Culture Club

# 616

Your ABC invigorates the cultural landscape, yet again

Every time I sit down to watch television I’m reminded why I so rarely sit down to watch television. It hasn’t always been this way. There was a time when one could rely on the ABC or SBS for something sharp and entertaining, worthy of attention. Nowadays it’s necessary to study the TV guide carefully or risk being exposed to programs guaranteed to turn your mind to jelly.

Today’s ABC thinks that culture is something grown in a petri dish in a laboratory. In place of arts programming it prefers the kind of inane quiz shows that were once the preserve of the commercial stations. It has an unshakable belief that any and every show is improved by the presence of a gaggle of unfunny comedians for whom it provides a virtual welfare service. Despite ABC Chair, Kim Williams’s pronouncements about the need for a “critical culture”, the broadcaster is utterly phobic about criticism, unless it’s some airy generalisation about the evils of “colonisation”.

In an article in The Australian, from September last year, Helen Trinca set down Williams’s passionately held views on the subject:

Kim Williams says that in general, “criticism in Australia is in a moment of nadir… We need to really lift it up,” he says. “Critical culture is fundamental to a good creative environment, to good cinema, to good television drama, to literature, to the visual arts, to music. On the most generous-hearted assessment of the Australian creative landscape you’d have to say that we’re not doing well… We need to get behind critics, we need to develop critics, we need to invigorate our critical culture, because these things matter to the intellectual rigour of the culture, they matter to the kinds of ambition in the culture.”

Hear, hear! One year later, the ABC is giving us programs such as Portrait Artist of the Year and The Art Of… I’m not going to venture a blow-by-blow critique of these shows because, like most of the Australian population, I can’t bear to watch them.

To go through these programs systematically, giving a detailed analysis of their banalities, would be like writing a painstaking critique of the Da Vinci Code – it’s simply not worth it. The very fact that we live in a world in which conferences, scholarly publications and soon entire university departments may be devoted to Taylor Swift, is not a good reason for spending excessive amounts of time on terminally shallow subjects.

Writing about the visual arts or the cinema, I like to get into the nitty gritty, but with the ABC I make no apologies if I deal in generalities.

When the ABC began screening its Art Works program in early 2021, I was dumbstruck by its vacuity. I wrote at the time that I didn’t expect it would be around for long, but here I was completely mistaken. This frothy milkshake was served up three years in a row, and has given rise to another cringeworthy series, The Art Of… But who’s watching? It’s almost as if the broadcaster has to find a use for presenters who are still on contract, whether it be Nabila Benson telling us everything’s “awesome!”; or Leigh Sales, who nowadays seems to be reduced to introducing Australian Story; or that endless supply of comedians who pop up on every second program.

The last genuinely popular ABC arts program was At the Movies with David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz, which ran from 2004-14. It borrowed its format from a famous American program of the same name, featuring movie critics, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, which succeeded for the same reasons: it featured two knowledgeable, opinionated people who argued about films, often having completely different points of view.

This may not sound like revolutionary programming, but it worked. Ever since David and Margaret called it a day, the ABC has given up on any form of critical approach. The immediate replacement for At the Movies was a short-lived seminar of comedians who horsed around, displayed their ignorance of the cinema, and largely agreed with one another. The show soon disappeared without a trace. The ABC had learned absolutely nothing from the success of At the Movies, not understanding that viewers enjoy a vigorous exchange of well-informed opinions, and are bored rigid by aimless, self-regarding chit-chat.

Over the past decade the broadcaster has doubled down on those lessons not learned. Art Works was stupefying in its nullity, being a jazzy ‘magazine’ style program hosted by the enthusiastic Nabila, who made a virtue of her unfamiliarity with every topic. She gushed, ooohed and aaahed about everything she encountered. It was like someone who never imagined there was such a thing as “the arts” being introduced to the subject on a weekly basis. Imagine Mary Beard on the BBC exclaiming, “Ooooh! Who would’ve thought the Romans wore togas! That’s awesome!”

Despite a fundamental lack of knowledge, gushy Nabila was exactly the kind of presenter the ABC wanted because the quality the station values most highly is personality. The show’s masterminds decided, early on, that because the arts are inherently boring and uninteresting one had to give the public a presenter who could generate a bit of excitement, providing them with something to look at or laugh about. Many of the segment presenters were no better. I’ll never forget watching self-styled narcissist, Deni Todorovic, in beard and frock, wandering around the Mary Quant exhibition in Bendigo exclaiming: “This is another one of my favourites!” It was a shameful trivialisation of a significant exhibition. Last thing I heard about Deni is that they was subject to a restraining order, although restraint doesn’t seem to be their forte.

