|
|
|
2009
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Melissa Leong, National Post
Heads, you win
There's life in Canadian portraiture yet, says the
couple behind the Kingston Prize
One of the problems with portraiture in Canada,
Julian Brown says, is that it's too often thought of as
head-and-shoulder shots, with royalty holding sceptres
or men in blue suits sitting in armchairs.
"When the attorney general or director of a
company retires, they get their portraits painted in the
same chair. The result is when you go to Parliament
buildings, you see these rows of paintings of the
Speaker. One is hardly distinguishable from the
other."
This is not modern portraiture, he says. The
73-year-old retired chemistry professor has been trying
to push the boundaries of what people think of as
portraiture with the Kingston Prize, a biennial
competition for contemporary art.
The Kingston Prize started in 2005 as a project that
Brown and his wife, Kaaren, could find no supporters for
and had to fund with their own money. It has since grown
into a national competition with a $10,000 prize and is
now on tour; an exhibition of the 30 finalists for the
2009 prize opens tomorrow in Toronto.
The Browns lived for a time in Australia, where the
Art Gallery of New South Wales has been holding an
annual national portrait competition since 1921, drawing
more than 100,000 people to its exhibit.
"The Archibald Prize over its 89 years gives an
annual review of what portraiture means and shows the
shift in several things: clothing that people wear, hair
styles, colours, styles of painting. It builds a record
of how society is changing. This record is available
regardless of changes in technology," Brown says.
|
 |
2009
Canada's literary community is well-served with
prizes such as the Giller and the Griffin poetry prize,
but the visual arts community is lacking, Brown says.
"Canadian visual arts tends to be dominated by
Group of Seven-type landscapes. Group of Seven had a
huge effect on Canadian artwork, Canadian
paintings," he says.
"We thought there needs to be a better balance
struck. The obvious thing to do is put people right back
in the centre."
Some say the growing interest in the Kingston Prize
only provides further argument for why Canada needs a
permanent national portrait gallery. To date, efforts to
find a permanent home for the Portrait Gallery of Canada
have been lengthy, convoluted and controversial; but
supporters are still committed, according to former
Liberal senator Jerry Grafstein.
He has sent letters to the heads of all of the major
art organizations in the country, denouncing their lack
of support for the initiative; he said that he hopes
that his bill to establish a gallery at the site of the
former U.S. embassy in Ottawa will be reintroduced into
Senate.
"Every other civilized and intelligent country
that I know of has a national portrait gallery:
Australia, America, Britain," said Enright, who
teaches at the University of Guelph's school of Fine Art
and Music and edits a cultural magazine.
"Without portraits, we don't have that
opportunity to see the reflection of ourselves in a
considered way, not the way Facebook or the Internet can
deliver us immediate information and can give us a quick
image of what we are."
The Kingston Prize Portrait Competition Exhibition
continues to Jan. 19 at Waddington's Auction Rooms in
Toronto, before moving to the Art Gallery of Calgary on
Jan. 29.
-30-
Contact:
Julian or Kaaren Brown, 613-544-6329, julian@kingston.net. Kingston Arts Council 613-546-2787, info@artskingston.com
|
