“An artwork is not a riot or a strike or a blockade or a commune. And we must be careful not to forget that the future we desire will not be won in the gallery but in the streets and through collective struggle.” - Andrew Brooks, The Island, 2020
In November 2019 my mother and I go to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. I am a freshly anointed fashion school dropout and art school beginner, she a weary supporter of my constant personality changes. Together we are typical gallery-goers; self-conscious, aiming for pensive. We go for Japan Supernatural, absorb its vibrance, babbling as we exit, and end up downstairs where the Quilty retrospective is being held.
The exhibition is huge, spanning through multiple rooms. Nothing is left out, from Toranas to war portraiture, disembodied life vests to giant Rorschachs. The room almost smells of a strange, phantom turpentine, paint threatening to splat onto the tiled floor at any given moment. I’m transfixed immediately, absorbed by Quilty’s perpetually adolescent angst, enraptured in the earthy, bruised tones of his portraiture. But it’s his newer works that I’m drawn to the most; great torturous, grotesque abstractions, “deformed ogres, bared teeth, writhing figures,” of oil (Apfelbaum, 2021). They seem giant, impossible, completely magnificent.
I think, this is it. This is an artist that I can use as the answer to the unbearable question: “Who’s your favourite artist?” I get as close as I can to the canvas, take about a thousand photos, scurrying home to document my new findings on my Instagram with the simple caption: “ben quilty”.
For a while, I revel in my new discovery. My paintings grow bigger, somehow more impulsive, decorated in wide eyes and creeping fingers. My mind becomes coated in thick impasto, the world bathing in that distinctive shade of Quilty lilac. I become a devoted follower, consumed by his “fierce moral energy”, swept up in grand gestures of allyship, convincing myself that maybe, just maybe, this time would be different (Delaney, 2019). That an artist with immense commercial success could be a beacon for Real Change, could look right in the eye of The Institution and spit in it, eating the rich without needing to eat himself.
But like any new infatuation, the spark begins to dwindle, and boredom sets in. With every new painting, every new grand gesture of activism that is inevitably spreads like wildfire throughout the media, a feeling of monotony grows. I start resenting Quilty, sick of seeing him everywhere, tired of the “empty expressiveness, the signs of expressivity but without anything actually being expressed” (Butler, 2018). Quilty becomes synonymous with rolled eyes, with boredom and predictability. And this is where it should end, where I ought to just accept my aversion to Quilty’s work and focus my attention on better artists. But there’s something deeper to it, sharper than boredom. It’s the dig in the ribs, the twisted discomfort of something else I can’t quite name. It consumes me until a new obsession forms, an obsession with unravelling, picking Quilty apart until I can understand just what it is about him that makes me wince.
While researching for this piece I tell my partner all about Quilty, about my strained, shifting view of him. I tell him about his insistent portrayal of a blokey, working class persona alongside his kinship with billionaire Kerry Stokes. I tell him about his life jacket series, the way the semiotics seem somehow displaced. I read him quotes with an air of cynicism, trying to convey the unconveyable, to transfer some of the discomfort I feel. He listens diligently, lets me ramble, until he finally says, “He really sounds like a Ben.”
And it makes sense, for some reason. We laugh about it, wonder about it, and the moment passes. But over the next few days, I find myself constantly returning to it.
Ben. The name makes me crinkle my nose immediately. How much power have I unknowingly attached to a name, an empty signifier of identity? And how much of my contempt at Quilty is merely a projection of my own encounters?
Ben Fordham calling me “attractive” at fifteen. Ben Roberts-Smith, the stench of disgrace. Ben 10, childhood sweetheart. Ben Affleck and his revolting brother. Benny and the Jets. Ben Foster as William Burroughs in Kill Your Darlings. Ben Shapiro. Benjamin, the donkey from Animal Farm. Mr. Clean and Mr. Ben are living in my loft. Walter Benjamin, completely impossible, assigned reading, pain in my ass. Telling everyone at fourteen that if I had a son, his name would be Benjamin.
Ben Quilty. Ben, my boyfriend when I was eighteen, taking a lighter to my naivety, pulling it in, breathing it out, setting fire to it, eating the leftovers.
I see the look in my father’s eyes as I am berated, right there in front of him. I hear myself reassuring my friends, saying “Sorry”, saying “He’s just drunk”. I feel hands around my throat, crushing, not holding. I see myself, small, shaking, sobbing on the phone, apologising, always constantly fucking apologising.
If I wince when I think of Quilty, maybe this is the source, the pinch on the arm, the nick of sharp teeth. Maybe it is because he is Ben first, Quilty second. Because underneath the persona of Quilty, the “impassioned activist, using his brush to draw our attention to our responsibility as citizens living in an increasingly fragmented world” he is just Ben, perfect poster boy of the artistic genius, malleable and palatable, perpetually balancing between good intentions and an increasingly wilful ignorance (Safe, 2019). The duality of the Quilty persona, it seems, as both lucrative darling of the art world and champion of the downtrodden, makes him the perfect face of contemporary art in the settler state; one that is progressive when it is appropriate, and profitable when it counts.
When convenient, Quilty’s paintings embody what Natalie Thomas calls “Activism Lite” (Thomas, 2019). I am immediately thinking of his 2016 work, ‘The Last Supper’, a monstrous work of writhing, dismembered limbs, bared teeth and a decapitated Donald Trump, all surrounding a long, white table that quite ferociously nods to the da Vinci work of the same name. The imagery is immediate, the meaning vague but clear enough as some form of societal critique. “I thought of them sitting around having the last supper as the world burns around them,” Quilty remarks in 2019, “It’s all about chaos. It’s a representation of these men – these straight white men.” The audience looks at the painting, pausing, reflecting, nodding pensively. The message is received: this painting is about men that are Bad. These “straight white men” - of which Quilty, who is all three, is notably absent – must be held to account, be loudly critiqued, but for what? If we assume it is, as Quilty says, for watching “the world [burn] around them”, are we implying the responsibility of the capitalist class – the Donald Trumps of the world – for the world’s destruction? And if this critique is coming from Quilty, who broke the record for his highest selling painting in November 2020 at $140,000 only to smash it in April 2021 at a staggering $220,000, how are we able to judge its authenticity? (Coslovich, 2021). When the structure that continues to set the world ablaze is the same one that allows him to make over 5 times the Australian average yearly wage from two paintings alone, how are we to trust a critique that sees him place himself firmly outside of it?
I do not mean to say that Quilty and Trump are one in the same, or that he has no right to critique the structures that we were raised within without our consent. But what concerns me is the painting’s lack of self-awareness, which extends beyond Quilty and towards the audience. Quilty’s activist persona assures the audience that just viewing ‘The Last Supper’ is a progressive act, one that encourages them to be moved, but not to the point of discomfort. Activism becomes reduced to fleeting moments of reflection, a sombre pause, an empty mind, confined to the gallery space in a singular event. It’s the vague gestures of liberal epiphany, intermingled with overwhelming commercial success, that allows Quilty to, quoting Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung, “[take] the benefit of fame without its burden of self-reflection” (Yiu Nam Cheung, 2021). And it’s this exact commercialisation of activist ideas that makes him so irresistible to the state.
