I’m afraid the increasing lateness of these postings is an index of the mad scale-up in activity as we come out of the COVID-19 lockdowns. I had a feeling that as soon as we could get back to something approaching normality, life would be frantic again. And so it has come to pass. I’m having to readjust to being back on the job when I’d begun to enjoy staying at home poring over my library like an old antiquarian.
The Herald has been sitting on art columns like a hen on eggs, but this week they’ve run two of them – on Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro’s show in the Blue Mountains, and Le Sculptures Refusées at Q Station, Manly. These pieces speak for themselves so I won’t editorialise. The movie being reviewed is The Lost Leonardo, a killer documentary by Danish director, Andreas Koefoed, which looks at the Salvator Mundi, allegedly by Leonardo da Vinci, sold by Christies for US$450 million in 2017.
Whether the painting is by Leonardo or not is still a matter of dispute, but there’s no disputing the nature of the international art market that is exposed in this film. Greedy, decadent, ego-driven… add whatever adjectives you like. The art world has it all. This story would seem incredible if it appeared in a novel, let alone real life.
I’m including another Jeffrey Smart piece – a first look at the exhibition in Canberra, which shouldn’t preclude a more considered review at a later date. I’m also hoping to come back to the AGNSW’s Matisse show soon, as I’ve only scraped the surface as yet.
It was predictable that Saint Gladys’s proposed tilt against Zali Steggall in Warringah would come to nothing. Her Holiness’s current beau, Arthur Moses QC, would have advised her to have nothing to do with it while the ICAC inquiry is still underway. By now it seems pretty clear that the miracles St. Gladys accomplished for her previous date, Dagwood of Wagga Wagga, were achieved by bending quite a few rules. Were they bent badly enough to qualify for a recommendation for criminal prosecution? I’d be very surprised if it comes to this, but it would have been unwise to tempt fate by plunging into another political campaign, allowing an unlimited amount of mud to be thrown at an already tarnished reputation. Besides, I’m sure she would have lost.
St. Gladys’s good name has already been martyred, but she might escape a court case if she avoids the limelight and trusts in the way Australian justice usually refrains from getting stuck into the rich, powerful and prominent. When the coast is clear she can move into a lucrative post with one of the banks, who have no moral qualms when it comes to hiring former pollies, even those who live under a cloud.
What the ‘Gladys for Warringah’ push exposed – as if it needed further exposing! – was Scummo’s contemptuous attitude toward anti-corruption bodies. His attacks on the ICAC were disgraceful, even by his standards. As usual, he seemed utterly oblivious to the fact that his crowing and squawking about the ICAC being a “kangaroo court” was exposing his personal conviction that corrupt behaviour was a normal part of public life.
This has got to come back and haunt him during an election campaign that has already begun in predictable fashion, with Albo playing the sober, straight-laced statesman, while Scummo went whirling around Bathurst in a racing car. Surely, the idea that every political debacle can be cured with a stunt or a photo op has got to wear thin. But the Coalition is left with nothing but stunts and scares to try and carry them over the line. The idea that they are responsible economic managers has gone out the window when one realises they gave $20 billion of taxpayers’ money to their corporate mates during the lockdown, while those mates were already increasing their profits.
One of the telltale photos of the week showed Matt Caravan, one of the Nationals’ most hardened nitwits, standing in a blackened field with the Nats’ candidate for the Hunter electorate. Both of them were dressed in fluoro mining gear and holding pieces of coal.
I know that part of the world pretty well, and also know that everyone up there realises coal is a dying trade. Cessnock used to be surrounded with working mines, now all of them are closed. Singleton has been despoiled by the mining industry, and many can’t wait to see the end of it. Coal, in the Hunter Valley, is a nostalgia trip for many people. Even if the mines are still profitable, those profits are guaranteed to diminish rapidly over time, so it only makes sense to start preparing the transition to renewable energy.
Albo may not be the most dynamic politician since Churchill, but it’s looking as if all he has to do is hold the line, make no rash promises, keep his policy program minimal, and allow his opponent to play the galoot. His motto should be: “Not a Crook. Not an Idiot”. That should be enough to win an election.