M ODELOS ESTRUCTURALES Y CARACTERÍSTICAS

Portraits in the collections of the national cultural institutions provide an

understanding of those people who are considered to have mattered in society in the past and those who do today. One way to achieve this is by commissioning portraits that aim to formally record the contribution famous and notable people make to society whether by their achievements or social standing.188 _The

187 _{Judy Annear, “Blank Face,”: 279.}

188 _{The commissioning of portraits for the national collection is regarded as an essential}

component of the National Portrait Gallery’s charter. The Gallery is distinctive in its role which seeks to shape the way portraits are made in the future rather than rely on portrait works that already exist and thus shape the collection. The Gallery actively commissions portraits from a wide spectrum of society.

130 commissioned formal portrait would generally seek to present a recognisable likeness of the subject within a social context or broader cultural frame for the purpose of commemoration consistent with the conventions of portraiture. To achieve this aim would require commissioning portraits from established and emerging artists whose approaches complement the sensibility of the subjects or have a creative edge.

Jude Rae is a prominent contemporary artist who works across genres, including portraiture.189 _{While the primary focus of her art practice has been still-life}

painting, in 2004 she expanded her oeuvre to include portraits of people and figures in interiors that owed much to her study of the placement of objects. Since then she has broadened her oeuvre with portrait commissions of some of Australia’s eminent scholars, scientists and politicians. She has painted formal portraits that commemorate the careers of former Vice–Chancellors Dr Ian Chubb (2011) and Dr Ian Young (2014) of the Australian National University; Vice–Chancellor Professor Glynn Davis (2012) of the University of Melbourne; former Chancellor of Monash University and now Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel (2015); the late distinguished virologist Frank Fenner (2007) and the former Speaker of the House of Representatives Anna Burke (2015).

Portrait commissions require a balance between undertaking a dispassionate analysis and capturing a sense of the person. Like other portrait artists, Rae augments photographs of the subject with little drawings of physical features, facial expressions and gestures during the early sittings. She does not overly rely upon photographs because in her view it would make the portrait appear too flat and artificial.

189 _{Rae has been twice awarded the Portia Geach Memorial Prize for portraiture in 2005 and} 2008, and the Bulgari Award in 2016.

131 Figure 35, Jude Rae, Dr Ian Chubb, 2011

Figure 36, Jude Rae, Anna Burke, 2015

In the formal conventional portrait of Ian Chubb (figure 35), the grey-brown tonal colours and the ray of light falling across the wall behind him is indicative of her still-life paintings and interiors. The luminosity and roughly textured surface of the background, however, does not distract from the subject but adds an architectural nuance to the work. The portrait is both formal and relaxed as he boldly stands quietly smiling with his right hand in his suit pocket. The placement of the hands and hand gestures are an important focus of her

portraits, as a physical expression of the person much like the face—his left hand is visible at the centre of the picture plane. Pride in his career achievements is clearly evident with his black academic robe with gold trim draped over his left arm and the pin of his award as a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in his lapel. His interest in rugby may not be publicly known but is clearly on display with his red and white tie of the Sydney Swans. Rae says, “The tie was a perfect choice by Chubb because it lifted the colour of the painting”.190

In her account of the process of making a portrait on commission, Rae remarks:

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[Portraiture] is thus strongly associated with the mechanisms of social status, power and wealth. In commissioning a work, the client usually requires certain conditions which necessarily limit the artist. This tends to contribute to the idea that the

commissioned portrait is creatively constrained … Limits can present extraordinarily exciting creative challenges—ask any architect.191

Whilst there may be certain requirements set down by the client, she highlights this does not diminish the creative potential of the artist or the subject. The Parliament House Historical Memorials Committee has rules about the size and composition of official portraits but this did not distract from her portrayal of the former speaker Anna Burke (figure 36). In her formal portrait, Burke is seated in a hand-crafted dark timber chair from the Senate chamber but not the Speaker’s Chair, against a textured grey tonal background. She sits calmly, hands crossed in her lap, unsmiling and reflective, eyes looking ahead but not at the viewer. Burke chose to wear a suit with dramatic patterning which gave her portrait an edge over other formal portraits of subjects seen wearing their dark robes and grey suits on the walls of Parliament House. The fabric was designed from photographs of the Castello in Madrid taken by the husband of the designer Tiffany Trelour. The dark blue and white fabric features the Castello buildings at night with red and white circles representing fairy lights. Rae explains

At first sight of the fabric pattern, I thought this is going to be too difficult but actually I think it’s going to make the painting. The trick for the artist is to recognise that what a person wears can be a gift.192

Rae views Burke’s choice of dress for her formal portrait as perfect for the occasion. She stresses how a woman is dressed for an official portrait is much more complex than for men who just worry about the colour and pattern of the tie. The outfit cannot be too conservative or outrageous but needs gravitas.

191 _{Jude Rae, “Hired guns, bounty hunters and horse whisperers”, Portrait 52, National Portrait} Gallery (2016): 23.