Australia loves Ben. Australia loves Ben so much, in fact, that in October 2011 we sent him over to Afghanistan for 24 days as part of the Australian War Memorial’s longstanding Official War Artist Scheme. With 30 Australian deaths in the 10 years since 2001, most of whom being men in their 20s, it was a perfect time for Quilty, recently emerged and well-known for his works surrounding young Australian masculinity, to enter the conversation (Messham-Muir, 2018). The resulting works from Quilty’s time as War Artist saw returning veterans stripped - literally and figuratively – vulnerable, fleshy bodies and forlorn faces against dark, abyssal backgrounds. In them, Quilty aims to convey the trauma of these returning soldiers, the difficulty to slot back into regular life only to “drop, fall, crashing down to earth,” after developing post-traumatic stress disorder (Quilty, 2013). And this concept is valid, just as it was after Vietnam and the first and second World Wars. But the issue with the series, much like the issue with ‘The Last Supper’, is the ways in which it seemingly omits the essence of the problem, focusing instead on the surface to allow Quilty and the viewer to feel as though they are a part of a ground-breaking, important conversation. Kit Messham-Muir, citing Rex Butler, writes:
[The] paintings’ expressionistic aesthetic actually conveys nothing of the trauma experienced by their sitters, yet it allows audiences to go through the motions by playing out the expressionist trope of externalising inner psychological and emotional states. ‘Not only do we not come to know what the soldiers went through… [but] we ultimately do not want to know; and in fact what the paintings offer the viewer (and hence their public success) is a way of avoiding any real encounter with the outcome of war, the public performance of responsibility without any of its real-world consequences (Butler, 2018)
The ‘real-world consequences’, of course, stem from the real motives of Western involvement in Afghanistan: profit and expansion under the guise of border protection. Ultimately, Australian soldiers in Afghanistan only ever existed to be, as summarised by Natalie Thomas: “the geo-political puppets of the US interventionist policies” (Thomas, 2019). But the paintings do not speak to these consequences, nor the most frequently ignored victims of the war, the 46,000 Afghan civilians killed and the over 2.2 million displaced as of September 2021 (Crawford, 2021). They don’t speak to these victims because they’re not supposed to. Quilty says it himself; “In the contract, the job is to tell the story of the Australian people on the frontline” (Quilty, 2013). The US invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent Australian involvement becomes a necessary evil; an unavoidable sacrifice, in a sense, a natural occurrence. The ADF is able to use Quilty’s unique brand of commercial activism to incite a deep sense of pity and respect for the horrors of war within the viewer, and simultaneously have Thales arms manufacturers sponsor the opening of the exhibition at the Australian War Memorial (Thomas, 2019). The very cycle that created the post-traumatic stress disorder in these veterans - the same one that Quilty is attempting to critique - continues, unchallenged, its necessity reinforced. Thomas notes: “The thing about art about war, art that might purport to be ‘anti-war’, is how easily it can slip into propaganda that perpetuates war”. Quilty’s brand of activism – because that’s what it is, really, a “brand” – allows him and his audience to convert real-world atrocities into ponderable concepts, pedagogical exercises for the gallery visitor. The War Artist scheme continues, the paintings are sold off, and Quilty regards the experience as “a healthy sign of a good democracy” (Quilty, 2013).
At the same time as Quilty is detaching himself from all responsibility for this two-dimensional, intellectual mode of activism, the mainstream media clambers to congratulate him for his valour. “What he feels about the world is communicated so adroitly and so directly … with potency and relevance.”, says Lisa Slade, curator of the Quilty retrospective,“No one is left out of the conversation” (Delaney, 2019). But Quilty’s paintings are not open-ended, and there is no opportunity given to respond. Instead, Quilty preaches, the media shares the gospel, and we hold onto what Thomas calls his “paternalistic assuredness” (Thomas, 2019). “Quilty solves all of life’s ills,” she continues, “Just like Daddy”. And it’s this strange, fatherly authority that sees Quilty linking back to the broader issue of white activism in the settler state; the kind of activism that champions the white reformist, pushing back against neo-liberalism but not so far as to destroy it. Ben Quilty becomes a character for the state to deploy when needed, a replicable, relatable everyman that makes his white audience feel safe.
