Aboriginal artists in the selection.
How do you think the final selection holds up? What would you like the viewing public to come away with from seeing the show?
I would hope that audiences feel they have been on the same journey that I have been on over the past three years. Not only did I learn the names of artists I’d never heard of before, I also took a trip through the past century, discovering the stories of those who helped shape this society we now live in. Most importantly, it’s given me a chance to reflect on where we are going, how past injustices are now being acknowledged, and the positive changes we are making as we continue into the future.
