ABOVE: Detail from Marcus Wills’The Paul Juraszek monolith (after Marcus Gheeraerts), winner of the 2006 Archibald Prize for portraiture.

The vaguely creepy picture above is this year’s winner of the Archibald Prize, the Australian award for portraiture. Marcus Wills’ painting of sculptor Paul Juraszek depicts the portrait subject 29 times, as tiny versions of himself working on a larger monument of his own head. The somewhat limp controversy being cooked up over the painting involves the fact that it is a close replication of a 16th century etching by Flemish artist Marcus Gheeraerts, the Allegory of Iconoclasm.

The similarity between the works is undisputed, as Wills’ painting is obviously based on the original etching, and he references the original work in the title. But some people feel that while the new painting is technically accomplished, it’s too derivative to win one of the world’s premiere portraiture prizes. But given the competition, this looks like the clear winner to us.

LINK: Sydney Morning Herald > The 2006 Archibald Prize

Sorry we were MIA for most of last week — we were arrested and tried for converting to Christianity. Whew! What a wacky couple of days! Thankfully, that’s all over with — it turned out to be all a crazy misunderstanding. We’ll post early this afternoon.