A couple of weeks ago, The Australian asked me whether our art museums had lost the courage to show genuinely controversial works. It’s a question that doesn’t allow for a yes-or-no answer, because it would be ridiculous to show a controversial work purely for the sake of causing a rumpus. I’m sure this is something lots of institutions have done, but they never want us to believe they are doing it for the publicity.
It’s one way of sticking pins into the necrotic rump of the media, which only seems to get excited about the visual arts when there is a heist, a huge auction price, a cunning forgery or a public outrage. It could be argued this was precisely what the Oz was doing by compiling a list of controversial works that have made headlines in former years. Nevertheless, in the age of cancel culture the newspaper had a point, and it was a revealing exercise for writer, Tim Douglas, to look at art controversies past and present to see what has changed.
Back in 2000, when serving as curator for the Federation exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, I included a component which featured 20th century works of art that reflected significant political issues, or had created controversies in their own right.
An obvious starting point was Norman Lindsay’s Pollice verso, a large pen and ink drawing first exhibited at the Royal Art Society of NSW in 1904. It featured a crowd of naked ‘pagans’ – centurions, gladiators, a boy with a leopard, a smiling Bacchus, and a plentiful supply of buxom nymphs – giving the “thumb’s down” to a pitiful, scrawny figure dangling from a crucifix. It represented Lindsay’s rejection of “Christianity, that communist uprising of the underworld”, and his embrace of the classical “civilisation” of Greece and Rome.
The response was predictably hysterical. The critics were dismayed Lindsay did not use his pen for the cause of niceness instead of evil, but while decrying the “bestial” nature of the image they kowtowed to his penmanship. Intellectuals such as Julian Ashton and A.G. Stephens wrote spirited defenses of the picture, with profligate use of the word “genius”. For Ashton, Pollice verso was an historic event. He announced: “at last a great work has been produced in Australia.”
For Lindsay’s detractors the drawing was an act of blasphemy and provocation. The arguments raged for weeks, with the Bulletin receiving a stream of complaints from angry subscribers. The most original contribution was a long poem from a clergyman, who ranked Norman second only to the Devil – much to his delight, no doubt. Finally, the Bulletin published a pusillanimous editorial explaining that the work represented “the challenge of Pleasure to Asceticism, but not necessarily Pleasure’s victory.” This was a feat of imagination that left Lindsay’s efforts in the shade.
There is a postscript to this episode. Within a few days of the work being shown in a group exhibition in Melbourne in 1907, it was purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria for 150 guineas, reputedly a record price for an Australian pen and ink drawing.
Here, in embryo, is a pattern for most of the art scandals of the century that followed. An act of provocation is followed by public outrage fuelled by a scandal-mongering press. Debate rages, then dies down, and the work is purchased for a major collection. As for the overt insult to Christianity, many institutions today would barely blink at such an attack, although they would be horrified by any work that criticised or satirised Islam – and not just through fear of a jihad. But as subsequent events have shown, there’s a point at which museums have been too complacent in assuming that Christians will simply turn the other cheek. More of that later.
Another flashpoint was the Archibald Prize of 1943, when William Dobell’s portrait of Joshua Smith was the subject of a lawsuit over whether it was actually a caricature. Today that distinction seems frivolous, as many Archibald Prize finalists would be flattered by the term “caricature”, but the court case almost ruined Dobell’s life. Although he won the day, the experience proved deeply traumatic.
Skip forward to 1973, and James Mollison’s purchase of Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles for what was then the Australian National Gallery. I won’t trawl back over the “Drunks Did It” headlines, and the sustained apoplexy at the AUD$1.3 million (US$2 million) price tag. The affair is often credited with helping bring down the Whitlam government, which was being hammered for its free-spending ways.
Attitudes towards such extravagant purchases have changed so radically over the past 50 years that when current NGA director, Nick Mitzevich, thought it was a good idea to spend $14 million on a commissioned sculpture by Lindy Lee, an Australian artist whose reputation cannot be remotely compared with that of Jackson Pollock, both the Coalition government, and its Labor successors seemed to think this was no big deal. The press too, has been suitably indulgent. Virtually the only dissenting voices have been Christopher Allen and Yours Truly.
The major argument for those who support the purchase seems to be that “Lindy’s such a nice person”. I agree completely, but whether that’s a sufficient justification for handing over a record wad of money for a large, poorly finished sculpture is another matter.
