Painters and superheroes

I was at the Art Gallery yesterday afternoon, filling in. They still need extra people this weekend because they extended the Zen show, Lewis Morley is just finishing up, and Giacometti is open upstairs. During my stint sitting on the chair at the entrance to Lewis Morley checking people's tickets, a tour of little kids came by. There were a few children's events on that day, it looked like these ones were looking at some art before going off to make their own. An older man was leading them. The group came up to a big canvas that has been recently re-hung in the main gallery, now that the interactive screens of the Biennale are down, just to the right of where I was sitting. The guide got the children's attention and was showing them how the painting which looked like just multi-coloured squiggles was really an Australian landscape, with rivers twisting and winding, etc. He intoned, "This painting is by a man named John Olsen". A little brown-haired boy, who couldn't have been more than eight years old, exclaimed immediately, "He won the Archibald last year!" Yes, yes he did, said the man, and went back to the twists and turns.

The boy had the same excited tone of voice that I've heard from little boys at the footy, saying, "That's Andrew Johns. Andrew Johns just kicked that. Dad, where's Andrew Johns now?" This kid followed the Archibalds like those kids follow their local team. It made me smile.

The Archibalds attract criticism that they appeal to the lowest denominator of culture, that they inspire mediocre art, that it's antithetical to the artistic enterprise to run a big competitive annual prize like a horse race, etc. But I figure if they get a kid like that excited about a crotchetty old painter like John Olsen, and if the kid knows the names of major Aussie painters by the time he's half-way through elementary school, then it's as legitimate as the footy.