Never a week goes by without some reminder of the black hole into which the ABC has consigned the arts. I was pleased to see an article by Debi Enker on the Herald website that tracked back over the history of the ABC’s TV arts coverage and noted the weird obsession with sticking comedians into everything, as if no-one would watch an arts program unless some lamebrain is cracking jokes. She also picked two squirmingly awful low points in the Art Works program: a ludicrous report on the Mary Quant show in Bendigo, by non-binary narcissicist, Deni Todorov, and a visit to the MCA conducted as a blind date.
Even by the ABC’s own decayed standards the current arts programming is jaw-dropping in its stupidity. Do we really need umpteen series of Anh Do painting terrible portraits while he yarns with celebrities? Do we need the vulgar PC obsessions on display every week in Art Works? It’s taken about 6 weeks before I could stop cringing through every episode, thanks solely to segments on Guy Warren and Karla Dickens.
And now we have Finding the Archibald, a new three-part series on the dreaded Archibald Prize, fronted by actor, Rachel Griffiths. After one episode I’m wondering if I can make it through parts two and three. The program has heightened my appreciation of the BBC for using presenters such as Mary Beard, a Cambridge professor who really knows her subject when she tells us about the Greeks or Romans. Griffiths states her qualifications as being the wife of an artist, the daughter of an art teacher and possessed of an interest in “the human condition”. In fact it shouldn’t matter who or what she is, so long as she could speak with some authority on the Archibald and its history. Instead, she is a fan girl.
“Wow!” she says, or occasionally: “Whoa!” She’s thrilled about everything. We hear about all the works she loves, and the works her friend Steph loves. She tells us she’s going to select one work from the entire history of the Archibald that encapsulates “the face of Australia”. What a brilliant idea. Listening to Griffiths gush over Brett Whiteley and others in the first episode, I couldn’t care less what she thinks. Neither was it encouraging to hear her announce that “the later Archibalds do a better job at capturing the spirit not the importance of the sitter”. W.B.McInnes’s inaugural Archibald winner of 1921, of architect, Desbrowe Annear, is dismissed as “boring”, but I’d argue that it’s a lot better than most of the subsequent Archibald winners. Neither do I understand why the mention of 1921 leads into newsreel footage and condemnation of the White Australia Policy. Can we only think of the past as a time of racial injustice while congratulating ourselves in our own enlightened attitudes? Welcome to Your ABC.
Which “experts” should one interview in order to get a critical take on the Archibald? Well how about Ben Quilty and Tony Albert, the two artists on the AGNSW board of Trustees? That should ensure a good range of opinion. Then there’s the kids from Prairiewood High, “my mate Steph”, and for some unknown reason, Chris McAuliffe.
It’s hard to sound objective when I say this, but as someone who’s written more about the Archibald than anyone in the country for over 30 years, I can only note that nobody asked my opinion. Aside from the fact that I’m not the most popular person at the AGNSW there was never any intent to risk a single critical comment about the Prize. The program is a soft propaganda exercise – an advertisement, with Griffiths playing the role of resident celebrity. Does the ABC really need to follow the commercial stations into the ‘celebrities with everything’ approach to programming? And what’s with all the expletives? In the past, casual swear words were avoided by shooting the comments again, but now they’re left in, as if this adds extra “authenticity”. Or as “my mate Steph” puts it: “Like anything that has authenticity to it I’m all about”. This, while looking at John Brack’s stridently artificial portrait of Barry Humphries as Dame Edna.
The only thing left to say is: “Whoa!”
The art column this week takes a brief pause from Archibald madness and looks at John Olsen: Goya’s Dog at the National Art School Gallery. I know it’s been only a few years since the last John Olsen retrospective but this survey takes a different approach, concentrating on the dark and introspective side of this ebullient artist’s work. The NAS Gallery has made a huge effort with this exhibition and it has paid off.
This week’s movie is getting only a limited release in Australia, but it’s highly recommended. Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden takes the life of a writer and makes it into a gripping drama, in which a working-class hero’s self-education is just as absorbing as his hopeless passion for a girl from the moneyed classes. I hope the ABC arts programmers go and see this movie if only to recognise that art can be presented in a way that doesn’t require high profiles and low comedy.