One story the Oz passed over was the occasion in 1982 when Juan Davila’s multi-panelled Stupid as a Painter, was removed from the 4th Biennale of Sydney by the vice squad on the basis of obscenity. The work was subsequently restored to the walls thanks to the intervention of Premier, Neville Wran, who decreed the police had no role in judging works of art. As for Davila himself, the scandal was the making of his reputation in Australia. From now on, as a renegade avant-gardist he could do no wrong in the eyes of critics and curators, even if his trademark brand of provocation rapidly took on predictable overtones.
Ironically, Stupid as a Painter became a millstone around the artist’s neck, being his only picture that everyone was eager to talk about. I wanted to include it in Federation, but when I rang Davila he angrily refused permission and his moral rights were respected. In 2006, when Davila was given a retrospective at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, he made sure the work was omitted.
Today, Davila’s trademark brand of deliberate perversity, pop culture and high art appropriation feels tedious, while the quality of his painting has declined, but he is still an institutional favourite, being given a solo exhibition within the 2024 Sydney Biennale. The edge may be blunted, but the aura of controversy remains a temptation for institutions that wish to show how daring they are by hanging his works.
Returning to the topic of religion, the Oz article also mentioned the scandal over the photograph, Immersion (Piss Christ) by American artist, Andres Serrano, which caused mayhem when exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1997. The image featured a cheap plastic effigy of Christ on the cross immersed in what looked like a bottle of pee. It was one of the most notorious images by an artist who specialised in notoriety.
Serrano had quickly made a name for himself with series on the themes of sex and death, so religion was an obvious target. I thought it was a calculated act of careerist provocation and meeting the artist, who had the limpest of limp handshakes, didn’t inspire any greater confidence. Nevertheless, the NGV, under the directorship of Timothy Potts, decided to play up the controversial angle in their press releases. It proved to be a mistake, as two enraged Christians attacked the work with a hammer. When Potts ordered the removal of the photo for reasons of “public safety”, he was widely pilloried for his hypocrisy and cowardice. Moral of the story: Don’t court notoriety for publicity purposes. Second moral: Never underestimate the power of religion in public discourse, which is far more likely to stir up anger than anything to do with sex. Religious belief is a matter of faith, not reason, and artists who insult the faithful are playing with fire.
The last I heard of Serrano he had made an appearance in the Epstein files, exchanging emails with the disgraced financier whom he had photographed. Even for such a connoisseur of controversy this may not be the kind of publicity one would relish.
Finally, to mention just one of the many controversies associated with David Walsh’s Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania, there was that moment in 2021 when these habitual scandal mongers finally cracked. This was when Spanish artist, Santiago Sierra, called for local Indigenous people to donate blood for a work called Union Flag. Although intended as a blow against colonialism, it was taken in quite the opposite way by the local First Nations crowd, who went ballistic. For the first time, MONA, which regularly embraced controversy, backed down and cancelled the work.
It was a turning point for MoNA’s carefree image as it showed that its sense of perfect freedom had given way to pressure from a particular lobby group who quickly demanded a seat on the board of the museum and a say in its exhibition program. Had the MoNA people held the line, explained and defended the project, they may not have got the Indigenous community to participate, but neither would they have made a rod for their own backs.
As we’ve seen with Creative Australia’s farcical handling of the on-off-on Khaled Sabsabi selection as next year’s representative at the Venice Biennale, the biggest problems arise when an arts organisation flip-flops on a controversial commitment.
Having arrived in the present, it’s worth noting the different nature of today’s art scandals, and the different attitudes of press, politicians and public. The Oz article mentions the split between Mike Parr and his dealer, Anna Schwartz, over a performance-installation of last year called Sunset Claws in which the artist wrote graphic accounts of Hamas and Israeli atrocities on the walls on the gallery. Mike probably felt he was being admirably even-handed in his extreme commentary, but that’s not the way Anna saw it.
Although we are a long way from the action, the Israeli-Hamas conflict is probably the single most divisive issue in the Australian art world today. So many people have come down heavily on the Palestinian side, it leaves an unpleasant impression of anti-Semitism, particularly for Jewish artists such as Nina Sanadze, who has written about the hostility and marginalisation she has encountered. On the other hand, there are the moronic antics of figures such as Pauline Hanson, which promote Islamophobia. The tendency to view Khaled Sabsabi as some kind of martyr to bureaucracy is another weird development, because his reputation has only been enhanced by the Creative Australia backdown. I strongly believe that to send an avowed pro-Palestinian to represent us in Venice at this time is no less of a mistake than it would be to send a dedicated Zionist. Whatever our personal views of Gaza, the Australian government should not be seen to be taking a partisan position.
