Australian Art Terrorists

A few Australian groups have acted or threatened to take action outside of the law to achieve artistic and cultural objectives. Most are right-wing conservatives — so much for the so-called ‘cancel culture’ of the left.

A.C.T. target Picasso’s Weeping Woman

In 2003 the Revolutionary Council for the Removal of Bad Art in Public Places threatened to destroy a number of pieces of public art. That the “spokesman, Dave Jarvoo, told The Australian newspaper” about the threat speaks to the conservative taste of this so-called Revolutionary Council. The fact is that they were all talk and no action, and the spuriously named, Dave Jarvoo appears to be the only member of this organisation. 

Their targets were modern sculptures Fairfield Industrial Dog Object and in Sydney; Ken Unsworth’s Stones Against the Sky ‘poo sticks’ in Kings Cross and Brett Whiteley’s Almost Once giant matches behind the Art Gallery of NSW. David Fickling for The Guardian came up with several more deserving targets in Sydney (see his article), and I could do the same for Melbourne (perhaps in another post). (Thanks to Vetti Live in Northcote for drawing my attention to the Revolutionary Council for the Removal of Bad Art in Public Places.)

The Australian Cultural Terrorists (aka A.C.T.) stole Picasso’s Weeping Woman from the NGV, held it to ransom and then returned it undamaged. They seem to have twice as many members as Dave Jarvoo’s Revolutionary Council; at least one man and, maybe, one woman. They were more successful than the Revolutionary Council but, perhaps, no more radical given their demands for more art prizes for local artists. They had no follow up aside from stories that the following year they also wrote some  libellous letters about people in Australia’s art world. The A.C.T. wrote lots of jeering, satirical letters, several of them attacking state Arts Minister, Race Mathews.

To this list, we could add the Catholic Church for their attack on Andre Serrano’s Piss Christ in the NGV. Graffiti writers, like Pork, that cap and tag as a form of conquest and censorship. And BUGA-UP, graffiti to stop tobacco advertising, vigilantes with a specific type of art, selling a particular message in mind, not exactly the artistic kind but still ‘art’ in the advertising copy sense.

Revolutionary Council target Fairfield Industrial Dog Object

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Archibald Prize 2019

 All that a hopeful artist has to do to win Australia’s most prestigious prize for portrait painting is pay the $50 entry fee and deliver their painting to the loading dock at the rear of the Art Gallery of NSW at a certain date. Each year thousands of paintings are arrive and if a painting makes the final exhibition it is doing well.

Installation view of several finalists in the Archibald Prize 2019

The portrait must be of a notable in the fields of arts, science or politics (although judging from the entries this is very flexible). It has to be painted from life, meaning that the artist must have actually met the notable person; the subject has to sign the entry form to confirm this. Mostly it is artists painting other artists, or themselves, in a daisy-chain of insider promotion.

It was a relief to see that there were no portraits of politicians amongst this year’s finalists. No of the finalist artists wanted to be associated with any Australian politician. Although ugly, morally bankrupt thugs have been the subject of Archibald finalists in the past, such as Adam Cullen’s portrait of Chopper Reed, there were no portraits of popular criminals this year.

One positive aspect of both of these trends is that there were a lot more small portraits suitable for domestic display.

Kirpy, Dylan

As a focus of this blog is the intersection of street and gallery so I should report on the two street artists in the exhibition: ELK and Kirpy. Both portraits are very large, more than one square metre, multi-layered stencils spray-painted in aerosol paint and use acrylic paint to fill in the larger areas and give weight and texture. And both compositions have strong horizontal elements, in a rather rigid and static structure. Kirpy’s painted Dylan Alcott Paralympic gold medallist and founder of the musical festival Ability Fest. And ELK (aka Luke Cornish) did portrait of businesswoman and media commentator Sue Cato, along with her dogs, Callie and Comet. In 2012 ELK was the first street artist in the Archibald Prize finals and the following year first street finalist in Sulman Prize.

For the exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW is not just the Archibald but also the Wynne and Sulman prize.These prizes receive far less attention in the media than the celebrity focus of the Archibald.

The Wynne Prize for landscape painting or figurative sculpture is, not surprisingly, dominated by Indigenous artists this year. Figurative sculpture has become far less significant in Australia’s art world and there were only two pieces amongst the finalists.

The changing significance of types of art reminded me that the Sulman Prize is for subject, genre or mural painting. And given the increased significance of mural painting I don’t know why more street artists and graffiti writers don’t enter that prize.  After all Guido van Helten’s Brim silos mural project was the winner for the mural prize in 2016.