Let’s not dwell too long on Kim Williams’s call for “intellectual rigour”. For the organisation he helms, the arts are subordinate to the most superficial brand of entertainment. Today, the ABC’s base assumption that culture is inherently boring is even more strongly ingrained. It’s believed the only way to make the visual arts palatable is to find some “personality” and a bunch of “celebrities” for formats that make the gardening program look like Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation. Between 2016-22, the ABC gave us no fewer than six series of Anh’s Brush with Fame, in which comedian and wannabee artist, Anh Do, created a succession of amateurish portraits of celebrities, who had to pretend to be overwhelmed when confronted with these daubs.

And so we come to the ABC’s “new” visual arts extravaganza, Portrait Artist of the Year. Like most ABC arts programs, it’s a shameless facsimile of a BBC program. One precursor you may remember was Star Portraits with Rolf, in which the now unmentionable Rolf Harris brought together three professional artists to paint a portrait of a celebrity, who got to keep the work he or she liked.

The precise model is a UK Sky Arts program of the same name, now in its 12^thseason. The format is exactly the same, even the rather juvenile sets are identical. The major difference is that the UK judges and artists have been replaced by Australian judges and artists. Another difference is the quality of the art and the commentary, but that’s a sad fact of every program the ABC copies from the UK.

One imagines the ABC was contractually obliged to stick rigidly to the established UK format, but it may have seen the show as a way of capitalising on the enduring popularity of the Archibald Prize, which the broadcaster previously tried to exploit in an embarrassing three-part series fronted by Rachel Griffiths.

Portrait Artist of the Year is a competition in which nine artists, both amateurs and professionals, paint portraits of three celebrities who are invited to pose for a four-hour session. At the end of the session, the celebrities view the portraits and choose their favourite, while three “expert” judges choose a winner who will progress to the finals.

Once again, we find that familiar ABC fascination with comedians and celebrities. The show is hosted by actress, Miranda Tapsell, and carrot-top comedian, Luke McGregor. The three judges are Abdul Abdullah (an artist the ABC simply adores) in his trademark baseball cap; Bree Pickering, director of the National Portrait Gallery; and Robert Wellington, a consummate dandy who teaches at the Australian National University. Viewers might expect that ‘arty’ types all dress like Wellington but will be pleased to learn they can also be refreshingly good blokes, like Abdul. Pickering is the benevolent face of the institution that will accept a picture from the eventual winner of the competition.

In each episode the action proceeds along a predictable path, as participants strive to keep proceedings cheerful and up-tempo. The judges are nice to everyone, the celebrities play along (or try to), the artists keep smiling through gritted teeth, and the presenters – or rather McGregor – attempt to crack jokes. It’s an orgy of insincerity that results in a bunch of hasty, rather ordinary paintings that are praised to the skies by all and sundry.

Having made the commitment to watch this series, I found I could only last two complete episodes. The solution was to watch the beginning and end of the other episodes, and fast-forward through the middle. In this way I was able to follow everything through the six preliminary heats and avoid two hours of aimless, meandering blather.

Morbid curiosity kept me glued to the set. I was personally acquainted with at least one of the artists and had seen work by some of the others. It’s entirely possible I’ll come across the same painters while judging another art competition, of which Australia has a surfeit.

However, there is something depressing about a group of artists being obliged to produce a portrait in four hours in front of a camera. This is not how successful works of art come into the world. It’s a dubious form of showbusiness, closer to sport or a game show. It gets particularly gruesome when the music tinkles and swells to provide the correct emotional cues. I felt sorry for some of the painters who simply didn’t have time to correct (or scrap) works that went off in the wrong direction. The show is selling a misleading, undignified idea of what artists do, and for most contestants it was a hopeless cause. At best they gained a precious bit of public exposure for enduring this ordeal.

What’s really depressing is the ABC’s obsession with ‘celebrities’, most of whom seem to be actors or presenters associated with their own programs. The celebrity sitters, carefully chosen to represent a cross-section of ethnicities and sexual preferences, are referred to as “our beloved celebrities” or “our much-loved celebrities”. (I’m reminded of the NGA referring to Lindy Lee as “revered.”) Does the ABC believe we should be worshipping their employees, as if they were gods? Are we supposed to feel a deep emotional attachment to these people?

In Victorian times, the “celebrities” were homely old chaps like Charles Dickens or Thomas Carlyle, with Queen Victoria the most “beloved” of all. They were famous because they were people of outstanding achievement. Today’s celebrities are chiefly famous because they appear regularly on TV or in the movies. There’s no guarantee of any special quality beyond good looks or an extrovert personality. The Victorians required substance, while we’re content with anyone who shouts: “Look at me!”, and Your ABC is delighted to cater to current preferences.

Although the judges make a range of critical comments when left alone with the works at the end of each episode, it’s a very fleeting discussion. Most of the exchange centres around whether an artist has captured a good likeness or revealed some aspect of the sitter’s personality. With portraiture this is standard fare. For the most part they make strenuous efforts to be nice about all the paintings, although one wonders what they say when the cameras are turned off.

It would be laughable to suggest that this program reflects Kim Williams’s ideas about a “critical culture”. It is an exercise in popular entertainment – even though it may be tedious and repetitive – that treats everyone as wonderful, warm human beings. It reflects a more general ABC attitude towards the arts: they have to be fun and accessible for everyone.

