ARTISTS EXCITED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 22, 27 January 1944, Page 6

ARTISTS EXCITED

£500 PRIZE FOR 'CARICATURE' G.C. SYDNEY, January 25.

Record crowds are viewing this year's exhibition for the Archibald Prize, the outstanding art award in Australia, at the National Art Gallery, Sydney.' The prize of £500 is for the best portraiture, "preferentially of a man or woman distinguished in art, letters, science, or politics," by .an artist resident in Australia.

In' selecting an exhibit by William Dobell, the judges haye started a controversy that is intriguing to artists and public alike. The painting is of another artist, Joshua Smith. While it is acclaimed a brilliant piece of work, it is considered a caricature rather than a. portrait. Mr. Smith himself said: "I like this portrait as a painting, but I think a portrait really calls for normalcy." • Other artists were less restrained. A leading portrait painter, Mr. J. H. R. Rousel, ' said it was "exaggeration to the point' of distortion," and "became a caricature or a burlesque of the sitter." Joseph Welinski, who has exhibited in London and Paris, said if it was meant to set a new standard in art it would start a revolt. After seeing it the first: time he had been unable to sleep,-and had eaten nothing indigestible for supper. Secretary of the Australian Commercial and Industrial Artists' Association, Mr. Stan Clements, said it introduced jitterbugging into art and hardly up-, held the dignity of the award.

Members of the public who viewed the picture claimed that it "haunted them," looked like a "praying mantis," and was the "weirdest thing in the room." A woman wrote to the newspapers offering a guinea to start a subscription to commission Mr. Dobell to do a group portrait of the judges in his inimitable style, "in the interests of progress."