“Six foot two, built like the builder’s labourer he once was, he is the artist from central casting – or Home and Away” (Turner, 2019). The Quilty character is immediately established as one that is both intimidating but approachable, tangible but intangible, and altogether recognisable. While thinking about how to word this, I type quickly into my Notes app: “Quilty is the artistic equivalent of posting a black square” and try to figure out why this makes so much sense to me. Quilty’s voice, his wealthy, white, male voice, floods the contemporary art space, flushing out other voices, assuring us they need not be listened to. Quilty knows what’s best. All we need to do is listen. And without even knowing it, we are protecting the myth of white sovereignty. By centring Quilty as the paternal white hero, allowing Australian contemporary art to continue to draw, As Yiu Nam Cheung phrases, “whiteness as the winning ballot for steering cultural conversation”, we continue to legitimise the authority of the white voice as natural leader (Yiu Nam Cheung, 2019). If News Corp and Nine Entertainment and the Defence Force seem to love Quilty, it isn’t because he’s an “impassioned activist” (Safe, 2019). It’s because the persona of Quilty, progressive and paternal, can be used as an answer to what Aileen Moreton-Robinson refers to as “an anxiety of dispossession, which rises to the surface when the nation as a white possession is perceived to be threatened” (Moreton-Robinson, 2015). White sovereignty, in all its fragility, relies upon the continuous validation of itself. Quilty leads us to heaven along the easiest path possible. This is the path of voting in better pollies, using a keep cup, painting a big painting of nothing. We follow Quilty, and by proxy, we follow the state while we think we are fighting against it. In Thomas’ words: “Quilty’s activism replaces group resistance with individual genius” (Thomas, 2019). There is no better example of this than Quilty’s cover story for the Good Weekend on February 23rd, 2019. Overlooking the article itself, which is flooded with praise for Quilty’s ability to remain ‘just like us’ despite his celebrity, the cover is not at all subtle in the ways it frames Quilty as the literal white saviour. The contrast stark, the colours drained, Quilty appears shirtless and rugged, a crown of barbed wire atop unkempt hair. We see the lines on his face, the grey in his beard, the furrow of his brow. Yiu Nam Cheung remarks how “Quilty stares away from us with what can only be described as an empty look of reckoning – an expression typical of a burdened genius” (Yiu Nam Cheung, 2019). Here we see Quilty rather indiscreetly labelled as the new Christ, condensed into an easily-identifiable icon. There is no need for protesting, or boycotting, or leafletting, or unionising, decolonising, marching, rioting, spitting, yelling, refusing, organising, redistributing, not when we have Ben. Quilty is Christ, Christ is saviour, Christ is white, and white is king. The narrative continues, again and again. In his article, Turner muses: “If Ben Quilty hadn’t existed, Australia may well havehad to invent him” (Turner, 2019). I wonder if he realises that inventing Ben Quilty is exactly what Australia has already done.
If I seem like I am reaching, grasping for any way to critique Quilty, maybe it is because I am. Maybe I am irrational, over-reacting, like a lover scorned. My opinion of Quilty is slippery; sour one moment and sympathetic the next. I can’t help but feel guilty, like I have somehow wronged him. Because how much are we to blame for the way Quilty is portrayed? Ultimately, he never explicitly labels himself an activist, it’s the Good Weekend, and GQ and the War Memorial and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. But at the same time, it’s a title that he never actively distances himself from either. It’s still Quilty that went to Afghanistan to make a difference. It’s still Quilty playing the character, speaking up when convenient, quiet when not. It’s still Ben that picked up the crown of barbed wire, placed it upon his brow, and let us take his photo.
Reference List
B. Apfelbaum, "Quilty : A Retrospective With Some New Works | Sydney Arts Guide", Sydneyartsguide.com.au, 2021, https://www.sydneyartsguide.com.au/quilty-a-retrospective-with-some-new-works/, (accessed 1 November 2021).
G. Coslovich, ‘Ben Quilty sale marks generational shift as old school falls flat’, Financial Review [website], https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/arts-and-culture/ben-quilty-sale-marks-generational-shift-as-old-school-falls-flat-20210406-p57gxh, (accessed 22 November 2021)
N. Crawford, ‘Calculating the costs of the Afghanistan War in lives, dollars, and years’, The Conversation [website], https://theconversation.com/calculating-the-costs-of-the-afghanistan-war-in-lives-dollars-and-years-164588, (accessed 22 November 2021)
B. Delaney, "Ben Quilty on empathy, angry art, backlash and that Jesus photo", The Guardian, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/mar/10/ben-quilty-on-empathy-angry-art-backlash-and-that-jesus-photo, (accessed 22 October 2021).
Messham-Muir, K. "Conflict, Complicity and Ben Quilty's After Afghanistan Portraits", in Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, vol. 18, 2018, 71-89.
