Same Old Same Old

.

le bLOG qui rit previously presented the plight of a Heidelberg artist attempting to render Australian landscape with a cow breathing down his neck.

Minus the bothersome cow, a similar scene greets us today on the front page of THE AGE (Melbourne).

The newspaper's headline writer has had fun too:

Double Dutch as our Sam paints
it again to take Wynne prize

"You painted it for her, you can paint it for me!" - bL

Turns out that Sam Leach's winning work in the Art Gallery of NSW's 2010 Wynne Prize for ...

"the best landscape painting of Australian scenery in oils or watercolours or for the best example of figure sculpture by Australian artists completed during the 12 months preceding the [closing] date"

is a reworking of a 1668 painthing by Dutch artist Adam Pynacker.

Is this a problem? Consider and discuss.

1. Look at the painthing

archive : Theatre of the Actors of Looking
26 March 2010 AGNSW

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

2. Read the Label

archive : Theatre of the Actors of Looking
26 March 2010 AGNSW

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA

3. Consider your verdict

If bLOGOS/HA HA recalls the above TV news item correctly, art critic John McDonald made no mention of any problematic copyness attaching to this painthing when he addressed the Australian people immediately after the Wynne Prize announcement.

Today he addresses the cosmos again. On TV news; on the net, with a prime-ministerial chat from the study ( video here )

and quoted in THE AGE article, where he concludes :

''I don't think Sam is really the villain here. I think it's the judges who are culpable for making a rather silly decision … It is an embarrassment for the art gallery. It shows up how little judgment they showed.''

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA