Ah, we’ve now come to this, the most serious of our decisions...the subject!
The ‘who do I paint?’ answer is a code word that tells the inner-circle of the Archibald Prize whether you’re a 'somebody' and worth taking note of.
Why?
Each painting has 5 seconds to grab the judge’s attention as they sweep past 900 other hopefuls. If the subject is unrecognised we’ve lost half our chance, and as they say the one thing worse than being despised is being unnoticed. Sure we could make up for it by being noticed in another way but things just get a bit tougher.
We’ve spoken about the occupation 'artist' carrying the weight of winning history (more than a third) but if we want to be radically rebellious we could pick any number of occupations unloved by Archibald history.
A banker, a rabbi, a sportsman, a mining magnate and journalist have each won a single time. Never a blogger, businessman, model or pastor.
But remember that radical rebels can be burnt by their own hubris so let’s consider wisely if we want to paint an artist (30 times), author (9 times), actor (8 times) or an Archibald Prize judge!
Here are some options already suggested.
- Shane Warne (genius sportsman)
- Ben Quilty (Archibald winning artist)
- David Marr (famed journalist)
- Roy Williams (public intellectual)
- Michael Jensen (Christian pastor)
- Dan Brettig (cricket writer)
- Unnoticed busdriver
- David Walsh (founder of MONA)
- Anonymous
- Peter FitzSimmons (ex-rugby player, author)
- Self-portrait
Who is the most famous person you know? Can you tell them of our quest?