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

ABOVE: Simon Starling’s jury-rigged hydrogen moped, part of his work Tabernas Desert Run, in turn part of his Turner Prize-winning installation. Sayeth the Telegraph: “meh.”

Blowback from the Turner announcement on Monday continues to roll in; The Telegraph’s take on it today focuses less on Simon Starling and the goodness/badness/indifference of his shed-and-bicycle derived works, but contemplates the total mainstreaming of the whole modern art movement. Non-winner Darren Almond’s interview with Channel 4 on Monday night, says Mark Hudson, had all the grit and revolutionary panache of a Jamie Oliver kindergarten Christmas Special (the interview was actually filmed in Almond’s catalogue-photogenic kitchen). Where’s the spitting in the face of convention? Where’s the countercultural angst?

Hudson recounts an anecdote (which sounds made-up to us, but still amusing) in which painter Stuart Davis presents Picasso with a petition asking for more acceptance of modern art among American establishmentarians. Picasso refused, saying that acceptance would defang modernism of its killer instinct. As the 2005 Turner award was given out on live TV with millions watching, it seems safe to say that contemporary art—some of it, anyway—has been accepted by the mainstream. But does that spell its death?

LINK: Telegraph > What’s really shocking about modern art

ABOVE: Detail of Simon Starling’s Shedboatshed, part of Starling’s Turner-prize-shortlist exhibit. Starling was named winner yesterday.

The Turner circus packed up its tent and rolled out of town yesterday, as it was announced that Simon Starling would receive the £25,000 prize. Although the show [link has audio] of all four Turner-shortlisted artists continues until January 22, yesterday’s announcement, which was made live on Channel 4 in the UK, really marks the high point of the whole Turner gong-show. The remainder of the exhibit is pretty much mopping up.

Starling’s work, which includes a self-built electric bicycle and a shed that he rebuilt as a boat and then as a shed again, is all about reusing and recycling, and the jury said in the Tate’s press release that they “admired his unique ability to create poetic narratives which draw together a wide range of cultural, political and historical references.” Each of the other three shortlisted artists receive £5,000; the prize loot this year was put up by Gordon’s Gin, which seems like an awfully low-rent gin to be sponsoring the world’s biggest contemporary art prizes.

LINK: BBC > ‘Shed boat’ artist takes Turner

ABOVE: Damien Hirst has topped Art Review’s Power 100, meaning he gets a lifetime supply of Swiffer dusters. Or something.

There are some cases where a numerical rank of individuals makes sense: the Forbes Richest list is one such example: there are quantifiable things to rank, like the number of dollars in someone’s bankroll. That’s a ranking. But most powerful? Prettiest? Best? These are pretty loosey-goosey concepts to shoehorn into the lock-step grid of 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10. Not that people don’t try. Now, Art Review has drawn up its own annual “Power 100″ list, a ranking of the most powerful people in the art world. We can’t approve of the concept, but the result is still amusing to debate.

Damien Hirst topped Art Review’s list this year, the first time an artist has take the #1 spot (he actually dislodged his own dealer, Larry Gagosian, to take the position). The list was compiled based on a methodology of total sales, show attendance, and a subjective category of “artistic influence.” After Hirst, Gagosian is second, followed by François Pinault, Sir Nicholas Serota of the Tate is fourth, and Glenn D. Lowry of MoMA ranked fifth. Now, undoubtedly these are all appropriately potent dudes and all that, but do they really fit into their assigned slots that easily? Does this represent the moment Damien Hirst, uh, Jumped the Shark? We don’t really want to spoil anyone’s fun, but wouldn’t a list of powerful art-world figures in no particular order be just as effective, and less of a mathematical atrocity?

LINK: Reuters > Hirst tops art power list

ABOVE: two works by artists competing for the 2005 Turner Prize: left, detail from Gillian Carnegie’s Fleurs de Huile; right, detail from Darren Almond’s Meantime.

Britain’s biggest, splashiest, most infamous art prize opens the exhibit of its shortlisted artists to the public today. The shortlist for the £40,000 Turner Prize is old news, announced way back in the summer. But for the next three months the public will be able to actually see the works themselves at the Tate Modern. The show runs October 18 to January 22, but the winner will be announced in a live broadcast on Channel 4 on December 5.

Of shortlisted artists Darren Almond, Gillian Carnegie, Jim Lambie, and Simon Starling, Carnegie, the only painter of the bunch, is favoured to win. Some of that speculation seems fueled by the mega-exhibit “The Triumph of Painting,” which lumbers onward at the Saatchi Gallery right now. Charles Saatchi, having patronized many past Turner artists before they hit it big, either has his finger on the pulse of an art world that is coming back around to painting (ludicrously suggesting that it ever went off it), or he is simply a collector of such freakishly grandiose financial means that his every well-publicized move shakes the foundations of art. Either way, “The Triumph of Painting” may augur well for Carnegie’s own triumph in December. Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen….

LINK: Reuters > Birds battle buttocks, bike for top art prize

ABOVE: Detail from Sue Williams’ Wish U Were Here (2003). Williams is one of six artists shortlisted for the Welsh Artes Mundi Prize.