I’m becoming increasingly allergic to this insistence on obligatory fun. Art is not always fun. It can be painful, difficult, dark, upsetting, profound and moving. It can transport us with its beauty or shock us with its insights. It can be hard to look at, while also being hard to ignore. It can make us re-evaluate the world around us, and those attitudes we take for granted. It can lift us out of our everyday existences and make us feel inspired.

None of the above is likely to happen with Portrait Artist of the Year.

Feeling as if I hadn’t plumbed the full depths of the ABC’s arts coverage, I also tuned in for the latest episode of The Art Of… in which artist, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, examined a major philosophical problem: Why are we so obsessed with looking good?

Although it’s obvious that everyone would sooner look good than bad, some of us are more obsessed with our looks than others. Take Ramesh, or instance, whose wardrobe in this program made Nabila Benson look like a model for Country Road. Presumably the show’s producers felt it required a peacock to get to the bottom of the thorny question about “looking good”.

Ramesh, like Abdul, is good ‘talent’. He’s extroverted, articulate and self-confident. If you don’t spend too long thinking about the things he says, it comes across as a very lively presentation. In this show he had brisk conversations with four people: photographer, William Yang; Elaine George, the first Indigenous fashion model to appear on the cover of Vogue; artist, Joan Ross; and choreographer, Kelley Abbey. None of this stuff was earthshattering, but it wasn’t terrible. What gradually wore me down was Ramesh’s constant self-referencing, as if he were the measure of all things; and the air of political righteousness that accompanied his pronouncements.

This was most obvious in the conversation with Joan Ross, who makes witty collage works and animations, drawing on images from the colonial era. Listening to Ramesh’s commentary, one could imagine that “colonialism” was one of the most pressing problems we face today – an unspeakable evil that poisons our daily lives. Really? I thought we’d dispensed with colonialism a long time ago, even if some of the old attitudes die hard. This was the ‘serious’ side of the “looking good” discussion, although the links between colonial oppression and good grooming were not precisely drawn.

As a presenter, Ramesh was content to parrot a lot of received wisdom about race, sexuality, power and identity that gets passed around in the cooler echelons of the contemporary art scene. It may be music to the ears of ABC arts producers, but it sounded to me like the voice of a clique who have become firm institutional favourites while decrying the oppressive society in which we are condemned to live. Look at the artists whose work is being purchased by the major art museums, those who are being given commissions by public bodies and sucking up grants from agencies such as Creative Australia and Create NSW. The same names turn up again and again. It’s a club.

Most club members, like Ramesh on the ABC program, know how to hit all the right notes with a kind of “critical” commentary that laments our rotten world and tells us how to smarten up our attitudes. This is not a sign of a “critical culture” it’s a chorus of conformity that allows entrance to that charmed circle considered to be the ‘right kind’ of artists. To these creatives and their enablers it’s perfectly acceptable that their work should be collected and funded by public bodies, because they are providing a moral service to the benighted taxpayer. They are paragons of virtue alongside those dumb artists who make work without thinking about politics, race or gender – and as a consequence, have been scrubbed from institutional wish-lists.

What concerns me about all of this, in a post-critical world, is that the dice are now seriously weighted in favour of those who understand the importance of cultivating a certain public image, the right attitudes and the appropriate contacts. Hasn’t it ever been thus? Yes, but never so much as today, when there are almost no voices in the media that will call out nepotism, corruption, favouritism and unfairness.

Instead of putting on frivolous shows that help promote the careers of anointed favourites such as Ramesh and Abdul, the ABC might demonstrate its commitment to a “critical culture” by coming up with programs in which people put forward arguments about works of art or movies or issues; programs where intelligence supplants the rule of obligatory niceness. It’s disagreement that grips audiences, not an exotic presenter’s predictable recitation of political platitudes.

If the national broadcaster really did have a will to do something for our culture, Four Corners might consider an investigation into the way the Powerhouse Museum has been burning public money with zero accountability, en route to a massive financial blowout. If there was ever a blockbuster story of cultural vandalism, government irresponsibility and institutional overreach, this is it. How about it, Kim?

This week’s art column catches up with the exhibition, Our Story: Aboriginal Chinese People in Australia, at the National Museum of Australia. It’s the culmination of an intensive research project led by artist, Zhou Xiaoping, who has traced connections between Chinese and Aboriginal people, from the 19^th century to today. Along with a large collection of social history material, the exhibition includes work by Zhou himself, and eight contemporary Indigenous artists with Chinese ancestry. There’s never been a show like it in this country.

The movie being reviewed is The Choral, which opened this year’s British Film Festival. Directed by Nicholas Hytner, with a script by Alan Bennett, and Ralph Fiennes in the lead role, it was a safe choice for first night. Having spent a fortnight sampling odd, depressing arthouse flicks, followed by a couple of dismal evenings with the ABC, it was a great relief to come across this film.