This article was written by Roger Benjamin, Professor in Art History, University of Sydney

“She’s no oil painting”.

Those were the unkind words of a colleague commenting on the subject of Vincent Namatjira’s acrylic painting, Gina. Every one of the prominent Australians and cultural heroes in Namatjira’s ensemble Australia in Colour (2021) is subject to his trademark distortions.

When the painter gets to work interpreting the press photographs that are his main source, resemblance is always stretched. No one comes out unscathed: Tony Abbott looks just as scary as Angus Young from AC/DC; a grimacing Queen Elizabeth as grisly as a roaring Cathy Freeman. Indeed, in the 2023 volume Vincent Namatjira there are no fewer than four paintings of Gina Rinehart – and they look like four different people.

Do we expect a portrait to be a moral physiognomy, the ancient pseudoscience that assumes the way someone has lived their life shapes their features and appearance?

Roman emperors were shown to be ideal types: the heroic portrait. Who knows what these men actually looked like? In the case of King Charles III, whose new portrait by Jonathon Yeo was unveiled this week, we can compare his likeness to the myriad photographic and filmic images.

Newspaper caricature, popular since the 1700s, works hard to point out imperfections, posit animal likenesses, and exaggerate specific facial features to satirise public figures.

Namatjira brushes with caricature even when depicting himself.



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