Archibald Prize

+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
18 Mar 2007

For more than twenty years I have made an annual pilgrimage to see the finalists in the Archibald Prize, our most famous annual art award.  The Archibald often provokes equal measures of controversy and public interest, which places it ahead of its richer rivals.

One critic claimed that the finalists this year were a rotten field, the worst he could remember.  This is overkill in a big way, although the styles are a tad more conventional than in previous years.

What did strike me, however, and for the first time, was that many of the subjects painted appeared as unhappy and anguished.  The six politicians generally escaped this fate, although Peter Garrett was very stern as he fronted up to global warming, and Malcolm Turnbull exhibited all the charm, intelligence, self confidence and informality required by his role.  Neville Wran’s portrait took us closer to the truth of this political master, one of the most astute in post-war Australia, wearied, wary but still formidable.

However I could only find seven portraits of peaceful, happy people among the 41 finalists.  If this was a glimpse of the Australian establishment, a visitor would conclude that we are an unhappy lot.  And tragically we do have one of the world’s highest rates of suicide for young males.  Why do so many of these portraits portray sad or haunted people?

My happiness ratings might be exaggerated and the choices might represent a chance occurrence, with no underlying significance.  The judges might have been idiosyncratic individuals who rejoice in misfortune.  It could be simply that angst is fashionable.

There is another possibility, because the best artists see inside, towards the subconscious, to what lies beneath the façade we offer to the world.  Good artists have honesty and integrity, which they can and do convey to the canvas.

This year’s winner John Beard claimed that every painting is a self portrait of the artist.  This is an over-statement (at least for the best portrait painters), but it could be that the artists projected more of their own sadness onto the subjects.  This would still point to an Australian emptiness, not so much among ordinary Australians (who are generally prosperous, self confident, sometimes rough about the edges and proud of it), but an emptiness among our elites.

God has been banished more comprehensively among our cultural leaders, where an uneasy and often unchallenged agnosticism papers over the abyss.  Nature impels us to fill vacuums, while broken marriages (much increased), drugs and alcohol usually deepen depression; what Winston Churchill called his “black dog”.

Faith is not an antidote to clinical depression, as I have known deeply religious people to be so afflicted, but belief that the Creator God is benign and interested in us does bring hope in life’s ups and downs. 

Visible hope was in short supply at this year’s Archibald.