re. pointing at a painting

TAR at The Death of Stalin (2017) :

Khrushchev and Svetlana Stalina are talking in Joseph Stalin’s dacha office. Stalin lies unconscious in the bedroom next door.

Mikoyan rushes in :  'I’m sorry . Quick. The boss is back.'

(All three hurry back to Stalin. The committee members are gathered around his bed.)

Kaganovich : 'A miracle! Stalin is invincible!'

Malenkov : 'The Man Of Steel! He lives!'

Mikoyan : 'The force has sent death back to the salt mine.'

Beria rushes in, confused and concerned at this further turn of events : 'What’s  happening? This is impossible.... and... wonderful...'

Stalin gestures with his finger.

Khrushchev : 'He’s pointing. What is it chief?'

Mikoyan : 'Maybe he’s appointing his successor.'

Khrushchev : 'Do you think?'

Stalin's finger shakily passes across all the committee members then stops, points to Matryona his longtime maid.

Mikoyan : 'Maybe not.'

Stalin points past her. 

TAR : 'The painting. It’s the painting. He’s pointing to the painting.'

Malenkov : 'Hold on. You know what he’s saying. He’s saying, he is saying "I am the lamb. I am the lamb and you, my children, have given me life."'

Matryona : 'Yes!'

Mikoyan : 'Or.... Or the lamb is the people and the milk is Socialism.'

Malenkov : 'Maybe he’s the milk?'

Mikoyan to Malenkov  : 'Maybe you’re the tit.'

Bulganin : 'Maybe he just wants a drink...'

TAR : murmur of general agreement  

Mikoyan shouts a summons : 'Ah, milk here!'

Bulganin : 'Not milk, water. Water.'

Mikoyan : 'Water. Not in a horn, in a glass.'

Theatre of the Actors of Regard   

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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

 someone looks at something...

  

 LOGOS/HA HA

   

   

Homage to wtf ever it is yous are lookin' at. Now go back to work!

The Irishman / Theatre of the Actors of Regard  

NGV / TAR  

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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
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I Am matrix-Curious (yellow)

Theatre of the Actors of Regard  

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 Kazimir Malevich
 Yellow Plane in Dissolution
 1917-1918
     

 Kazimir Malevich
 Complex Presentiment : Half-Figure in a Yellow Shirt
 1928-32

        

Theatre of the Actors of Regard  

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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

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 Who's afraid of matrixial intercourse (yellow) 
 - after Barnett Newman

Theatre of the Actors of Regard  

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Visual Arts Sector Unites In Response to Funding Cuts

Image: Raquel Ormella, Golden Soil #3, 2016, acrylic hi-vis and poly cotton, 186 x 186cm (irreg). Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane. Photo: Sam Cranstou

Audience numbers for visual art are up. Australian artists are driving the innovation agenda and are recognised globally. There has never been a more significant time to invest in innovation and creativity: and still our arts are in CAOs.

The announcement by the Australia Council that 65 organisations will no longer receive funding under its Four-Year Funding program (previously Key Organisations) delivers a major blow to Australia’s contemporary visual arts sector.

We congratulate the 42 newly funded organisations across all art forms, including one in the visual arts. However, we raise significant concerns about the overall impact on the visual arts sector, with the loss of Four-Year Funding to 40% of contemporary art spaces and two invaluable support organisations.

Contemporary Art Organisations Australia – or CAOs – is a 25-year-old national network of 14 independent art spaces, funded by state and federal governments. Each art space is an engine of innovation, supporting living Australian artists and developing new audiences for art and culture in Australia and globally.

CAOs member organisations play a fundamental role building capacity in the visual arts sector – providing crucial exposure for artists and curators who have become leaders at the forefront of contemporary art in Australia and internationally.

They connect and contribute to arts networks, including regional and public galleries; state, national and international art museums; the higher education sector; festivals and biennials; artist-run initiatives; commercial galleries; private collections; and cultural agencies. CAOs organisations demonstrate value for public and private investment on every measure.

Between 2012 and 2014, these organisations presented works by more than 6,500 artists through exhibitions and programs; supported 230 Indigenous artists through programming; exhibited 900 new artworks; toured more than 200 exhibitions to remote and regional communities nationally and internationally; and welcomed more than 3.9 million visitors.

These organisations play a vital role in Australia’s visual arts ecology providing opportunities that contribute to the vibrancy of the sector nationally and internationally.

Until the Australia Council’s May funding announcement, every state and territory in Australia had a federally-supported contemporary arts centre providing consistent, ongoing support and a stable base for artistic innovation in their locales.

Of the 14 CAOs member organisations, five have been informed that after 2016 they will no longer receive Four-Year Funding (previously Key Organisations funding).

Four of the organisations represented the only not-for-profit and independent contemporary art space in their particular state or territory – the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art (NCCA) in the Northern Territory, Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS) in ACT; and both Contemporary Art Centre South Australia (CACSA) and Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF) in South Australia.

The two contemporary art spaces dedicated to photography – Centre for Contemporary Photography, Victoria and Australian Centre for Photography, NSW – are also no longer funded through Four-Year Funding, as well as the National Association of Visual Arts (NAVA). NAVA’s role as an advocate for artists’ rights and wages, and a leader in establishing and implementing best practice standards across the sector is a major loss.

Others losses include: Object: Australian Design Centre; Asialink Arts, which has done so much to foster international relations in the region; Next Wave Festival, which plays a critical role in supporting emerging talent; and several touring organisations amongst many others across art forms.

As Rupert Myer AO, Chair, Australia Council, wrote in his 2002 report for the Commonwealth Visual Art and Craft Enquiry:

‘Contemporary arts organisations play a major role in the development of contemporary art practices in Australia. Through their exhibition, educational and promotional activities they nurture the careers of artists and arts professionals. They provide opportunities for the revitalisation of the work of established artists and they also provide initial professional experience for emerging artists and emerging curators. Through their network they help build audiences, create demand for contemporary art and pioneer new international relationships.’

Fourteen years on from the Myer Report these organisations are at the forefront of demonstrating the Prime Minister’s Innovation statement that Australia should be a ‘creative and imaginative nation’.

Professor Ross Harley, Dean, UNSW Art & Design

The Australia Council has been placed in the invidious situation of being forced to manage a significantly reduced operating budget at precisely the time it needs to invest in the nation’s creative infrastructure. These key organisations have played a central role in the broader arts economy, in some case for more than 50 years. Removing their funding will do nothing to improve access to the contemporary arts and culture that is vital to the wellbeing of the general public and the creative sector that serves them.

Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE, Director, Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia
       
I am at a loss to understand these decisions. The contemporary art spaces are a vital part of the visual arts ecology. To give just one example, last year the MCA acquired through Yirrkala Arts Centre a major wall drawing by Barayuwa Mununggurr after seeing the work exhibited at the NCCA in Darwin. It will be shown later this year at the MCA in an exhibition to be opened by the director of Tate Modern. The loss of a significant number of these spaces will have an impact well beyond their scale.

Professor Ted Snell AM, Director, Cultural Precinct, University of Western Australia, Chair of the Australian Experimental Art Foundation and former Chair of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council

The withdrawal of organisational funding to contemporary art spaces across the nation undermines partnerships that have delivered extraordinary outcomes for Australian artists and the Australian community over decades. Despite claims that no organisation has been defunded, the four-year Visual Arts and Craft Strategy (VACS) awarded to some groups does not constitute ongoing organisational funding and this effective defunding will have a long-term impact on the contemporary arts sector nationally. Short-term it will puncture confidence, reduce opportunity, put many young arts professionals on unemployment and undermine the Government’s rhetoric of building ‘a creative and imaginative nation’.

Shaun Gladwell, Artist, represented Australia at the 53rd Venice Biennale 2009

It is impossible for me to assess my career without factoring in the CAOs spaces as formative and utterly relevant. All of the CAOs spaces have played a crucial role in my career as an artist from my earliest group exhibitions at PICA, AEAF, NCCA, ACP and Gertrude Contemporary through to recent opportunities at CACSA, Artspace and 4A. I am in development for upcoming projects with CAOs spaces for 2017. Professional support through the network of CAOs is instrumental in the development of projects that subsequently become seen internationally. CAOs offers a vital platform for my work and I value the professionalism and commitment to experimentation. I represented Australia at the Venice Biennale and I credit that in significant part to the investment in my practice that I received from the CAOs network. It is inconceivable that CAOs should not be in every state and territory.

Tracey Moffatt AO, Artist, representing Australia at the 57th Venice Biennale 2017

The best thing about CAOs is that artists can be edgy with ideas. It was through CAOs that I learnt how to be an artist, where I learnt to organise myself and to understand the workings of a serious contemporary art space. Hail the CAOs of Australia for their fearlessness and guts in exhibiting the ‘unacceptable’, and for knowing that NOTHING holds back a brilliant idea.

Alexie Glass-Kantor, Chair, CAOs and Executive Director, Artspace

The contemporary arts in Australia are defined by many qualities including agility, responsiveness, passion, professionalism and a can-do attitude. As a consequence of operational funding cuts, it is foreseeable that one third of the CAOs membership will face severe cut backs, jeopardising their ability to support artists, deliver excellence in programming and expand audiences both in Australia and internationally. This is a devastating outcome that undermines decades of investment in sustainability, employment, education and innovation. It is imperative we do better.

We appreciate the difficult decisions that led to funding cuts but cannot understand how one vibrant sector can reasonably lose so much core infrastructure and be expected to continue to thrive.

We call for the allocation of additional funds so that the Australia Council can work with the states and territories to maintain critical infrastructure in the visual arts.

We call on the Australian Government to consider the long-term impacts of this loss of support and act to preserve the vibrancy of this sector and its sigificant contribution to the creativity of our nation.

SIGNATORIES

Contemporary Art Organisations Australia (CAOs)
4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, NSW
Artspace, NSW
Australian Centre for Photography (ACP), NSW
Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF), SA
Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS), ACT
Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), VIC
Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (CACSA)
Contemporary Art Tasmania (CAT)
Gertrude Contemporary, VIC
Institute for Modern Art (IMA), QLD
Northern Centre for Contemporary Art (NCCA), NT
Performance Space, NSW
Perth Institute of Contemporay Art (PICA), WA
West Space, VIC
Alexie Glass-Kantor, Chair, CAOs; Executive Director, Artspace

SECTOR SIGNATORIES

MICHAEL BRAND, Director, Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW)
CHARLOTTE DAY, Director, Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), VIC
STEFANO CARBONI, Director, Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA)
JANET CARDING, Director, Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG)
MICHAEL DAGOSTINO, Director, Campbelltown Art Centre, NSW
MAX DELANY, Artistic Director, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), VIC
KELLY GELLATLY, Director, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, VIC
ANGELA GODDARD, Director, Griffith University Art Museum, QLD
ERICA GREEN, Director, Samstag Museum of Art, Univesity of South Australia
DOUG HALL AM, VIC
PROFESSOR ROSS HARLEY, Dean, UNSW Art & Design, University of NSW
BARRY KELDOULIS, CEO, Art Fairs Australia and Director, Sydney Contemporary, NSW
MICHAEL LYNCH CBE AM, Chair, Sydney Community Foundation, NSW
VICTORIA LYNN, Director, Tarrawarra Museum of Art, VIC
ELIZABETH ANN MACGREGOR OBE, Director, Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), NSW
NICK MITZEVICH, Director, Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA)
DJON MUNDINE (Bandjalung) OAM, Curator, NSW
KAREN QUINLAN, Director, Bendigo Art Gallery, VIC
MICHAEL ROLFE, CEO, Museums & Galleries NSW; CEO, NETS Australia
CHRIS SAINES CNZM, Director, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA)
MARCUS SCHUTENKO, Director, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT)
JASON SMITH, Director, Geelong Gallery, VIC
PROFESSOR TED SNELL AM, Director, Cultural Precinct, University of Western Australia
MICHAEL SNELLING, Director, National Art School (NAS), NSW
BEN STROUT, CEO, Biennale of Sydney, NSW
MICHAEL ROLFE, CEO, M&GNSW and NETS Australia ANTONIA SYME, Director, Australian Print Workshop


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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
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LOGOS/HA HA 

          

               

sTAR RATe : Farley Granger

 Your votes are in...

 Farley Granger 4 contribution to Theatre of the Actors of Regard

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    A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
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    LOGOS/HA HA 

          

   

       

The Connoisseur of The Connoisseur

A work we knew of but had not seen in the flesh, "The connoisseur" by Bernard Hall, is one of the supporting works available for regard in the antechamber to the NGV's exhibition of

Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1
Portrait de la mère de l'auteur

Whistler's Mother
at the NGV. 

The image below shows "The connoisseur" 

by Bernard Hall, 1890.

NGV Matrix Label Poem
] all a Matter of eMphasis (

(The connoisseur)
(c. 1890)
Bernard HALL

Medium :  oil on canvas

Measurements :  60.7 × 33.0 cm

Place/s of Execution :  (London), (England)

Accession Number :  2004.769

Department :  Australian Painting    

Credit Line :   National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 

                      K.M. Christensen and A.E. Bond Bequest, 2004
Gallery location :  17th Century & Flemish Paintings Gallery,
                            Level 2, NGV International

   
Later that night, having emptied the content(s) :
"The Drunken Connoisseur" by Judith Leyster, 1629.



Next morning, somewhat worse for wear, we renew our vow to start afresh : "The Young Connoisseur", An Arrangement in Grey and Black by Theatre of the Actors of Regard, 1952.

       

AAA_Art Archive Australia  

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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/ 
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 LOGOS/HA HA 

                              

     

 Post Script

 Later that night, "The Drunken Cubist" 
 by Haydos, Brisbane, 2016 ( listen here )
 

          

Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, Art ...

       
- from Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney :

Revisit the golden age at ARTBAR

Artist Kate Scardifield programs a night of roaming performance, guest DJs, fashion and surprises that hark back to the golden era. Feel the Midas touch with Rochelle Haley, YEVU, Make or Break, Heaps Decent founder Andrew Levins, the Jingle Jangle DJs and more. Plus: this is your opportunity to see works from the 20th Biennale of Sydney after dark. 

#MCAARTBAR driven by Audi Australia

MCA ARTBAR Golden Hour

– curated by Kate Scardifield

Fri 29 Apr, 7–11pm

$20/$15 MCA Members & Concessions*

       

Theatre of the Actors of Regard                               

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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

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 LOGOS/HA HA 

                              

     
              

The End (continued)

 
How strange to read these two articles in the same paper today.

In the Obituaries section of The Age, the death reported of artist William Delafield Cook (here).

Forty years ago, mid-1975, your correspondent was appointed as artist-in-residence in Patrick McCaughey's brand new faculty, the Department of Visual Arts, at Monash University. I found out later that the distinguished playright and poet Dorothy Hewett was artist-in-residence in the English Department during this same period. And, at Melbourne University, Bill Delafied Cook was the first artist-in-residence there. Memories of visiting him in his clean bright studio in the Old Physics Building.
           
 William Delafield Cook, Heap, 2006

We were, as far as I am aware, (among) the first artists-in-residence in Australia, under that new initiative of the then new Australia Council for the Arts.

The Australia Council was formed in 1967 by Prime Minister Harold Holt as a body for the public funding of the arts and was given statutory authority in March 1975 by the Australia Council Act. The Council's predecessor, the Australian Council for the Arts was established in 1968 by Prime Minister John Gorton as a division of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. The Council then incorporated other government projects, such as the Commonwealth Literary Fund and the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board. It operates in co-ordination with the various state government agencies.

- from Wikipedia

Today's second article is 'Dancers' angry protest against arts funding cuts' (online version here) with this bookend para to the news of William Delafield Cook's demise :

Cost-saving measures to be introduced by the country's peak arts body include scrapping the artists-in-residence program and potentially divesting itself of some of the four overseas properties it owns, which includes the Cité Internationale des Arts studio in Paris (a review of those properties had begun before the cuts were announced).

Vale Bill. Vale and thank you Oz artists-in-residence.

Artists' dance protest outside ACCA  

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Post Script :
Also published today, a follow-on to last Saturday's editorial in The Saturday Paper :

Inside George Brandis’s Australia Council arts heist :
The arts minister’s shock annexation of Australia Council funding is about long-running tension over the purpose of the humanities
by Martin McKenzie-Murray
       
                 

so what does the action Learn from its agent? (though in a yoyo youreonyourOwn economy, a bank isabank isabank. or

- Chris Mann, from 
notes ( on the user as software

TAR presents : 
FIAPCE YO YO Champion in 
'With mindful regard 
these things on strings 
this spinning ideogram mandala'

Theatre of the Actors of Regard 

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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

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 LOGOS/HA HA

   

     

pre-meta-predator, or something

        
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a meta-man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I wish, I wish he'd go away...

- opening verse of 'Are We Not Meta-Men?' 
after Devo and with apologies to Hughes Mearns. 

Mearns' 1899 poem "Antigonish" was originally part of a play called The Psyco-ed. It's a great title. One that suits well the meta-madness of this last week in the land of the chosen (i.e. not-rejected) whom Prime Minister Tony Abbott now refers to as (also this last week) TEAM AUSTRALIA.

So, BuzzWord of the Week : metadata

And associated with that, the problematic, generally unfamilar, BuzzPrefix of the Week : meta-

The government has indicated it plans to formalise the collection and storage of our internet metadata. But they have struggled to demonstrate to the public that even they, the law makers, understand what they are referring to when they refer to metadata.

The Prime Minister, Tony Abbott : 
'Let's be clear', he begins. Then he suggests a metaphor 4 metadata :

PM_ABC.RN (6 August 2014) :
TONY ABBOTT: "Let's be clear what this so-called metadata is. It's not the content of the letter: it's what's on the envelope, if I might use a metaphor that I think most Australians would understand. It's not what you're doing on the internet: it's the sites you're visiting. It's not the content: it's just where you've been, so to speak."

But, holes soon appear in this explanation, too.
      

 FIAPCE meta-mice infiltrate envelope metadata metaphor

Flushed with the skill and wisdom of his promotion of amendments to the 18C Free Speech legislation, George 'People do have a right to be bigots' Brandis decides that he will have a crack at it.

After all, he's already well-rehearsed this topic at a Parliamentary Committee appearance :

Brandis and the unspeakable metadata 02:07

Fearless, he now riffs metadator live on SKY News :

click the images to view these clips
    
Some background for our international readers : George Brandis is not some rarely-heard inarticulate back-bencher. He is the Attourney General for Australia, the first law officer of the Crown in right of the Commonwealth of Australia.

Of the Crown, indeed, by his preference. Brandis was appointed a Senior Counsel of the Supreme Court of Queensland in November 2006. In June 2013 the original title of Queen's Counsel was restored by the Queensland Government and Brandis was one of 70 (out of 74) Queensland SCs that chose to become QCs. (Wikipedia)

Only partly off topic : how much is a QC/SC paid for their advocacy skills?

QC/SC: 1,000.00 per hour

QC/SC: 8,000.00 per day

Lawyers and Legal Services Australia :Solicitor and Barrister Prices

For our sins, George Brandis is also the Minister for the Arts. 
       
Eventually, that naughty but clever Malcolm Turnbull, Minister for Communications, is sent in to clean up the mata-mess.
      
AM_ABC.RN (8 August 2014) :
MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: "Well, you do accept there was a lot of confusion over the last couple of days?"

MALCOLM TURNBULL: "Well, look, let's, let's... I'll leave you to talk about the last couple of days. My concern is simply to be crystal clear about what we're talking about. I think one of the difficulties with a term like metadata is that it can mean different things to different people. And so you have to be very clear about what we're talking about."
         
Over to you again, James Joyce :
"Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse." (Ulysses, Ch 9)

And, from the world of Golden Oldie Frames between Inside-ers and Outside-ers, beween notions of content and context, here's another metablast fave from TEAM FIAPCE (-1978-) :
      

collection : National Gallery of Australia, Canberra  

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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ... 

LOGOS/HA HA

          
         
                 

LOGOS/HA HA : MASTERPIECE

         
Today, we received requests from two Australian Art Museums seeking donations for acquisitions. 

From QAGOMA for a "striking portrait" by Ben Quilty, Sergeant P, after Afghanistan 2012.

And from the National Gallery of Australia for this:

The National Gallery of Australia Foundation is proud to present a significant and charming painting, Benjamin Duterrau's An infant of Van Diemen's Land 1840, that we hope to acquire for the national art collection through the Masterpieces for the Nation Fund, now in its eleventh year.  However, this acquisition will only be possible with your generous support. 

