The year's best portrait

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Aristotle          

Gina, by Namatjira
Gina Rinehart’s intemperate response to her portrait by Vincent Namatjira on display in the National Gallery has resulted in considerable mockery and hilarity across the full spectrum of social media platforms.

Mrs Rinehart is not a self-made woman or a battler who’s made good. She inherited her wealth from her father, Lang Hancock, a man who treated Australia as his own personal quarry, and she has built on his legacy by buying off successive governments in order to extend her claims on vast swathes of the country for her personal gain. In the process, as well as becoming one of Australia's most reviled characters, she has managed to alienate at least two of her children whom she now only sees in court.

According to a 2021 Guardian Australia report, Rinehart owns and controls 9.2 million hectares of Australia – a total of 1.2% of the entire landmass of the country. Some of that includes the traditional lands of Vincent Namatjira’s people. She has been responsible for the destruction of Indigenous sites, wildlife habitat, unique and sacred landscapes and she has accrued vast, obscene amounts of money through doing so. Her personal wealth is around $18 billion, making her the richest individual in the country. 

Gina's loyal vassal bowing before her
Rinehart has about as much interest in what’s in the national interest as she has in art, and this is where things take an interesting twist. 

A portrait of her by Archibald Prize winning artist, Vincent Namatjira, is on display, along with other Namatjira portraits, at the National Gallery. Gina doesn’t like it and generally speaking, what Gina doesn’t like she can have removed. The National Gallery, however, is beyond her influence and power, so she’s throwing a bit of a tanty. 

Before the advent of photography, wealthy and influential people became patrons to individual artists and paid them to paint their portraits. If they didn’t like the result, the artist didn’t get paid, so portraits were often quite flattering to their subjects. This remains the case: the only time the subject of a portrait can control their image is when they have commissioned it. If an artist chooses to paint a subject without commission, it is entirely up to the artist how that subject is to be depicted. 

Namatjira’s style is caricature. This technique is not new. The artist deliberately distorts the likeness of the subject to exaggerate features or portray a certain personality trait. In 1943 William Dobell won the Archibald Prize with a portrait of his friend and fellow artist, Joshua Smith which was challenged in court by a group of artists, claiming that the painting was not a portrait but a caricature. The court threw out the challenge on the basis that the determination of what constituted a winning painting rested solely with the trustees of the gallery not with a court of law, wherein practitioners may be legal geniuses, but not art aficionados. Fair enough. 

We no longer need artists to provide faithful (or flattering) likenesses of their subjects and artists don’t have to curry favour with their subjects. Which brings us back to Gina. 

If Rinehart used her wealth – even a fraction of it – to support the arts or artists, or to improve health services in some of the Indigenous communities she’s displaced, or to support scientific research into climate change or medical advancements, or well, anything really, her outward appearance might mirror a nicer soul within. But she’s made her choices. 

In a country where the arts rate considerably lower on government spending priorities than exploiting and raping the country’s landscape for as much money as possible, patrons and benefactors – and there are many – have provided ongoing foundations for arts practitioners and creatives to continue to work. These people, even if portrayed in Namatjira’s style of caricature, wouldn’t complain because they respect the art and the process. 

Gina Rinehart has learnt that (a) money and power might buy governments, but art remains beyond her reach; (b) making a big fuss over something she wants hidden ensures its maximum public exposure; and (c) greed, selfishness and ruthlessness are visible traits. 

Will she understand the lesson? No. But at least it’s given the rest of us a good laugh.

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