There was an air of absurdity about
the whole event, which was probably appropriate given that the art being
celebrated was of an absurdist bent. Alice and the Mad Hatter, or at least people paid to dress up like
them, mingled among the throng at the media preview at the National
Gallery of Victoria of Charles Blackman’s Alice in Wonderland
exhibition. Some of the gallery staff wore bunny ears. And the
ageing artist was on show like an enfeebled Soviet leader at a May Day parade.
But most absurd was the unmentionable strain over the conspicuous absence of key person Geoffrey Smith.

Senior gallery execs kept up appearances with brave smiles and well-scripted
words to paper over the absence while Smith was across town in the Federal Court where his lawyers were fighting for
his right to be at the gallery to play host at the unveiling of the exhibition
that he’d spent two years preparing.

His boss, Gerard Vaughan, made three polite, if slightly pained, references
to Smith’s contribution to the exhibition but no mention of the court
proceedings where the gallery had three separate legal teams squaring off
against Smith’s lawyers. It was all so Melbourne – a courtly and courteous
facade concealing a bare-knuckled brawl.

The media mostly followed the NGV’s script, as it has done pretty much
since this conflict-of-interest drama first came to light five weeks ago. Up at
the court in William St, a handful of dedicated scribes followed proceedings,
while down at Fed Square it was an all-networks, all-mastheads turn out, with
the assembled hacks seeming to accept without question that they were in the
presence of “one of Australia’s most significant living artists”. If any of them
did have doubts, they weren’t able to take it up with the artist himself because
his minders had insisted he not take any questions, owing to his frail state of
mind. A pity that edict wasn’t issued earlier. As part of the publicity push for
this exhibition, Blackman has been the subject of several profiles in which his utterances have been more than a bit muddled. As his profilers have
painstakingly pointed out, the 78-year-old artist suffers Korsakoff’s syndrome,
a memory disorder brought about by decades of boozing. I hate to be a party
pooper but didn’t it occur to anyone that it probably wasn’t a great idea to
interview a man with such an affliction?

Watching him propped up in front of his pictures yesterday with a barrage
of cameras bearing down on him, I got the feeling that the artist himself was
being turned into a museum curio, with the media desperate to get a last look at
the genius before he goes.

As for the work – I am already on record as not being a Blackman fan.
Instead of seeing anything dark and disturbing in this work, which is the party
line, I think it’s naff and sentimental. Nevertheless, of the 43 Alice
pictures on show, there are four or five paintings that stand out, not for their
subject matter but because they’re interesting as compositions. For really
stunning Australian art from the mid-twentieth century just across the corridor
from the Blackman show – there’s a selection of abstract paintings by the likes of
Ralph Bolson, Grace Crowley, Ian Fairweather and Godfrey Miller, all wonderful
artists who have never received the kind of attention now swamping
Blackman.