It is a travesty that the late Australian painter John Olsen has not been awarded our highest honour, the Companion of the Order of Australia. This should happen posthumously, and soon, says ROSS FITZGERALD.

My dear friend, the great Australian painter John Olsen was, at 77, the oldest artist to win the Archibald Prize.

In 2019, over a long lunch at Catalina restaurant in Rose Bay, facing the Sydney Harbour, I was with John and Barry Humphries when they yarned about what might happen to John’s 2005 Archibald Prize winning Self Portrait Janus-faced.

As Barry and I were then 50 years sober, it will come as no surprise that it was John who did all the drinking!

That afternoon, in his favourite eatery, John drank moderately. The Moderation, he was delighted to tell us, is the name of a pub in Reading, at which he once drank when he was in England.

John and Barry thought that after he died, it might be a good idea that his most famous painting should somehow be made available to the nation.

It is pleasing to report that, a little over a year after John’s death at age 95, his daughter Louise, who is a renowned designer and painter, and his son Tim Olsen, who runs a leading Sydney art gallery, have gifted Self portrait Janus-faced to the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Tim and Lou’s decision was exquisitely timed.

Serendipitously, their offer occurred just after the great Archibald exhibition finished touring major art galleries throughout Australia. It had featured the cream of past Archibald winning pictures, including John’s remarkable self portrait.

John had a long history with the Archibald prize, having for many years served as a judge and a trustee.

Although he had previously won the Wynne prize for landscape twice and the Sulman prize once, the Archibald was his greatest artistic (but not personal) highlight. A deep understanding of the latter can be found in Tim Olsen’s revealing memoir, Son of the Brush.

John’s artist statement about his self-portrait is found in a poem, which he wrote shortly after he won the Archibald in 2005.
Janus-faced:

Sitting this afternoon in the studio,
Summer’s gone.
Now’s the time of freckled leaves & longer shadows.
Men & women after sixty in slippered feet,
Pause on the stairs, Janus faced.

Self delights in well worn brush
On an ancient palette.
Time trickles & avoids defeat. Janus faced.

John explained that Janus, the Roman god of doorways, passages and bridges, is usually depicted with two heads facing in opposite directions. At Catalina, by then empty of other patrons, Barry Humphries quipped: “Roscoe, this was certainly true of the three of us – in our heyday”.

As John wrote wryly: “I think that this poem casts light in dark places. It informs the viewer. Janus had the ability to look backwards and forwards and when you get to my age you have a hell of a lot to think about!”

With what I think has more than an element of truth, after not winning the prize in 1989, when his self portrait Donde Voy was a clear favourite, John referred to the Archibald as “a chook raffle”.

But when John did win the prize, he was chuffed.

In one sense, it’s ironic that John ultimately won the Archibald. This is because, as a rebellious student at the National Art School in Sydney, in 1957 he led a group of budding artists protesting against the judges who were responsible for the conservative Sir William Dargie being awarded the Archibald for the eighth time in a row!

Thirty students stormed the Art Gallery of New South Wales holding placards and chanting “Don’t hang Dargie. Hang the judges”.

Although some protesters may not have been aware, this was an early fight for modernism – of which John soon became the leading exponent. It is telling that Dargie won his last Archibald Prize for a traditional portrait of leading Australian industrialist and founder of BHP, Essington Lewis, who was hardly a rebel like John.

As Tim Olsen recently told me, for years his father enthusiastically sang “How much is that Dargie in the window?” This aped an extremely popular song of the 1950s, How much is that Doggie in the Window?

It is so pleasing that Self portrait Janus-faced will be hung, for public view, in the permanent 20th century collection at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

When so many lesser lights have been gonged, it is an utter travesty that John Olsen has not been awarded our highest honour, the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).

Surely this should happen posthumously, and soon.

Some critics say that such an honour cannot be awarded an AC posthumously.

But this does not apply if someone has been nominated before they died, which was the case with John Olsen

Ross Fitzgerald AM is Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University. His latest books are Fifty Years Sober: An Alcoholic’s Journey and a boxed set of four Australian political satires, The Ascent of Everest, co-authored with Ian McFadyen of ‘Comedy Company’ fame.