Perhaps I should have viewed the two exhibitions in reverse order. After the scintillating colour of one I was left with the sepia toned staleness of the other and even where colour was lavishly applied with a visible brush by painterly artists, the colour took second place.  In one gallery of the AGSA was 100 years of the Archibald Portrait Prize, the annual competition run by the Art Gallery of NSW and judged by the gallery directors and in the other the video portraits of Robert Wilson.

The ‘Archies’ exhibition was on its national tour with this year’s winner just as steeped in controversy as were many of the previous winners. As a leading critic pointed out, there were much better portraits that the one that was this year’s eventual winner and hundreds beyond that didn’t even make the cut. The criteria for selection remain a mystery other than that the judging committee all agreed. The public, for their part, seldom agree with the choice.

The early winners of the Archie have a sameness about them largely due to the same artist popping up continually but it is more than that. The morbid brown backgrounds occupying anything up to half of the picture space and the accent on photographic semblance, place them in a past where the figure itself had to do all of the work. There is no doubt that they are well painted but the approach is dated. Further into the hundred year history we find all sorts of stylistic experimentation with hints of expressionism, fauvism, cubism and almost caricature. However, what may well have been a radical departure from tradition in its day looks just as dated and passive as everything else. The Brett Whitely collection in particular has taken on an unpleasant character and while his drug dependence and contorted forms were honest attempts at rawness and stylisation, they look less palatable at this vantage point than his landscape work.

Those works where the background had been incorporated into the portrait as an environment stood up better than those of the early days when the isolated figure against a murky background removed the subject from any societal reality. However, the more recent stylistic tendency to incorporate other faces or figures as clues to character seemed forced. Where this prize is heading in the future is anyone’s guess.

In the other gallery was to be found the video portraits of Robert Wilson the avant-garde theatre director responsible for, among other things, Einstein on the Beach. The differences couldn’t have been more stark and I left wondering if I knew anything about portraiture at all. To say that the Robert Wilson portraits looked nothing like anything seen in the Archies would be an understatement. Wilson has always been a favourite of mine. His approach to the stage and how it could be used had less to do with narrative and more to do with a series of strikingly lit images. The slowness in the stage productions and in these portraits, was not just meditative but all-enveloping. This series of video portraits takes that slowness, that stillness, to extremes and incorporates the brilliant stage lighting for which he is famous. The depth and crispness of the images is striking as is the minimal movement- sometimes little more than the subject breathing. To base each portrait on a single artist or dancer is one thing but to quote the history or art as context is something else. Davide’s Death of Marat or the execution of St Sebastian might seem to be odd choices within which to place contemporary figures, but the result is intriguing as is the juxtaposition of works from the gallery collection that in some way reflect the interests or character of the sitter. These sitters are alive in ways that the Archies are not and were never meant to be. In fact the old term ‘still life’ or ‘nature mort’ is more applicable to the archies in that no matter how well painted, the portraits will never breath other than as an illusion.

Does all of this make one approach any more valid or valuable than the other? No doubt gallery goers would be divided. The archies have been loved by generations who venerate the artists, or at least the ones who can paint a recognisable likeness with skill. To be faced by a painted illusion on canvas is a very different experience to a subject that is actually alive and breathing. After a century or more of cinema, and half that of television, the moving, talking character has become second nature to all of us. The crisp moving 4K image is now very much part of life in the digital age whereas the painted portrait remains a relic of the past which society hangs onto like a life raft. Millions of square metres of canvas are covered in paint each year and sold accordingly and yet few if any would consider hanging a screen on the wall displaying a Robert Wilson let alone venturing into a theatre where one of his works will inevitably baffle all but a few connoisseurs. The theatricality of the video portraits may equally baffle an audience and the two gallery-goers to whom I spoke at the AGSA, albeit briefly, rallied behind the archies. Something familiar – almost certainly, even though the approach of the artist and even the famous arty subject may seem jarring or unfamiliar.

Is there a future for the painted portrait? The annual rush to present a work for selection to the NSW Archibald committee never seems to diminish and nor does the disappointment in being passed over yet again. The archies aren’t the only portrait prize either. But just who gets their portrait painted anyway these days when the camera phone can capture every waking moment in perpetuity? Prime Ministers do, as can be seen in Parliament House in Canberra, although I’m not sure if the art world has managed to portray all of them even now with significant gaps from recent times as Prime Ministers were rolled in rapid succession. Would the powers-that-be consider a Wilson portrait to hang in the halls – at least such a figure would be alive – even with an historical reference to similarities to Nero or Napoleon or an historical martyr. Given how few of our Prime Ministers knew anything about the Arts at all Wilson was unlikely to have chosen any of them as a subject anyway.

I came away from the two exhibitions refreshed by the Wilsons and basically bored by the

archies. Maybe I simply don’t understand portraiture. No doubt there would be many who would take issue with me on definition and relevance.