Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

46 from 577 is the answer THE Art Gallery of New South Wale's annual I summer exhibition for local artists has never looked better. This doesn't mean that the Archibald Prize, and the Wynne, the Pring and the Sulman Prizes have suddenly been entered by better artists, or that the artiste are painting better. The artists and en- tries are much as usual (except the Wynne Prize, which. is rather worse). What makes it look better is the fact that It isn't being held in the Art Gallery of New South Wales's own building, now dosed for reconstruction and renovation. The exhibition is be- ing held instead at Far- mers' Blaxland Gallery. And since Farmers' Blaxiand Gallery Is very small, compared with the galleries usually available for temporary exhibitions in an art museum, only 46 paint- ings are exhibited. And 96 should be quite enough, too, from an entry of 577. It's still more than five percent, the usually accepted proportion of decent art to be found in an exhi- bition open to all- corners. A_ year ago the 1969 Art ilWid Prize exhibi- tion was put into Syd- ney Town Hail, a very large space indeed, which allowed no less than 225 pictures to be exhibited from a total entry of 626. This was nearer 50 percent than five per- cent, and it was a very depressing-locking. ex- hibition, morafejice a field day for amateurs and commercial artists than a professional ex- hibition of seri o us painting. And yet there were printings many good last year, and by mu the same art- ists. They simply got lost among all their 225 neighbors. Eric Smith won the Archibald portrait prize this year with a frontal red Neville rintzman staring out from a rect- angular border. Gruz- man is an architect, and architects spend their lives looking at rectangles of paper with borders around them. Architects very seldom draw buildings in angled perspective, they usually conceive of things front on, or as flat plans. So it is a reference to the sitter's own World when this por- trait is so frontal and so set -square. Its redness I can't account for. Maybe the artist has simply dis- covered that it's the sitter's favorite color. In any case, Eric Smith's strong Interest in differences of indiv- idual character make it probable that the color does have some signifi- cance. This consuming cur- iosity about other people's characters is what makes Eric Smith a better portrait painter than those who can get a likeness as well as he, or who can arrange a composition as well as he. Eric Smith, of course, counts writers a n d architects as fellow art- ists. The other best por- traits in this year's Archibald are also art- ists by artists. Sam Fullbrook has painted an elderly writer, Ernestine as a tilted, gentle gim- let; she will discovei. all -if necessary, with de- vious, circular polls- tpnr_e_ Fullbrook has been best known as a land- scape painter. He Is said to have a market for society portraits In Mel- bourne. If this is true they must be much bet- ter than the usual soci- ety portraits, and good luck to him, for what he has chosen to ex- hibit in public is very fine. Last year his carefully buttoned -up portrait of Kenneth Pirrie was, like this year's Ernestine Hill, a tribute from one artist to another-Pir- rie a fashion designer, being an artist in cloth - covered kinetic sculpture is one way of looking at clothed human beings) and Hill the writer, an art- ist in words. Fullbrook is sumptu- ously caressing and gentle with his applica- tion of paint to canvas, and perhaps he chooses portrait subjects who are shy, so that he can tell them how nice they are. I've no idea whether Ernestine Hill and Ken- neth Pirrie are shy in fact, but he makes them look it. And he has painted a great many shy Aborigines, and bestowed dignity upon them. ART with Daniel Thomas John Brack's portrait, brilliant as usual is of an artist, Ronald Millar. It's cot so up- roarious as Barry Hum- phries -as - Mrs. - Ever- age-as-a-chook had to be last year. Jack Carington Smith portrays Lloyd Rees. there is Brian Dunlop by Bryan Westwood. Hal Mlssingham by Judy Cassab, Nevil Mat- thews. by John Rigby. The Wynne Prize for Australian landscape wairnstei,n an hda en etvherbeen are some excellent land- scape painters in Aus- tralia. Fred Williams. where are you? And David Strachan, why did you have to get killed? The Sulman Prize, for a figure subject, was judged by Sall Herman and awarded to Michael Kmit for a highly pro- fessional romantic com- position. Indeed the 10 Sulman pictures are the high point of the exhibition. They include Garry Shead's moody, green- ery-yallery symbolism called "Room Escape:" Ken Reinhard with electric lights; John Brack sharply observing a perfect ballroom quickstep; and football matches by Elizabeth Rooney and Stan de Tellga. 31 "TELEGRAPH" Sydney, N.S.W.