Everyone’s life can be enriched through art. Through the national collection, stories can be told, experiences can be shared and the cultural landscape of Australia is enriched in perpetuity. The Masterpieces for the Nation Fund is an annual appeal that gives all Australians the opportunity to make a valuable contribution to the development of the national art collection. In order to tell a full and diverse story of our Nation’s art, the Gallery endeavours to acquire works of art that have originated from every Australian state and territory. 

Since 2003,  the Masterpieces for the Nation Fund has allowed the Gallery to acquire numerous major works of art, such as Florence Fuller’s serene Western Australian landscape A golden hour c1905, William Robinson’s torrid Queensland rainforest scene Twin Falls and Gorge 2000 and Nora Heyson’s beautiful Self Portrait 1932 from South Australia. This year, we look to our most Southern state, Tasmania, with Benjamin Duterrau’s memorable portrait.

An infant of Van Diemen's Land 1840 shows a robust Australian child with sweet, rosy cheeks sitting firmly on the ground playing with a cup and ball toy in a Tasmanian setting. She is dressed in white muslin, a late Regency-style dress with a bonnet, apt clothing for the Australian summer. She smiles, has alert blue eyes, and seems to be happily posing for this painting, which has little of the conventional sentimentality of many child images. The infant is depicted looking intently at a little bird (possibly a juvenile Flame Robin or a Tasmanian Thornbill) on the branch of a tree, an endearing companion to the little girl. Nearby there is a cool expanse of water. Beside her, springing from the ground, are self-conscious depictions of distinctly local Tasmanian plants—a white flag iris (the upper flower), Australian bluebells (below), spiny-headed mat rush or sedge and a white paper daisy. Above her, there are the leaves and yellow flowers of what is probably a wattle tree. In this way the artist made sure that his subject was recognisably ‘an infant of Van Diemen’s Land’. Certainly, the painting suggests Tasmania to be a safe and bountiful natural playground and her inhabitants to be healthy and free to play—in bare feet, as they might not have done back in cold, more restrictive England.

Donations above $2 are tax deductible. Contributions will be acknowledged in Artonview magazine and the National Gallery of Australia Foundation Annual Report.  Please help us to continue to develop the national art collection for the enjoyment of all Australians by making a contribution in support of Benjamin Duterrau’s engaging An infant of Van Diemen’s Land,1840.

Today's brochure of request refers to this object, in each of its three headlines, as a "masterpiece" : 
- Masterpieces for the Nation Fund 2014
- In pursuit of a masterpiece
- Help us bring an Australian colonial masterpiece into the national art collection.

Cranium scratching. When we hear the word masterpiece we reach for our fallback positions : 
- "Unsheathe your dagger definitions."(JJ)
- The Two Truths : relative and absolute, co-existing

Is this a masterpiece? Was Benjamin Duterrau a master? The wordage in support doesn't make the case :  
- He is admired today for his bold, naive style
- This delightful and naive painting...
- This robust Australian child with sweet, rosy cheeks...

We are not told the work's price, nor how much is being sought from us at this time of our supposed National Economic Crisis. A quick online search shows it was sold in London at Christie's Australian Art auction last September for £73,875 ($AU118,717).

Seen from the Centrelink queue, that's a change-of-life amount; but it's not a lot in the relativity of Art World Prices. Especially for a Masterpiece.

We presume, despite the words below, that the object has already been acquired by the NGA

... we hope to acquire for the national art collection through the Masterpieces for the Nation Fund, now in its eleventh year. However, this acquisition will only be possible with your generous support.

and therefore that this is a promotional or support-building exercise of some sort? If so, is this choice of object a reflection of the NGA's estimation of their audience? Is this the current dredging level of our national aspiration? Masterpieces for the Nation - whither Blue Poles?

Don't get us wrong, we do like this pic:
We like images of regard. 
This is an image of regard.
We like this.

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ... 

LOGOS/HA HA

Sometimes we like figures of allegory.
This may or may not be one of those.
We like the cup and ball Instrument of the Passion that the infant holds.
It appears to mean everything to us/HA HA

 

We like lots of things for lots of reasons, and for reasons unknown. But just because we like things doesn't make them Masterpieces.
LOGOS/HA HA : buy it if they want, of course, but at a time when so much debased LANGUAGE and so little VISION (now there is a curious word) emanates from the ACT (another curious word use) do we really need this unnecessary resort to... MASTERPIECE?
        

     

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ... 

LOGOS/HA HA