The Sulman Prize Controversy

So the painting which won the 2011 Sulman Prize was decided by a single judge (Richard Bell), who tossed a coin. Now a lot of people are upset, not least the winner, there are charges the prize has been devalued and Edmund Capon is mounting a fairly flimsy defence of the process.

Clearly this is a serious fuck up: the Sulman is a major Australian art prize, instituted in 1936. The prize is administered by the Art Gallery of NSW and is therefore ultimately taxpayer funded, regardless of where the $20,000 prizemoney comes from. The public has a right to be angry if the competition is insulted by the judging process and a right to seek a sincere explanation and measures to stop a similar farce occurring in the future.

The Sulman has been won by Brett Whitely (twice), John Olsen and Tim Storrier (twice). It is a serious competition and judging needs to be taken seriously. You can’t have a single judge, whose cavalier attitude to the task seems to be: “Well, who can say whether one piece is better than another? It’s just a lottery of personal taste. It’s the process of the art that matters anyway.”

So who is responsible for this absurdity? Obviously the 11 trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW, who chose the judge. Such an important prize, with a rich tradition and you nongs choose only one judge, moreover a bloke known to be a loose cannon? The Sydney Morning Herald says the gallery trustees chose the judge on the advice of Edmund Capon, but I understand the trustees had Richard Bell as their preferred choice from a number of candidates and then asked Edmund Capon if he saw anything wrong with it. Edmund, you probably should have said “yes”, unless the other candidates were even less appropriate, in which case you should have suggested someone else.

However, the main question is: Why is there only one judge? Apparently there is the feeling this makes the award process more interesting. More random = more interesting? May you live in interesting times. Even American Idol has three judges.

Art criticism is mostly, but not wholly subjective. There are questions of technique, of the depth of the questions the work poses, of its innovation. An art prize jury needs a range of skills and experience to assess these more objective criteria, as well as to actively debate the subjective qualities of the works. This point should be obvious to trustees of the state art gallery, so a natural question then becomes: Who are these people? Well, here are the 11.

Some are business people who may be combining an interest in the arts with an entry on their social CV, but there are enough artists and art collectors in the 11 to have made a more sensible choice than this. The contribution of the business people and the professor should have at least been to question the risk of having the decision made by a single, controversial artist.

Many people are by now questioning whether Richard Bell is qualified to judge the Sulman Prize at all. On the basis of his attitude, clearly not, but I suggest that on the basis of his work, asking him to sit on a prize jury is quite reasonable.

Here is a good collection of his artwork. His painting Scientia E Metaphysica (Bell’s Theorem), which won the 2003 National ATSIC Art Award is accompanied by a serious and well written essay. The piece posits that “Aboriginal Art” is a Western construct which demeans the art with the “ethnographic” tag, whereas it should be seen as abstract expressionism; an “ism” giving Western work more philosophical credibility. I like the juxtaposition of the Jackson Pollock style drip painting over his modernist rectangles, which I guess are meant to represent a modern “Aboriginal” style. Why is Pollock’s drip painting abstract expressionism while dot paintings are in the ethnographic category? How modernist does a painting by an Aboriginal painter, using Aboriginal style motifs have to be before it is classified as abstract expressionism and not “Aboriginal art”? That the piece poses these questions and poses them well is sufficient to validate its worth as art. It’s not a masterpiece, but clearly a serious work.

Bell has developed this theme in multiple pieces, which is what artists do, but in this case, I think none of them have the impact and interrogative depth of Scientia E Metaphysica.

He has developed another theme: paraphrasing of Roy Liechtenstein works, with the content of the speech bubbles altered to be personal eg. “Richard”, “black man” and the colour of the man’s face changed to brown. Here is a good example of the original and Richard Bell’s piece. These are more playful. I don’t like that word but flippant is not correct because their content is serious. They are however, highly derivative (perhaps an homage) and don’t require much effort to produce.

So, given the above, Bell is not a master, but certainly a serious artist with the ability to engage in sophisticated discussion of his work. I’d say this qualifies him to judge other art. Which is why his lazy, smart-arsed attitude of “I was tempted to put in all animals. I was going to make that the criterion, but I had to choose some of my friends” and “It’s a lottery anyway” are so disappointing.

Perhaps next time one of his works sells, the price can be chosen by a random number generator. How would that fit in with your philosophy, smart arse?