Archibald Prize

+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
30 May 2010

This year it was not the Archibald Prize but the Wynne Prize for landscape painting which generated controversy. 

Sam Leach won both prizes, producing two small pieces, detailed and classical.  Apparently the Wynne Prize specifies that the countryside painted should be Australian.  Leach publicly acknowledged his dependence on the seventeenth century Dutch landscape school and his work bore a startling resemblance to one such painting.  Certainly the plants were unlike any Australian bush that I had encountered.

Tim Minchin, an "out-there" song writer, singer and commentator who wanted to be painted on a cross, was the subject of the winning portrait.  This small technically masterful painting was restrained and respectful. 

To my mind paintings are created to be seen and admired, not stacked in a storeroom or under the house.  Many of the paintings are still very large and many would not fit even in grand homes.  The Cathedral presbytery has a number of beautiful paintings, most from the nineteenth century, some older, which have been restored and brought out of storage where they had been quietly deteriorating.

However some of the portraits of early bishops from St. Patrick's at Manly were too huge for the house and could only be hung in the restored 1840s Chapter House.  Large portraits do not make for easy viewing.

The portraits on display for the Archibald each year give us a glimpse of the way Australians view one another.  Or, more precisely, how the painters chosen by the judges see things.  This year we Aussies come out of it pretty well as a mixed lot, very different from one another, not too superficial or miserable.

The large crowds of viewers, popular voting and the Packers' Prize help keep the feet of the judges on the ground.  While one painting (I wake up with Today) could have been in the landscape section, the styles were accessible, ranging from the classical works of Newton and Hannaford to the grim, post-Modernist self-portrait of Kevin Connor.

The portrait of my good friend, Bishop Peter Elliott from Melbourne, in full ecclesiastical regalia and with his cat Lady Jacqueline, is at the entrance to the exhibition.  The bishop used to inform the children in the parish school that the cat was his pastoral assistant!

At least six of the finalists were Chinese-born and they are making a wonderful contribution to our portraiture, with their technical skills, their mastery of balance, sympathy and insight.

I enjoyed viewing this year's finalists.