Moreton-Robinson, A. The White Possesive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty, Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
In November 2019 my mother and I go to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. I am a freshly anointed fashion school dropout and art school beginner, she a weary supporter of my constant personality changes. Together we are typical gallery-goers; self-conscious, aiming for pensive. We go for Japan Supernatural, absorb its vibrance, babbling as we exit, and end up downstairs where the Quilty retrospective is being held.
The exhibition is huge, spanning through multiple rooms. Nothing is left out, from Toranas to war portraiture, disembodied life vests to giant Rorschachs. The room almost smells of a strange, phantom turpentine, paint threatening to splat onto the tiled floor at any given moment. I’m transfixed immediately, absorbed by Quilty’s perpetually adolescent angst, enraptured in the earthy, bruised tones of his portraiture. But it’s his newer works that I’m drawn to the most; great torturous, grotesque abstractions, “deformed ogres, bared teeth, writhing figures,” of oil (Apfelbaum, 2021). They seem giant, impossible, completely magnificent.
I think, this is it. This is an artist that I can use as the answer to the unbearable question: “Who’s your favourite artist?” I get as close as I can to the canvas, take about a thousand photos, scurrying home to document my new findings on my Instagram with the simple caption: “ben quilty”.
For a while, I revel in my new discovery. My paintings grow bigger, somehow more impulsive, decorated in wide eyes and creeping fingers. My mind becomes coated in thick impasto, the world bathing in that distinctive shade of Quilty lilac. I become a devoted follower, consumed by his “fierce moral energy”, swept up in grand gestures of allyship, convincing myself that maybe, just maybe, this time would be different (Delaney, 2019). That an artist with immense commercial success could be a beacon for Real Change, could look right in the eye of The Institution and spit in it, eating the rich without needing to eat himself.
But like any new infatuation, the spark begins to dwindle, and boredom sets in. With every new painting, every new grand gesture of activism that is inevitably spreads like wildfire throughout the media, a feeling of monotony grows. I start resenting Quilty, sick of seeing him everywhere, tired of the “empty expressiveness, the signs of expressivity but without anything actually being expressed” (Butler, 2018). Quilty becomes synonymous with rolled eyes, with boredom and predictability. And this is where it should end, where I ought to just accept my aversion to Quilty’s work and focus my attention on better artists. But there’s something deeper to it, sharper than boredom. It’s the dig in the ribs, the twisted discomfort of something else I can’t quite name. It consumes me until a new obsession forms, an obsession with unravelling, picking Quilty apart until I can understand just what it is about him that makes me wince.
While researching for this piece I tell my partner all about Quilty, about my strained, shifting view of him. I tell him about his insistent portrayal of a blokey, working class persona alongside his kinship with billionaire Kerry Stokes. I tell him about his life jacket series, the way the semiotics seem somehow displaced. I read him quotes with an air of cynicism, trying to convey the unconveyable, to transfer some of the discomfort I feel. He listens diligently, lets me ramble, until he finally says, “He really sounds like a Ben.”
And it makes sense, for some reason. We laugh about it, wonder about it, and the moment passes. But over the next few days, I find myself constantly returning to it.
Ben. The name makes me crinkle my nose immediately. How much power have I unknowingly attached to a name, an empty signifier of identity? And how much of my contempt at Quilty is merely a projection of my own encounters?
Ben Fordham calling me “attractive” at fifteen. Ben Roberts-Smith, the stench of disgrace. Ben 10, childhood sweetheart. Ben Affleck and his revolting brother. Benny and the Jets. Ben Foster as William Burroughs in Kill Your Darlings. Ben Shapiro. Benjamin, the donkey from Animal Farm. Mr. Clean and Mr. Ben are living in my loft. Walter Benjamin, completely impossible, assigned reading, pain in my ass. Telling everyone at fourteen that if I had a son, his name would be Benjamin.
Ben Quilty. Ben, my boyfriend when I was eighteen, taking a lighter to my naivety, pulling it in, breathing it out, setting fire to it, eating the leftovers.
