Archibald Prize 2009 | NEWS.com.au.
Well the Archibald had been run and won for another year. I’m pretty sure that at this year’s announcement Mr Capon would have said something like, ‘It was another stellar year and the decission of the judges was the hardest to make yet.’ But I think he would have been telling porkies. A look at this year’s finalists is not awe inspiring at all. Not one of them makes me want to run out and start painting.
Of course Mr Capon is a man of great honour so he may well have been far more diplomatic than I, and perhaps talked about the struggle of the artist in the realm of portraiture through the worst financial crisis in living memory.
And perhaps the artists had the same thought as they were plying their craft. Perhaps paying the rent, buying more oils and canvas or food was at the forefront. I know it is for a lot of people.
Maybe the quality of art can be completely equated to the state of the stock market. Maybe creativity in the fine arts ebbs and flows at the whim of the Dow Jones or ASX. They’re both like tumours – all invasive to every aspect of our lives no matter if we’re investors, spectators or blissfully unconscious and unaware of them.