This one’s a little late, as the shortlist for the newish Artes Mundi Prize—the two-year old, £40,000 prize backed by various Welsh arts organizations which have no name recognition but serious dough—was announced late last week. The artists competing for the Artes Mundi, which has quickly become one of the richest such competitions in the world, are: Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Thomas Demand, Brazilian/Swiss duo Mauricio Dias & Walter Riedweg, Leandro Erlich, Subodh Gupta, Sue Williams, and Wu Chi-Tsung. Williams is the only Welsh resident represented in the list, and she moved from England Proper in the first place.

Selected works from each artist will be shown between 11th - May 7th 2006 at the National Gallery in Cardiff, and the winner of the big cheque will be announced on March 31, 2006. The Artes Mundi website includes information on all the free events going on with the exhibit, such as lunchtime lectures and guided tours of the works. A fun feature—presumably a serious issue of literacy and nationalism inside Wales, but we’re not in wales, are we?—is the link to turn all the text on the site into gibberish. Oh right, Welsh.

LINK: BBC > Welsh art prize entrants revealed

[And sorry for never posting yesterday; we’ve decided retroactively that we took Rosh Hashanah off. Happy New Year!]

ABOVE: details from portraits of America’s presidents. From left to right: Richard Nixon, Calvin Coolidge, Rutherford Hayes, and Andrew Johnson. The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery is sponsoring a contest to try to reinvigorate portraiture in the U.S.

“FACE IT,” the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery shrieks in the introduction to its 2006 Portrait Competition. “PORTRAITURE IS BACK.” That all-caps headline is the first salvo in the NPG’s explanation for its Outwin Boochever 2006 Portrait Competition, a high-profile attempt by the Smithsonian to breathe some life back into the depiction of dudes and chicks in paint and sculpture—it’s, like, totally retro. The whole deal is a ripoff of—sorry, inspired by—similar contests in England and Australia, and a bold new step for the gallery, which isn’t in the habit of collecting portraits of living people.

Speaking of living people, the contest was made possible by a donation by the presumably DAR-eligible Virginia Outwin Boochever, who volunteered for twenty years at the NPG and is possibly no longer alive. It’s difficult to tell from the website, which talks about her in both the past tense (”she was”) and the present perfect tense (”she has”). Wherther Mrs. Outwin Roochever has shuffled off this mortal coil or not, her cheque still cleared, obviously, so the gallery is going to give $25,000 to the best portrait they receive, and the contest is open to “all artists age 18 and older who are living and working in the United States,” which seems to include illegal immigrants. That’d make for one awesome acceptance speech. The contest closes Sept. 6, so start tomorrow.

LINK: National Portrait Gallery Competition

ABOVE: two works by artists competing for the 2005 Turner Prize: left, detail from Gillian Carnegie’s Fleurs de Huile; right, detail from Darren Almond’s Meantime. Carnegie is already favoured to win.

The 2005 Turner Prize nominees were announced yesterday, and the BBC noted that English bookmakers William Hill have already announced that painter Gillian Carnegie is the artist to beat, with odds of 1 to 1. The Turner, arguably the most important contemporary art prize in the world, has developed a reputation for what we will politely call eccentricity, and is often criticized for emphasizing conceptual over aesthetic concerns. Well, experts—the gamblers, at any rate—reckon that this is the year the committee will break that streak and award the prize to painter Carnegie, who does still life. In oil paint. On canvas. Try to contain yourself.

In case Will Hill is barking up the wrong installation, the other artists nominated for the £25,000 prize are: Installation artist Darren Almond; conceptual sculptor Jim Lambie; and scavenger-sculptor Simon Starling. Exhibits of the artists’ works will open at the Tate Britain on October 18, and the prize will be announced during a live broadcast on Channel 4 on December 5. Eat that, American Idol.

LINK: Tate Britain > Turner Prize 2005 Shortlist Announced

ABOVE: Claude Gosselin, founder of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, is one of seven recipients of Canada’s Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts.

The Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts in Canada never provoke the kind of outrage or unctuous disgust that other national visual arts prizes get; The GG’s are all so respectful and friendly and thoroughly Canadian. Seven prizes were announced yesterday, and the winners are: mixed-media painter Carl Beam; photograhper Lynne Cohen; sculptor Roland Poulin; video collaborators Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak; photographer/sculptor/painter Françoise Sullivan; video artist Paul Wong; and gallery founder Claude Gosselin.

The awards aren’t dull, exactly—the artists are worthy, many of them being rewarded after decades of solid work. But that’s the problem: there’s really nothing to disagree about here. The ones who have caused controversy, or actually driven public debate about art, mostly did it in the 70s and 80s and are being safely recognized now for those contributions, without ruffling taxpayer feathers. But couldn’t a few of the CA$15,000 prizes (about $12,000 in Disney dollars) go to some younger upstart Canadian artists who desperately need the exposure? It might mean some genuine engagement between contemporary artists and the general public.

Anyway, the Canada Council for the Arts website has biograhpies of the winners, essays on their work, online galleries, and videos to see.

Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts - 2005