I see the look in my father’s eyes as I am berated, right there in front of him. I hear myself reassuring my friends, saying “Sorry”, saying “He’s just drunk”. I feel hands around my throat, crushing, not holding. I see myself, small, shaking, sobbing on the phone, apologising, always constantly fucking apologising.
If I wince when I think of Quilty, maybe this is the source, the pinch on the arm, the nick of sharp teeth. Maybe it is because he is Ben first, Quilty second. Because underneath the persona of Quilty, the “impassioned activist, using his brush to draw our attention to our responsibility as citizens living in an increasingly fragmented world” he is just Ben, perfect poster boy of the artistic genius, malleable and palatable, perpetually balancing between good intentions and an increasingly wilful ignorance (Safe, 2019). The duality of the Quilty persona, it seems, as both lucrative darling of the art world and champion of the downtrodden, makes him the perfect face of contemporary art in the settler state; one that is progressive when it is appropriate, and profitable when it counts.
When convenient, Quilty’s paintings embody what Natalie Thomas calls “Activism Lite” (Thomas, 2019). I am immediately thinking of his 2016 work, ‘The Last Supper’, a monstrous work of writhing, dismembered limbs, bared teeth and a decapitated Donald Trump, all surrounding a long, white table that quite ferociously nods to the da Vinci work of the same name. The imagery is immediate, the meaning vague but clear enough as some form of societal critique. “I thought of them sitting around having the last supper as the world burns around them,” Quilty remarks in 2019, “It’s all about chaos. It’s a representation of these men – these straight white men.” The audience looks at the painting, pausing, reflecting, nodding pensively. The message is received: this painting is about men that are Bad. These “straight white men” - of which Quilty, who is all three, is notably absent – must be held to account, be loudly critiqued, but for what? If we assume it is, as Quilty says, for watching “the world [burn] around them”, are we implying the responsibility of the capitalist class – the Donald Trumps of the world – for the world’s destruction? And if this critique is coming from Quilty, who broke the record for his highest selling painting in November 2020 at $140,000 only to smash it in April 2021 at a staggering $220,000, how are we able to judge its authenticity? (Coslovich, 2021). When the structure that continues to set the world ablaze is the same one that allows him to make over 5 times the Australian average yearly wage from two paintings alone, how are we to trust a critique that sees him place himself firmly outside of it?
I do not mean to say that Quilty and Trump are one in the same, or that he has no right to critique the structures that we were raised within without our consent. But what concerns me is the painting’s lack of self-awareness, which extends beyond Quilty and towards the audience. Quilty’s activist persona assures the audience that just viewing ‘The Last Supper’ is a progressive act, one that encourages them to be moved, but not to the point of discomfort. Activism becomes reduced to fleeting moments of reflection, a sombre pause, an empty mind, confined to the gallery space in a singular event. It’s the vague gestures of liberal epiphany, intermingled with overwhelming commercial success, that allows Quilty to, quoting Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung, “[take] the benefit of fame without its burden of self-reflection” (Yiu Nam Cheung, 2021). And it’s this exact commercialisation of activist ideas that makes him so irresistible to the state.
