The Kingston Prize: Canada's National Portrait Competition

(Royal Ontario Museum, 25 November 2011)

The subjects in the exhibition's best paintings are artists' friends. In the paintings of William Lazos, Sean Yelland, and Richard Davis, the respect for the subjects translates into the respect for the viewer. The contemplation of friendship induces an artist to accentuate the positive in his friend and to portray him with dignity, thus producing an artistic contribution. The exhibition's worst paintings are mindless snapshots. Francis Fontaine and Michael Bayne rely on the mistaken premise that a raw emotion can be transformed into a thought without any intellectual effort.

Art scarcely needs ugliness---in part, because ugliness is ample outside art. In order to maintain a balanced outlook, an individual needs to experience a range of emotions, which art helps generate. But even when a gory image is required, the gore need not be ugly. More often than not, ugliness is the imprecision of expression. There is more art at the Bloor Street Starbucks than in some of the selected paintings.

Americans strive for an ideal and perfection---which sell well, and the market is large. The British strive for justice. Canadians strive for inclusion---or so it seems by inspecting the portraits selected by the jury, who fail to realise that their duty is to spot talent, not Canada. Besides, few included would appreciate what the chosen artists have deemed worthy of inclusion.

Partly as an unintended outcome of the portraits' selection, the gallery has the ambiance of a communal apartment, permeated by its inhabitants' routine resignation. This set-up does not do justice to individual artists. Better lighting would have brightened up the atmosphere.

An artist expresses himself in the medium in which he is most eloquent. A painter's comments on his work are bound to be inferior to his work, apart from being redundant for its appreciation. Besides, those who cannot interpret faces will come with a friend or a parent, or take a docent's tour, and will not gain from being instructed by the exhibition notes revealing whether a barmaid's countenance is glad or sad (neither, it turns out).