Richard Bell: ME (2004)

Richard Bell was born into the Kamilaroi tribe in Charleville, Queensland, Australia. As a young man in the 1970s he became an activist for aboriginal self-determination. He willingly admits that his art background is rooted in ‘tourist art’. He only decided to step over the line into ‘fine art’ when a friend observed that his political messages could reach a wider audience through art than by participating in protest marches. He has been exhibiting nationally and internationally for more than 25 years and his work, which includes paintings, video art, installations, text and performance art is held in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Australia, and the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art.

ME, Bell’s self-portrait, chosen for the current exhibit for its bold colors, seems, in style, to be an amalgam of Van Gogh, Warhol and Lichtenstein. It was painted specifically as a 2015 Archibald Prize entry. As Bell tells it, he chose himself for the subject because he didn’t believe that anyone else would trust him to paint their portrait.

Even though his 2004 Archibald winner was an abstract, textual piece, as is much of his recent work, Bell decided to produce a figurative and realistic portrait in 2015. In an interview with the Art Gallery of New South Wales, he conceded that, “Making this painting was difficult. The circumstances (he was working in a make-shift studio), the deadline and the process all conspired against me.” But, with a note of satisfaction, he described the result as “defiant, assertive, pensive, imploring, confident, dismissively cool and ambivalent.” Prize judges seemed to agree, choosing the painting as one of the 47 finalists from among 832 entries.

(This piece is proposed for inclusion in A Splash of Local Color: Vibrant Hues at Work in Contemporary Indigenous Art.)

Comments

Windows of the Soul: The Art of Vilhelm Hammershøi in the 21st Century

In December 2018, the Getty Museum, an institution with seemingly bottomless pockets, paid 5.04 million dollars for a work entitled Interior with an Easel, Bredgade 25, painted in 1912. (See earlier post.) If one were to guess what early 20 th century modern artist would fetch such a sum, names like Bonnard, Vuillard, and Ensor may come to mind. But, no, Interior with an Easel was painted by Danish artist, Vilhelm Hammershøi . Who? Who indeed. For many the name Vilhelm Hammershøi is not a familiar one, but it may be in the future. If you’ve seen the movie The Danish Girl, you’ve already been exposed to his work thanks to the efforts of director Tom Hooper who insisted on using Hammershøi paintings as the basis for interior set design. At this point, the question that logically arises is why is Hammershøi , who died in 1916, just beginning to be recogni...

John Haberle, New Haven's Trompe L'oeil Master

“ The Art Institute was yesterday afternoon the scene of a delicate and interesting experiment, upon the result of which a personal reputation may be said to have rested and certainly upon which the merit of a work of presumptive art did depend,” The Chicago Daily News reported on July 3, 1889. The personal reputation to which it referred was that of New Haven artist, John Haberle. At the time, Haberle’s painting, U.S.A. , (Indianapolis Museum of Art) was hanging in the main gallery of Chicago’s decade-old art museum, attracting much scrutiny and speculation. A small oil on canvas, the painting depicts several familiar objects including coins, paper currency and postage stamps rendered in the then fashionable trompe l’oeil (fool the eye) style. The bills and stamps quickly became the tempest in the Chicago art world’s teapot with one prominent critic publicly denouncing the work as a fraud. As a result, ...

At the Art of the Matter

Search This Blog