It’s easy to say, “Oh Khaled is a lovely fellow who believes in universal peace,” but his work and his public positions give a very different impression, and impressions are important.
Gaza is symbolic of the political confusion that dictates the way contemporary art is perceived in Australia today. The art community is in a frenzy over conflict in the Middle East but is prepared to accept all kinds of injustice in its own backyard. To reiterate from the Oz article, it’s a “schizoid” state of affairs, with a public culture that is simultaneously libertarian and puritanical. We react with anger at the merest hint of censorship or government interference, but are comfortable with an incredible degree of favouritism, nepotism and corruption, so long as the ‘right’ people come out on top.
The institutional obsession with identity politics has created a situation in which it’s taboo to say a word against anyone declared a protected species, while other artists are effectively cancelled because they are not members of any favoured minority. It’s foolish, unfair and guaranteed to breed resentment, especially when a few artists are allowed to buck the trend because of their social connections or political postures.
All of this is happening because the media and the politicians allow it to happen, preferring to turn a blind eye to obvious rorts, bad management, and ideological narrowness, rather than take a principled stand.
It’s not that the media has entirely lost its love of scandal - which still sells papers and gets ratings, but it has developed a countertaste for ‘good news’ stories designed to warm readers’ hearts. The ABC news site is an obvious example, allowing readers to curate their own feelgood newsfeed according to their “mood”, but it’s easy to find plenty of arts stories that are no more challenging than press releases.
Take, for instance, Nick Galvin’s recent piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, about Kayleen Whiskey and her “pop desert art”, currently the subject of a survey at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.
A breakout tells us: “It’s impossible to spend time with Kaylene and not feel good about yourself and the world.”
Ah, don’t we all want to feel good about ourselves and the world? It seems the solution to our misery is to go hang out with Kayleen in Indulkana, a five-hour drive from Alice Springs. There we can be charmed by her cartoonish pictures of Dolly Parton, Tina Turner, Wonder Woman, Cathy Freeman and other popular heroines.
I was charmed when I first encountered these works about seven years ago. It was amusing to find a desert artist making a form of riotous folk art which combines figures from popular culture with Indigenous motifs. By now, the charm is wearing thin, even as the art world raises Whiskey to superstardom. The artist has racked up so many awards and honours, and been exhibited in so many public venues, it would seem as if she’s making masterpieces for the ages. But it’s essentially one gag, even when turned into an animation or an installation.
There are many artists out there who have spent the best part of their careers painting portraits, without ever attracting the attention of the NPGA. They can’t be thrilled to see a painter with a career of less than ten years, and a style that remains utterly static, given a major survey. Even leaving aside the gospel of First Nations First, it’s the happy, funny aspect of the work that appeals to the curators. It’s a victory for the cult of Niceness that is ruining our cultural health with its sugary confections.
Australian art museums have convinced themselves that going head-over-heels for an artist such as Kayleen Whiskey allows them to appear to be open-minded and subversive all at the same time. “Wow! You’re showing this funky Aboriginal lady who paints Dolly Parton! That’s really wild.”
My concern is not that art museums are showing artists such as Kayleen Whiskey, because there should be room for all kinds of art in the contemporary firmament, it’s the undue prominence they assign to such light-weight work when there is a volume of art to which they never devote the slightest attention.
Neither is the problem confined to Australia. When I read Max Delany’s piece in The Saturday Paper about Hany Armanious being invited to have the opening exhibition at the revamped Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, I was left wondering if Hany had managed to make something that resembled a compelling work of art. A quick glance at the HMI website quickly laid those suspicions to rest.
Armanious’s exhibition Soup Stone featured a familiar collection of off-beat, nondescript bits of old junk lovingly crafted from polyurethane resin by assistants. This meant each piece was really a precisely detailed sculpture of a bit of old junk. That’s the central paradox of this work. The secondary paradox is: Why would the Henry Moore Institute consider this to be so sensational they would call on Hany Armanious for their opening exhibition? One might assume that with Henry Moore as their presiding deity, they would take an interest in sculpture, but Hany’s work is sculpture only in that it is three-dimensional. He puts a few things together, such as a worn-out ping pong racket and two rows of corks, then gets others to do the casting.
