Michael Leunig has written a great article that includes his thoughts on the recent Bill Henson controversy. More importantly it outlines his own philosophy of making art. The article can be found at:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/michael-leunig/art-from-the-heart
/2008/06/05/1212259005269.html

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A friend commented to me that when he went to list his top five favourite Australian artists he noticed that they were all dead! Here is what I came up with with this criteria as a filter:

1. Sidney Nolan
2. Fred Williams
3. Arthur Boyd
4. Lloyd Rees
5. Margaret Preston

This list might be different tomorrow and I am aware that it contains no one from left field - but these artists have had a large part in fueling my love of Australian art and I am very grateful to have seen so many great paintings produced by their hand.

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There has been so much already written on the Bill Henson controversy that there is little point adding anything else into the mix. The only point I would like to make is how little nuance there seems to be on both sides of the debate. This is no doubt fueled by the need for media articles to draw on extreme opinions to attract attention. Hopefully with time some sense, perspective and self-respect will return to the way we look at Henson's work.

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A friend and I were talking about 'lists' the other day and it spurred me on to think about who are my ten favourite working Australian artists at the moment. So here is my list for today - in no particular order of preference. Please feel free to send me a comment listing yours....

1. Jan Senbergs
2. Euan Macleod
3. Shaun Gladwell
4. Michael Leunig
5. Elisabeth Cummings
6. Tim Maguire
7. Tim Storrier
8. Dolly Mills Petyarre
9. John Olsen
10. Anne Wallace

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Artists on the whole are not necessarily the best people to write about their work - and this is probably how it should be. However in the late 1990's a selection of John Olsen's diary entries were published as a book called 'Drawn from Life'. Olsen writes very well about his own experience of making art and his thoughts on the artworks of his predecessors and contemporaries. Many of Australia's best know painters - Sidney Nolan, Brett Whiteley, Fred Williams and Tim Storrier - move in and out of frame. As is obvious from some of his paintings John Olsen is a lover of good food and also includes some of his favourite recipes just in case the reader gets inspired to give them a try!

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The Sidney Nolan retrospective starts in a few days at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Much of the focus on Nolan in recent news articles has been on how his work divides art lovers. Sebastian Smee wrote an interesting article in The Australian where he compared Fred Williams and Nolan. Smee seemed ultimately to favour Williams but saw Nolan as just too strong a painter in his best works to ignore. In the selection for the retrospective Barry Pearce has taken a different approach than might be expected. For example not all of the first Ned Kelly series will be exhibited and there seems to be a focus on Nolan's interaction with the poet Rimbaud. I'm looking forward to posting my own review of the exhibition shortly!

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Its a debatable point as to if Australian art ever really had a true modernist movement in the same sense as was seen in Europe and the US early last century. However painters who were influenced by such a dramatic shift in aesthetics - Sidney Nolan, John Olsen, Arthur Boyd, John Brack etc. - continue to dominate the market place. Even artists from the next generation after these innovators - such as Tim Storrier and Brett Whiteley - are engaging with the shifts in perception that modernism let loose. In the case of Storrier it is curious that he is often labeled as a conservative painter. I would argue that although Storrier's art is clear and exact in its representational nature the juxtaposition of imagery - such as TV sets in the desert - adds a distinctly modern and even surreal quality to his work.

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The crown of 'Australia's Greatest Living Artist' often hovers over the heads of several contenders at any one time. However as far as the mainstream media is concerned John Olsen reigns unchallenged at the present moment. I'm not sure if Olsen particularly likes the description but there is something to be said for its pleasing simplicity - competitive nuances notwithstanding. My guess is that Tim Storrier is widely seen to be a future title holder. Its an interesting game trying to guess who might be up for the job in 20 years time - Rick Amor or Euan Macleod? There are also several indigenous artists who would likely be up for consideration. Any other suggestions?

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Next year should see another arm-wrestle over the reputation of Sidney Nolan with a significant retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Nolan has always divided opinion. On one side of the table are those ancestors of genius, the 'my kid could have done that' brigade. Squaring them off are those who see him as an arist with an imagination like liquid mercury and the most significant non-indgenous painter that Australia has ever seen. I guess you can tell whose side I'm on.

The barbs against Nolan are many: too prolific, too many sloppy pictures, too many themes, can't draw, can't paint. It's not just traditionlists who poke the stick, many lovers of the now roll their eyes at the sound of his name. Nolan's use of irony is so well crafted, so porous to the emotions of fear, regret, and to the echos of myth, that his work can look too obvious to some viewers. If you like your art 'too cool for school' then the memory etched face of a Galipoli soldier isn't likely to be your thing.

And then there's the art market. For a while after his death Nolan's prolific output, combined with the relatively small size of the Australian population, seemed to suggest that there would be no end to the availablity of distinctive works. I would suggest that those days are long gone. One colleague, searching hard for works in the U.K., told of a conversation with a local dealer, the gist of which was, 'and if the Americans get hold of him.'

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Craig Ruddy must be a relieved man. After winning the 2004 Archibald prize for his portrait of David Gulpilil he found the decision to be contested by another artist, Tony Johansen. The dispute was over whether Ruddy's entry truly constituted a painting. The case was a near doppelganger of the watershed controversy surrounding William Dobell's portrait of Joseph Smith - except in that case the dispute centered around whether Dobell's work constituted a portrait or a caricature. Yesterday Justice Hamilton handed down his verdict on Ruddy's win. It isn't that the portrait was defined by the court to be a painting - rather the Judge pointed out that the courts aren't the place to be defining the qualities of different works of art.

What's interesting about this case is that the Judge expressed a view that decisions regarding the quality of an artwork should be left to those in the art world. Yet one can presume that he realised that consensus, especially in the art world, wasn't going to appear anytime soon. The subject of where or what is the 'art world' is best left to another post. However let's look at the main players in this game: two artists, the AGNSW and two art experts arguing opposing positions. It's reasonable to suggest that they are all citizens of the 'art world'. What's also obvious is that they haven't been able to agree as to if Ruddy's work is truly a painting. Many other similar debates over definitions of art keep cropping up. What constitutes an original print? When is a photograph a work of art? Whose work is a painting when it is largely produced by assistants in an artists studio?

Without trying to lay down the law myself it's my opinion that art involves the exploring and expression of alternate ways of ordering our experience of this world. I find it strange then so much time can be spent seeking watertight definitions of that which by its very nature seeks to resist being pinned down to rigid criteria. This isn't meant to displace the importance of a truthful description of how a work was conceived and made. However the great thing about art is that it is one area in life where no matter how hard one may try, no-one gets to be God.

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