Australia loves Ben. Australia loves Ben so much, in fact, that in October 2011 we sent him over to Afghanistan for 24 days as part of the Australian War Memorial’s longstanding Official War Artist Scheme. With 30 Australian deaths in the 10 years since 2001, most of whom being men in their 20s, it was a perfect time for Quilty, recently emerged and well-known for his works surrounding young Australian masculinity, to enter the conversation (Messham-Muir, 2018). The resulting works from Quilty’s time as War Artist saw returning veterans stripped - literally and figuratively – vulnerable, fleshy bodies and forlorn faces against dark, abyssal backgrounds. In them, Quilty aims to convey the trauma of these returning soldiers, the difficulty to slot back into regular life only to “drop, fall, crashing down to earth,” after developing post-traumatic stress disorder (Quilty, 2013). And this concept is valid, just as it was after Vietnam and the first and second World Wars. But the issue with the series, much like the issue with ‘The Last Supper’, is the ways in which it seemingly omits the essence of the problem, focusing instead on the surface to allow Quilty and the viewer to feel as though they are a part of a ground-breaking, important conversation. Kit Messham-Muir, citing Rex Butler, writes:
[The] paintings’ expressionistic aesthetic actually conveys nothing of the trauma experienced by their sitters, yet it allows audiences to go through the motions by playing out the expressionist trope of externalising inner psychological and emotional states. ‘Not only do we not come to know what the soldiers went through… [but] we ultimately do not want to know; and in fact what the paintings offer the viewer (and hence their public success) is a way of avoiding any real encounter with the outcome of war, the public performance of responsibility without any of its real-world consequences (Butler, 2018)
The ‘real-world consequences’, of course, stem from the real motives of Western involvement in Afghanistan: profit and expansion under the guise of border protection. Ultimately, Australian soldiers in Afghanistan only ever existed to be, as summarised by Natalie Thomas: “the geo-political puppets of the US interventionist policies” (Thomas, 2019). But the paintings do not speak to these consequences, nor the most frequently ignored victims of the war, the 46,000 Afghan civilians killed and the over 2.2 million displaced as of September 2021 (Crawford, 2021). They don’t speak to these victims because they’re not supposed to. Quilty says it himself; “In the contract, the job is to tell the story of the Australian people on the frontline” (Quilty, 2013). The US invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent Australian involvement becomes a necessary evil; an unavoidable sacrifice, in a sense, a natural occurrence. The ADF is able to use Quilty’s unique brand of commercial activism to incite a deep sense of pity and respect for the horrors of war within the viewer, and simultaneously have Thales arms manufacturers sponsor the opening of the exhibition at the Australian War Memorial (Thomas, 2019). The very cycle that created the post-traumatic stress disorder in these veterans - the same one that Quilty is attempting to critique - continues, unchallenged, its necessity reinforced. Thomas notes: “The thing about art about war, art that might purport to be ‘anti-war’, is how easily it can slip into propaganda that perpetuates war”. Quilty’s brand of activism – because that’s what it is, really, a “brand” – allows him and his audience to convert real-world atrocities into ponderable concepts, pedagogical exercises for the gallery visitor. The War Artist scheme continues, the paintings are sold off, and Quilty regards the experience as “a healthy sign of a good democracy” (Quilty, 2013).
At the same time as Quilty is detaching himself from all responsibility for this two-dimensional, intellectual mode of activism, the mainstream media clambers to congratulate him for his valour. “What he feels about the world is communicated so adroitly and so directly … with potency and relevance.”, says Lisa Slade, curator of the Quilty retrospective,“No one is left out of the conversation” (Delaney, 2019). But Quilty’s paintings are not open-ended, and there is no opportunity given to respond. Instead, Quilty preaches, the media shares the gospel, and we hold onto what Thomas calls his “paternalistic assuredness” (Thomas, 2019). “Quilty solves all of life’s ills,” she continues, “Just like Daddy”. And it’s this strange, fatherly authority that sees Quilty linking back to the broader issue of white activism in the settler state; the kind of activism that champions the white reformist, pushing back against neo-liberalism but not so far as to destroy it. Ben Quilty becomes a character for the state to deploy when needed, a replicable, relatable everyman that makes his white audience feel safe.