It would be just as easy to call this anti-sculpture, although Max giddily calls it “a critically acclaimed tour-de-force”, returning for a season at Buxton Contemporary in Melbourne. “Critically acclaimed” because the UK critics had never seen anything in an art gallery that tried so hard to not look like art.
Armanious himself says: “sculpture is something I’ve never been consciously interested in,” - which is a curious admission for the Head of Sculpture at Sydney’s National Art School. It would be a bit like the Prime Minister saying, “I’m not much interested in what goes on in Parliament.” It must be reassuring for the students. By way of consolidation, Max sees references to Brancusi, Duchamp, Giacometti, Picasso, Bourgeois, the ancient Egyptians and Arte Povera. There is also alchemy, animism, fetishism, voodoo, the sacred and the tragicomic – all invested with ritual, “metaphysical weight” and “cultural memory”. And more.
This goes to prove either that the author has been smoking something with powerful hallucinogenic effects, or that it’s always the most minimal work that offers the greatest opportunities for wide-ranging interpretation.
What’s apparently exciting about Hany’s work is that it looks like nothing much. Anyone scavenging for treasure on council cleanup days wouldn’t give these objects a second glance – and that’s what we’re supposed to admire.
If we go back to the Oz’s claim that Australia’s art institutions are no longer prepared to show challenging, controversial work, we need to understand that they honestly believe work such as Kayleen Whiskey’s ‘pop desert art’, or Hany Armanious’s resin replicas of junk are challenging and controversial. What’s being challenged are our conventional ideas about the nature of art, although anybody who has the slightest acquaintance with contemporary art will recognise these gestures as old hat. Come to think of it, an old hat made from resin would be a pretty typical Hany work.
The whole issue of whether a work of art is meant to challenge an audience harks back to the early days of the avant-garde: to Courbet’s Realism and all the movements that followed. The aim of those early-modern artists was to “épater les bourgeoisie” - to shock or amaze the middle classes, a group that had been a byword for small-minded materialism since the days of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The problem with this idea, which invests so much contemporary art with a distinct odour of dead horse, is that the middle classes have been shocked so often they’ve come to like and expect it. Yet somehow, artists are still trying to jolt audiences out of their “conventional” ideas of art and museums are still being impressed by their efforts.
So in answer to the Oz’s question as to “whether anyone has the courage anymore to put on genuinely controversial artworks,” we may need to look firstly at the audience, which is no longer shockable in the same ways. Sex is not really an issue, unless paedophilia is involved. Religion is not an issue, unless Islam is being denigrated in some way – and no gallery would ever venture willingly into these scary areas. We are even less shockable when we consider the huge sums of money spent on works of dubious aesthetic value. Somehow it is now taken for granted that art – even shallow, fashionable art – is ultra-expensive. Neither is there much uproar over the large amounts of public money being gifted to a small group of artists one might call ‘insiders’.
Perhaps the real danger for institutions today is not that audiences will be challenged and offended, it’s that they will be bored by the limited nature of exhibitions tailored to suit contemporary political pieties. The public comes along to art museums hoping to see something good, not for a lesson in social justice. As MoNA has shown, most viewers would prefer to risk being offended rather than being patronised and preached to. Instead of accusing today’s art museums of a lack of courage, it would be more appropriate to say they lack focus, breadth, discernment and – why not say it? – taste.
The art column this week looks at Euan Macleod: Glacier at the S.H. Ervin Gallery, a venue that persists in hosting exhibitions by well known painters who do not fit the current institutional frameworks. Macleod has nothing to prove, having been at the top of his game for a long time, but this show of works based on repeated visits to the Haupapa Tasman Glacier is a startling experience. We don’t see a lot of snow and ice in this country, but there’s plenty on display at the Ervin.
At the movies, I’m looking at Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia, a remake of a 2003 South Korean film that achieved a cult following. This new version seeks a mass audience, transferring the action to America, with big name actors Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons. It’s a twisted crime caper in which two misfits kidnap the CEO of a major corporation, thinking she must be an alien plotting the downfall of this planet. You may think that’s a fair assumption about the CEOs of most major corporations, but few people feel motivated to do anything about it. Whether it’s art museums or aliens, it’s hard to get a reaction nowadays.