133 The portrait of Anna Burke is significant for two reasons: it is the first portrait Rae has done for the Parliament House collection and second it is a portrait of woman and painted by a woman artist for the collection. In 2018, Rae will make history again with two more commissioned portraits of women: Susan Keifel, the Chief Justice for the High Court collection, and Linda Burney, the first Indigenous woman in the House of representatives. Each of these women were particularly interested in being painted by a woman artist.

While the commissioned portraits by Rae convey a recognisable likeness of the sitters in a conventional way, the commissioned portrait of musician Nick Cave Nick Cave (1999) (figure 37) by Howard Arkley is another case in point in style and medium. The portrait was the first commissioned work of the (new)

National Portrait Gallery, although not typical of official portraits that are usually associated with a national portrait gallery by the art-going public and art critics. So much so, Arkley’s close-up portrait of the face of the musician has become an iconic work of Australian contemporary portraiture of the new millennium. The portrait of Cave celebrates the singer’s influence in the rock music scene as an enigmatic and compelling figure—his musical achievements enjoys a cult status. Cave is best known as the lead singer of the bands ‘The Boys Next Door’, ‘The Birthday Party’, and ‘Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’.

The portrait depicts an idealised likeness of the musician’s face which captures the aura of the rock star with his intense black rimmed eyes and pouting lips that suggests a moodiness. Marc de Jong, however, suggests Cave’s face is a theatrical mask that represents the mentality of the wild punk rock era of the 1980s.193

Cave has a reputation for dark, emotional and unrestrained stage performances. It is painted in Arkley’s distinctively airbrush style with psychedelic

incandescent colours of purple, blue, red and yellow. This gives a shimmering, hallucinatory presence to the face, perhaps a drug-induced haze. The bold colouration and graphic intensity that frames his face are characteristic of Arkley’s painterly style. Arkley has become synonymous with images of Australian suburbia, although his earlier work was associated with the music

134 sub-cultures of Melbourne inspired by the likes of music by Nick Cave and his bands.194 _{The portrait was not painted from life but from Arkley’s memory of his}

association with Cave and the Melbourne music scene from the 1970s onwards.

Figure 37: Howard Arkley, Nick Cave, 1999 Figure 38: Matthys Gerber, Cadel Evans, 2008

Arkley’s painting may have given inspiration to other contemporary portrait artists commissioned to paint well-known people in society. I argue Matthys Gerber’s large abstract portraits in luminescent colours can be likened to

Arkley’s incandescent colour palette and simple painterly style. Indeed, Gerber’s portraits convey an abstract representation of likeness of the subject using blocks of colour and form. In doing so, he creates a tension between the

conventions and modes of expression of portraiture and abstraction. Gerber is known to work across many different genres and styles.195

Gerber’s portrayal of Australian cycling heroes Cadel Evans, Stuart O’Grady and Robbie McEwen wearing helmets, sunglasses and technicoloured team jerseys are painted in vivid colours, as a reflection of their sporting prowess and social

194 _{www.portrait.gov.au/nickcave/christopherchapman.}

195 _{Gerber’s oeuvre has a bewildering eclecticism of subject matter from portraits, large alpine} and mountain landscapes, kitsch scenes, and a panoply of visual styles and forms within the traditions of still-lifes, portraiture, landscape and abstraction, as shown in the exhibition of his art work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in September 2015.

135 identity. His portrait of Cadel Evans Cadel Evans (2008) (figure 38) shows the head and shoulders of the cyclist ‘in action’ as though riding in a race. The abstract nature of portrait is formed using a multiplicity of coloured shapes in purple, yellow, pink, orange and green on a blue background and yet a likeness of the subject seen in profile is clearly evident to the viewer. Evans is revered as sporting hero in Australia and internationally, he won the great cycling race Le Tour de France in 2011, having come second in 2008 and 2007.

Figure 39: Matthys Gerber, George Tjungarrayi, 2002 Figure 40: Guy Maestri, Gurrumul, 2009

Another abstract portrait by Gerber with its bold blocks of colour awash in hot purple-pink, clear blue, luminous green and bright orange, however, only gives a hint of the physicality of the face of Indigenous Western Desert artist George Tjungarrayi (2002) (figure 39). And yet, the abstract qualities of this large close- up portrait form a likeness of the subject with his broad nose, wide mouth and deep set eyes that celebrate his Aboriginality. The abstract expressionist style of this portrait takes inspiration not from Western abstraction but from the

paintings of Tjungarrayi himself and other Indigenous artists of the Western Desert and their cultural connection to country. The contours of his face in this portrait can be likened to the landscape as seen in Tjungarrayi’s paintings and likened to a portrait of country. In doing so, Gerber pays homage to the Papunya

136 Tula artist and his contemporaries as a new generation of Indigenous artists who rose to fame in the international art scene in the mid-late twentieth century. In keeping with this, I suggest the Archibald winning portrait Gurrumul (2009) (figure 40) by artist Guy Maestri painted in tonal brown-grey is a no less powerful image than the luminous coloured portraits of Cave, Evans and Tjungarrayi. The large-scale dramatic portrait of the face of the late Dr G

(Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu) foremost recognises the blind Indigenous singer who raised himself above his social and physical disadvantage to become

something of a cultural phenomenon in Australia and internationally with his style of music. The stripping back of the colour palette and use of thick febrile paint strokes has resulted in a large and arresting monotone portrait. The artist has deliberately contrasted light and dark on his face, by illuminating light from above and placing his eyes in shadow. As Ashleigh Wadman asserts, “The shadow that defines Gurrumul’s eyes acts as the focal point of the painting and offers up a powerful reference to the musician’s blindness and intense

shyness”.196 _{The face of quiet meditation also fits with the musician’s}

professional persona that avoids the media spotlight. His songs, most of which is sung in his native Yolngu language, are about his connection to the land, culture and his people of the Gumatj clan of North-East Arnhem Land. Dr G was a

member of the famed Aboriginal band Yothu Yindi and the Saltwater Band. In an interview with Wadman in 2011, Guy Maestri explains that he sensed a quiet inner strength in Gurrumul when seeing the musician perform in concert on the eve of New Year 2008. To achieve this, Maestri built up the image on the canvas slowly, glaze upon glaze to capture the ‘beautiful quality of his skin’ while listening to his music and the lyrics of the songs. The painting of Dr G contrasts with Maestri’s early paintings that were large, colourful expressionist works with lots of thick paint trowelled across the surface of the canvas, much like those by fellow artist Ben Quilty.

These commissioned portraits constitute powerful statements about the kind of contemporary portraiture audiences can experience at our national institutions.

137 On one level, the Parliament of Australia recognises the ongoing historical and social importance of formal portraiture in conveying its most senior past elected representatives to the nation and its citizens. On another level, the National Portrait Gallery places portraiture at the centre of contemporary art in Australia and in doing so, it brings into play a dialogue about what is a portrait.

Audiences are hardwired to respond to the face in portraits as a measure of individuality, social status, gender and ethnicity. At the same time, people may feel disorientated when faces are hidden or illusory by not conveying a

resemblance of the subject in a portrait, especially those of famous or celebrity faces. What audiences see in the faces of musicians Nick Cave and Dr G, cyclist Cadel Evans or for that matter artist George Tjungarrayi may evoke meanings of identity but only hint at likeness and character. Looking at these contemporary portraits in this way, I assert the abstract pictorial representations of the face by these artists can in part be interpreted by the theory of the face by philosophers Deleuze and Guattari that calls for the deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation of an image. Deterritorialisation refers to the undoing of established power structures in society, medium or symbols of visual culture and replacing them with new structures, beliefs and art styles, that is, a reterritorialisation. In this context, I would argue contemporary portraiture is no longer restrained by established conventions of the Western canon and has become deterritorialised, thereby liberating a multiplicity of visual expressions and media to one of

reterritorialisation.

For the purposes of this thesis, I briefly explain Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of the face which they called ‘Faciality’.197

Foremost, they describe the human face as a signifier of humanity, ethnicity and social identity not by its resemblance to a person but as a concept or product of an abstract machine based on simple binary distinctions of black and white. These distinctions form the (white) surface of the face, and the (black) eyes, nose and mouth akin to a lunar landscape of light planes and dark craters. They argue

197 _{Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, vol. 11,} trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 168–190.

138 the signification and subjectification of these binaries converge to create a

passable or unpassable face from the dominant face of which all interpretations of the human face are made. In Western society, the dominant or ‘positive’ coherent identity is seen as the European white male face which they refer as the ‘Majoritarian’ face. Moreover, the prime facial construct of the ‘Christ face’ in historical Western representation is viewed as the majoritarian face. From this premise, they argue variants of the dominant face are considered ‘negative’ forms which they refer as the ‘Minoritarian’ face. Thus, when aminoritarianis facialised, the subject is made visible only against the dominant face and the manner in which the dominant social system allows. In other words, when a person in Western society first comprehends a face, it is by its likeness to or divergence from the majoritarian face—through the binary choices of whether it is male or female gender, white or black skin, European or other race, and so forth. In doing so, the face then becomes both a powerful political and cultural identifier that can convey acceptance or indeed suggest exclusion in society. Indeed, the repressed nature of the minoritarian to the majoritarian identity is nowhere more evident than in gender and race imposed through Western patriarchy. The historical subordination of women through the objective

representation of the female face and form is evident in Western art history and visual culture.

Moreover, the landscape of the face as a metaphor for national identity enforces meaning through racial difference in a similar way as the facial system does through divergence from the dominant face. Similarly, the marginalisation of Indigenous people is represented in ethnographic portrayals and mass media. In this regard, the Australian landscape, like the face, was territorialised by the native black face then deterritorialised by white settlement in the eighteenth century establishing the dominant white European male face as the univocal of the majoritarian. By mid-late twentieth century, the strata of Australian society had become polyvocal with Indigenous, ethnic and feminine faces challenging the dominant face and with it the reterritorialisation of the land. Despite this

polyvocality, the historical notion of the dominant European white male face of Western society still remains today, although this is diminishing with the growth

139 of diversified cultural and social expression in mass media and visual culture, including portraiture. This is in line with Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of the