I haven’t seen the actual Archibald prize exhibition for many years but as I was in Sydney I can report on it.

Wynne Prize finalist Nongirrna Marawili, Pink Lightening

Keith Haring in Melbourne

At the old Collingwood Technical College, American stencil artist, Peat Wollaeger has memorialized the work of Keith Haring with writing and a stencil portrait of Keith Haring on the gate.

Peat Wollaeger’s stencil of  Keith Haring Stencil at Collingwood Technical College

For me, Keith Haring, 1958 – 1990, is one of the most important artists of the 20^th Century. He was certainly the most important artist of the 1980s for me. I have a scrapbook full of photocopied articles and magazine clipping about him that I collected at the time. And considering the rise of street art in the early 21^st Century, Haring has to be regarded as an important precursor.

The Collingwood Technical College may not be the most famous wall that Keith Haring painted but it was the first public mural that he painted outside the USA, it was the first time that he used a scissor lift and it is the only surviving exterior mural by Haring in its original form.  It is also not the largest nor the most famous wall that Haring painted; in 1986 Haring painted 107m of the Berlin Wall. The mural at the Collingwood Technical College was painted on the 6th of March 1984. Keither Haring wanted to paint the mural for the kids at the Collingwood Technical College and had fun doing it. He found the scissor lift a liberating experience.

Keith Haring mural, Collingwood

The wall on the Collingwood Technical College with its now fading but still visible iconic Haring figures riding a giant centipede is the only surviving Haring wall in Melbourne still visible to the public (there is another piece, a large guardian angel, at a school in Toorak where John Buckley was teaching at the time). The mural shows humanity under threat from computer technology – in 1984 the personal computer was Time Magazine’s “person of the year”.

Keith Haring visited Australia between 18th February and 8th March 1984. Haring was invited to Australia by gallery owner John Buckley (which is why there is a Peat Wollaeger stencil of Haring  by the door of his gallery in Albert St. Richmond). Buckley had seen his work in the New York subways. Haring was on the cusp of his international celebrity status when he came to Australia and John Buckley was very lucky to have invited him to Australia at that time because after that he was far too famous.

Haring also painted the NGV’s famous water wall; watched and filmed as he painted, it was a real performance. Keith Haring would paint to hip-hop music played on a tape-deck radio was decorated by Kenny Scharf. The painted water wall was destroyed by a vandal before I could see it because it was thought that Haring had stolen aboriginal motifs. While in Australia Keith Haring also went to Sydney where he painted the large wall in the foyer of the Art Gallery of NSW. Edward Capon, the director of the gallery had not been informed about this due to a missed communication. Nor had he heard of Keith Haring and was reluctant to have the wall painting proceed. John Buckley tells about how he showed Edward Capon the then current issue of Vanity Fair; it had a Keith Haring on the cover and a large interview with him inside. This convinced Edward Capon and within half an hour Haring was up on the sissor-lift painting the wall.

Also in Sydney that year Keith Haring helped with a Keith Haring float for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Although Haring was not yet a mainstream celebrity artist, his art was already well known in the gay community and a float depicting his art was already planned. Haring’s involvement made the float authentic rather than just a tribute.

Keith Haring’s technique was simple lines. He started working with just a large marker pen and then went over the lines with a paint brush. The mural on the Collingwood Technical College was done without any preliminary drawings apart from a demo chalk demonstration drawing of the centipede. Haring’s images that could fill any space from a wall to the body of Grace Jones. His genius was in the iconic figures that populated his images, most famously the radiant child.

Keith Haring studied at art school and was very aware of art history. His early influences were Pierre Alechinsky and Chinese calligraphy. Influenced by Wm Burroughs Haring started to do paste-up of fake New York Post headlines in 1980. And Wm Burroughs influence continued with the iconic images that Haring became famous for, from the centipedes to Mayans.

“I was aware of, and respected conceptual artists like Vito Acconci, or artists who were doing guerrilla art actions – things like that. I studied it and read about it, and respected it.” Keith Haring. (Notes from the Pop Underground, ed. Peter Belsito, The Last Gasp of San Francisco, 1985 p.106)

It is time to review the art of Keith Haring because what appeared to be an oddity of New York the 1980s has turned into an international movement. In particular is time to review Haring’s influence on Melbourne’s street art. It has taken an American street artist, Peat Wollaeger who was exhibiting his “Luchador Collab-o-mask” project at Per Square Metre to commemorate an important part of Melbourne’s street art history.

P.S. In 2013 The Age reported on finding the lost door from Keith Haring’s Collingwood mural.