AustLit

'In relation to the history of the actress as image, David Mayer asks: '[I] f the actress isn't seen upon the stage, how else - and where else - is she seen, identified, celebrated, memorialised, turned into an icon?'1 One way in which images of the actress make a striking, if little analysed, contribution to Australian public life is through the Archibald Prize, an annual award for portraiture managed by the trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW).2 Australia's favourite art award', the Archibald receives saturation coverage in mainstream media, bringing acclaim and publicity not only to the winning artist but also to his or her subject.3 In the history of the Archibald, nine of the winning portraits have been of male actors, the earliest being John Longstaffs 1925 portrait of Russian actor Maurice Moscovitch, and the most recent Louise Hearman's 2016 picture of Barry Humphries.4 No actress has ever been the subject of the winning portrait. By the turn of the century, the Bulletin had become the mouthpiece for 'an aggressively Australian cultural ethos which was masculine, republican, rural, nationalist, and anti-imperialist'.8 The nation-building impulse of Archibald's Bulletin is reflected also in the terms of his bequest to the AGNSW, for a prize to be awarded annually to a work of portraiture, 'preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in arts, letters, science or politics, painted by any artist resident in Australasia' within the previous twelve months.9 It could be said that other aspects of Archibald's and the Bulletin's worldview have lingered around the prize, an award for which over 75 per cent of the winning portraits have featured male subjects, and 80 per cent of the winning artists have been male. Furthermore, female entrants 'tend to paint men more than men tend to paint women, and so the "face value" of Australia exhibited at the Archibald reflects the grim picture of gender balance in Australian visual arts'.10 The Archibald's record with other aspects of identity, such as racial and ethnic identity, is equally troubling; to date, only four of the winning portraits have featured non-Caucasian subjects.11 Throughout its history, the Archibald Prize has attracted significant criticism and controversy. Portraits of actors have also won the ancillary awards, the Packing Room and People's Choice prizes, more often than those of actresses.20 The portraits of actors tend to fall into two categories: either individuals at the height of their powers, in their creative prime, or individuals with a distinguished body of work behind them, whose status and authority have been demonstrated.' (Publication abstract)