Archibald Prize - Controversy

Controversy

The prize has historically attracted a good deal of controversy and several court cases; the most famous was in 1943 when William Dobell's winning painting of Joshua Smith was challenged because of claims it was a caricature rather than a portrait.

The Archibald is one of the few art prizes in which the artist's signature is covered up so as not to be seen by the judges during initial selection for the final. Given the small size of Australia's art community, this is intended to discourage nepotism in the form of judges (several of whom are artists and several of whom have no arts qualifications at all) simply selecting their friends' works rather than making selections based on merit.

Max Meldrum criticised the Archibald Prize winner in 1938, saying that women could not be expected to paint as well as men. Nora Heysen was the first woman to win the Archibald Prize, with a portrait of Madame Elink Schuurman, the wife of the Consul General for the Netherlands.

In 1953 several art students including John Olsen protested William Dargie's winning portrait, the seventh time he had been awarded the prize. One protester tied a sign around her dog which said "Winner Archibald Prize – William Doggie". Dargie went on to win the prize again in 1956.

After Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was dismissed he refused to sit for the traditional portrait which is done of Australian Prime Ministers, and instructed that the 1972 Archibald Prize winning portrait by Clifton Pugh be used instead. This is now hanging at New Parliament House in Canberra.

In 1975, John Bloomfield's portrait of Tim Burstall was disqualified on the grounds that it had been painted from a blown up photograph, rather than from life. The prize was then awarded to Kevin Connor. Later, legal action was threatened by John Bloomfield in 1981, claiming that the winner that year, Eric Smith had not painted his subject from life. In 1983 John Bloomfield sued for the return of the 1975 prize which was unsuccessful. In 1995 the application form of the Archibald Prize was modified based on this to make clear that the subject must be painted from life.

In 1985, administration of the trust was transferred to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, after a court case where the Perpetual Trustee Company took the Australian Journalists Association Benevolent Fund to court.

In 1997 the painting of the Bananas in Pyjamas television characters by Evert Ploeg was deemed ineligible by the trustees because it was not a painting of a person. Although this was an incident which was seized upon by the media, hundreds of portraits each year are not accepted as finalists.

Another controversy involved the 2000 Archibald winner, when artist Adam Cullen lodged a complaint with the American Broadcasting Company who had used his painting, Portrait of David Wenham, in a television commercial.

In 2002, head packer Steve Peters singled out a painting of himself by Dave Machin as a possible winner for the Packing Room Prize. It did not win, but it was hung outside the Archibald exhibition. Following this, portraits of the head packer were no longer allowed.

In 2004 Craig Ruddy's image of David Gulpilil, which won both the main prize and the "People's Choice" award, was challenged on the basis that it was a charcoal sketch rather than a painting. The claim was dismissed in the Supreme Court in June 2006.

In 2008 Sam Leach's image of himself as Hitler made the front page of Melbourne's newspaper The Age and sparked a national debate about the appropriateness of his choice of subject matter. The prize money was also changed to $50 000.