About Prizing Portraits

S P E C
T R U M S P E C T R U M S P E C T R U M

Wazza’s
Trans-Tasman tales (cont.)

Looking at Coppersmith’s painting, I wondered at her comment
that she “wanted to inspire the next generation of young leaders”
and why she had chosen such a sombre visage to accompany the awfully
angular pose. I looked through an internet image search for Ardern
and found very few without her typical toothsome smile or loose hair
style that contrast so dramatically with Coppersmith’s stern
and severe stare from alongside her matching portrait, which I’ve
included along with one of the few unsmiling Ardern images I could
find. I’m left at a loss to understand not only how Coppersmith
has imagined herself channelling Ardern in this way, but also why?
I also wonder about the reference to “after George Lambert”.
Lambert was certainly a notable portraitist of women but his technique
delivered a much more refined effect than Coppersmith’s shows,
especially in his 1927 Archibald prizewinning portrait of Mrs Annie
Murdoch that presumably is the ‘after’ Coppersmith has
in mind, given the ‘look’ and the ‘colour’
of Lambert’s work. However, others have referenced a “mannered”
stylistic trait as common to both artists. Doubtless others still
will find ways and means to interrogate and elaborate on the raison
d’être of this winning work, I just found the introduction of
Ardern to the story a rather convenient narrative accompaniment to
an otherwise fairly ordinary painting. I recognise my criticisms are
likely provocative, but then maybe that’s a response to the
provocation of the painting itself and its commentary, which brings
me back to Ardern, herself.

Ardern is also not without commentariat critics in her homeland –
even, perhaps more so, among her own gender. Since the advent of electronic
print media there has been a decisive shift of the ‘Op-ed’
off its well-marked particular page i.e., opposite the editorial page
– NOT as it’s commonly mistaken to be inclusive of e.g.,
opinion as editorial – and out into the mainstream. Opinion
is now definitely to be marked out from editorial, as Emma Alberici
knows well. Ardern’s critics – based in NZ’s conservative
commentariat – include one Heather du Plessis-Allan, with a
piece comparing the NZ PM to Trump via their apparently similar immigration
policies – quite where that positions Dutton is anyone’s
guess – and another, Deborah Hill-Cohen, who had a go at Ardern’s
bloke that presaged a full-on attack on him via social media. The
end result being a ‘statement’ from the Commissioner of
Police that there had never been, nor was there, any interest or inquiry
into said bloke! That worked a treat…NOT. Never mind, the PM
enters her ‘confinement’ on June 17th and although her
deputy, ‘old warhorse’ and the media’s Bête
noire, Winston Peters is deputising, Ardern has made clear she remains
in charge, so there. How we all fare remains to be seen.
As for the Yvette/Jacinda-avatar proposing to “…inspire
the next generation of young leaders”, perhaps its intent is
to portray the dramatic demeanour she will need to confront an imminent
genderational shift in socio-political happenstances, which the Ardern/Peters
(pre-millenial, feminister/baby boomer, die-hard patriarch) leadership
coalition characterises.
At days end, perhaps my own vexations (I really like that word, as
did Eric Satie) are merely an inevitable consequence of the complexly
rhizomatic meanderings of minds and matter as they traverse a world
emerging through evolving understandings of so-called new materialism*…more
about such matters another day/month/year/decade/century…

*
‘new materialism’ is the most common
name given to a series of movements in several fields that criticise
anthropocentrism, rethink subjectivity by playing up the role of
inhuman forces within the human, emphasize the self-organizing powers
of several nonhuman processes, explore dissonant relations between
those …’ <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0305829813486849?journalCode=mila>

Image of Lambert’s Mrs Annie Murdoch
from < https://curiator.com/art/george-washington-thomas-lambert/mrs-annie-murdoch>