Sam Leach’s Wynne Prize winning landscape painting “Proposal for Landscaped Cosmos” bares an uncanny resemblance to Dutch artist Adam Pynacker’s 1660 work, “Boatmen Moored on the Shore of a Lake”.

The Herald’s art writer, John McDonald, believed Leech’s painting was “basically a copy” of Pynacker’s canvas, held at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. There are minor changes – most noticeably the removal of the boat and figures – but there was unwritten assumption in the prize that it was for an original, Australian landscape. But Leach was a serious artist who liked to play visual games, he said. “I don’t think Sam is really the villain here. I think it’s the judges who are culpable for making a rather silly decision … It is an embarrassment for the art gallery. It shows up how little judgment they showed.”

While Leach says he often “appropriates” features from the works of other artists into his paintings, were the judges of the Wynne Prize aware of just how heavily he had borrowed from Pynacker?

Melbourne based artist Sam Leach has cemented his place in Australian art history, after taking out both the Archibald and Wynne Prizes last week.

His wins, for the portrait of Tim Minchin in the Archibald Prize, and “Proposal for landscaped cosmos” in the Wynne Prize, for landscape painting or figure sculpture, are notable for several reasons.

• Leach is just the third Australian artist to win both the Archibald and Wynne Prizes in the same year.
• The other two artists are William Dobell (1948), and Brett Whiteley (1978), making the phenomenon a “once every 30 years occurrence” (approximately).
• Edmund Capon, AGNSW director, says Leach’s Archibald portrait is quite possibly the smallest ever winning entry.

I saw both works while at the AGNSW over the weekend, and they sure are small. In-fact I overheard one visitor asking an attendant in the Archibald room where she could find the painting, so small that it is.

At a guess, I’d say the Tim Minchin painting was about 40 cm high by 30 cm wide, while “Proposal for landscaped cosmos” was about 30 cm square.

Small is beautiful though, Leach has collected a total of $75,000 in prize money, $50,000 for the Archibald, and $25,000 for the Wynne. He hopes his winnings “will give him time to concentrate on his artistic [rather than commercial] endeavours”.

(Sources: The Age, ABC News, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Archibald Prize website.)

The annoucement of Sam Leach’s portrait of Australian entertainer Tim Minchin as winner of this year’s Archibald Prize made for the perfect excuse to go along to the Art Gallery Of New South Wales over the weekend.

In addition to seeing the Archibald entries, I also saw:

• The work of finalists in the landscape painting Wynne Prize (with Leach also won with his painting “Proposal for landscaped cosmos”), and the Sulman Prize, both of which run concurrently with the Archibalds.
• ARTEXPRESS 2010, which features a selection of the best work from art students of the HSC class of 2009.
• “Hymn to beauty”, a collection of woodblock print artworks by Japanese artist Kitagawa Utamaro.
• “Colour, rhythm, design”, which featured a sample of wood and lino cuts created during the 1920s and 30s, from the AGNSW archives.
• “Wilderness”, a collection of landscape and nature inspired paintings by 14 Australian artists, including Del Kathryn Barton, who was the winner of the 2008 Archibald Prize.

Not a bad little fix of art at all for a Sunday afternoon.

Hot sun baked sandstone building cooks up cool art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Spent yesterday afternoon at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, my first visit for 2010, and checked out a couple of their current exhibitions:

• “Rupert Bunny, artist in Paris”. Born in Melbourne in 1864, Bunny made a name for himself during France’s Belle Époque or “beautiful era”.
• “Garden and cosmos”. Artwork from the Rajasthan (formerly Jodhpur) region of India, dating from the 17th and 19th centuries.
• “6 photographers”. The work of six Australian photographers that was originally exhibited in 1955.
• “The Dreamers”. Features the work of eight well known Aboriginal artists who consider themselves “the dreamers for the future”.

And coming up is ARTEXPRESS 2010, The Archibald Prize and Colour, rhythm, design, a show of wood and lino cuts from the 1920s and 30s.

A glimpse of what happens behind the scenes of the Archibald Packing Room Prize, from the time entries arrive in the Packing Room, up until an announcement of the winner.

(Thanks Coffee Girl)

Paul Jackson’s portrait of Flacco, an alter-ego of comedian Paul Livingston, has been named winner of the 2009 Packing Room Prize today, in the run up to the announcement of this year’s Archibald Prize.

The Packing Room Prize which is awarded by workers at the Art Gallery of New South Wales who receive entries for the annual Archibald Prize, is usually assessed slightly more subjectively, as chief packer Steve Peters, explains of last year’s award:

“It’s a very good picture and it’s very Neil Finn,” said the gallery’s head storeman, Steve Peters. “I have no idea [about art], but I know what I like, and I think this is a pretty good one.”

Update: finalists for the Archibald, Wynne, and Sulman prizes have also been named. Winners will be announced on Friday 6 March 2009.

On top of Good Vibrations, and the opening of the Licorice Allsorts exhibition, just two items on my radar for the weekend, ArtExpress 2009 also gets underway at the Art Gallery of New South Wales tomorrow.

ArtExpress features some of the best work of NSW‘s graduating high school arts students, and the fresh edgy work on display makes it one of my favourite exhibitions on the art show circuit.

For an idea of what’s on show check out last year’s ArtExpress website.

Yes, a busy day in Sydney tomorrow…

35 of the approximately 200 Buddhist figures discovered buried in Qingzhou, China, ten years ago are part of the The Lost Buddhas exhibition, taking place at the Art Gallery of NSW, until 23 November 2008.

While many of the figures are in surprisingly good condition despite being buried for over 800 years, the reason for their interment remains a puzzle.

Despite their long stint underground, the sculptures are the best preserved Buddhist figures of their era. “They have beautiful colour decorations on the surface, and if you look closely, you can see patterns in gold strips on various parts of their bodies,” says Professor Helmut Brinker, of the University of Zurich. Why the figures were buried remains a mystery, but Professor Brinker speculates they were destroyed by a fire in the Longxing (Dragon Rise) Temple, then given a ritual burial by passing monks. “It’s a long-standing mystery,” he says. “The only thing you can be sure of is that we’ve never seen anything like them before.”

Vincent Fantauzzo’s Heath Ledger portrait named Archibald Prize People’s Choice winner

On a recent visit to see the Archibald Prize portraits on busy Sunday afternoon at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Vincent Fantauzzo’s portrait of Heath Ledger was, not unsurprisingly, the hardest work to get to see close up on account of the interest in the painting, and its subject.

“I wanted it to be dealing with self, your own consciousness and your thoughts,” says Fantauzzo. “An artist is their own biggest critic. I had seen his eyes wander off or stare into the camera while doing interviews and wondered what he may have been thinking. I felt that being a celebrity, you are always under constant scrutiny with so many demands made of you that you have to hold part of yourself back and not give too much away.”