“Six foot two, built like the builder’s labourer he once was, he is the artist from central casting – or Home and Away” (Turner, 2019). The Quilty character is immediately established as one that is both intimidating but approachable, tangible but intangible, and altogether recognisable. While thinking about how to word this, I type quickly into my Notes app: “Quilty is the artistic equivalent of posting a black square” and try to figure out why this makes so much sense to me. Quilty’s voice, his wealthy, white, male voice, floods the contemporary art space, flushing out other voices, assuring us they need not be listened to. Quilty knows what’s best. All we need to do is listen. And without even knowing it, we are protecting the myth of white sovereignty. By centring Quilty as the paternal white hero, allowing Australian contemporary art to continue to draw, As Yiu Nam Cheung phrases, “whiteness as the winning ballot for steering cultural conversation”, we continue to legitimise the authority of the white voice as natural leader (Yiu Nam Cheung, 2019). If News Corp and Nine Entertainment and the Defence Force seem to love Quilty, it isn’t because he’s an “impassioned activist” (Safe, 2019). It’s because the persona of Quilty, progressive and paternal, can be used as an answer to what Aileen Moreton-Robinson refers to as “an anxiety of dispossession, which rises to the surface when the nation as a white possession is perceived to be threatened” (Moreton-Robinson, 2015). White sovereignty, in all its fragility, relies upon the continuous validation of itself. Quilty leads us to heaven along the easiest path possible. This is the path of voting in better pollies, using a keep cup, painting a big painting of nothing. We follow Quilty, and by proxy, we follow the state while we think we are fighting against it. In Thomas’ words: “Quilty’s activism replaces group resistance with individual genius” (Thomas, 2019). There is no better example of this than Quilty’s cover story for the Good Weekend on February 23rd, 2019. Overlooking the article itself, which is flooded with praise for Quilty’s ability to remain ‘just like us’ despite his celebrity, the cover is not at all subtle in the ways it frames Quilty as the literal white saviour. The contrast stark, the colours drained, Quilty appears shirtless and rugged, a crown of barbed wire atop unkempt hair. We see the lines on his face, the grey in his beard, the furrow of his brow. Yiu Nam Cheung remarks how “Quilty stares away from us with what can only be described as an empty look of reckoning – an expression typical of a burdened genius” (Yiu Nam Cheung, 2019). Here we see Quilty rather indiscreetly labelled as the new Christ, condensed into an easily-identifiable icon. There is no need for protesting, or boycotting, or leafletting, or unionising, decolonising, marching, rioting, spitting, yelling, refusing, organising, redistributing, not when we have Ben. Quilty is Christ, Christ is saviour, Christ is white, and white is king. The narrative continues, again and again. In his article, Turner muses: “If Ben Quilty hadn’t existed, Australia may well havehad to invent him” (Turner, 2019). I wonder if he realises that inventing Ben Quilty is exactly what Australia has already done.
If I seem like I am reaching, grasping for any way to critique Quilty, maybe it is because I am. Maybe I am irrational, over-reacting, like a lover scorned. My opinion of Quilty is slippery; sour one moment and sympathetic the next. I can’t help but feel guilty, like I have somehow wronged him. Because how much are we to blame for the way Quilty is portrayed? Ultimately, he never explicitly labels himself an activist, it’s the Good Weekend, and GQ and the War Memorial and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. But at the same time, it’s a title that he never actively distances himself from either. It’s still Quilty that went to Afghanistan to make a difference. It’s still Quilty playing the character, speaking up when convenient, quiet when not. It’s still Ben that picked up the crown of barbed wire, placed it upon his brow, and let us take his photo.
Reference List
B. Apfelbaum, "Quilty : A Retrospective With Some New Works | Sydney Arts Guide", Sydneyartsguide.com.au, 2021, https://www.sydneyartsguide.com.au/quilty-a-retrospective-with-some-new-works/, (accessed 1 November 2021).
G. Coslovich, ‘Ben Quilty sale marks generational shift as old school falls flat’, Financial Review [website], https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/arts-and-culture/ben-quilty-sale-marks-generational-shift-as-old-school-falls-flat-20210406-p57gxh, (accessed 22 November 2021)
N. Crawford, ‘Calculating the costs of the Afghanistan War in lives, dollars, and years’, The Conversation [website], https://theconversation.com/calculating-the-costs-of-the-afghanistan-war-in-lives-dollars-and-years-164588, (accessed 22 November 2021)
B. Delaney, "Ben Quilty on empathy, angry art, backlash and that Jesus photo", The Guardian, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/mar/10/ben-quilty-on-empathy-angry-art-backlash-and-that-jesus-photo, (accessed 22 October 2021).
Messham-Muir, K. "Conflict, Complicity and Ben Quilty's After Afghanistan Portraits", in Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, vol. 18, 2018, 71-89.
Moreton-Robinson, A. The White Possesive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty, Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
