Homesickness by Murray Bail

Renaissance paintings replaced the originals. From a distance they looked almost the same. The enlarged X-ray prints were fitted into the ornate frames. This was the work of the forensic experts in the gallery’s basement. Explanatory paragraphs and cotton arrows pointed out the struggling artists’ ‘real’ intentions, ghost-like here, and their appalling early errors in composition and perspective. Nothing is as it appears. Photography’s efficiency had stripped away illusion. These Renaissance masters, it was revealed, were racked by the same doubts and timidity experienced by the average Sunday afternoon amateur.
    The gallery was crowded. Parties of photographers strolled around as if they owned the place. In addition to their expensive dangling equipment—the gallery’s NO CAMERAS rule had been temporarily waived—they wore expressions of triumph and understanding. Groups stood talking together, their backs to the ‘paintings’, introducing themselves and inspecting each other’s gear. Photography had come a long way.
    As Gerald fought his way out, other buses pulled into the curb, including one constant double-decker painted yellow like a film box, disgorging more photographers, enthusiasts having flown in from America and Japan, each one instinctively glancing up at the sky. Many a German’s snap included the ears of Gerald’s enraged head.
    The National Portrait Gallery, around the corner, attracted similar crowds. Here they’d put on an important historical show. The rooms had been made specially dark and oil portraits of pioneer photographers hung in place of the usual. Oil paintings of photographers? To some this was an ironical somersault. It was a cause for serious contemplation. Oil paintings of… Others though, the photographers, saw it as the supreme belated compliment. As the excellent catalogue in a footnote challenged: when before had a photographer been enclosed in gold leaf and an artificial convolvulus border? And here were more than forty. They had been tracked down and unearthed from the most unlikely of places. Many had scarcely seen the light of day before.
    There were fine realistic renderings of Daguerre, Talbot, Lartigue, Rejlander and Julia Cameron, et cetera; a mysterious oval portrait of Mangin; and what appeared to be a child’s drawing on graph paper of Lewis Carroll. From America came a rare blurred portrait of Marey descending stairs and in charcoal a Cherokee’s sketch of Brady. There was a small group of twentieth-century works where a painter has employed a photograph (Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol), closing with a stunning tongue-in-cheek canvas after the French aristocrat Picabia, Portrait of Camera , (c. 1917).
    But was photography ‘art’?
    A brave attempt to sort this one out was made at the big Hayward Gallery, across the river. Posters and banners announced the continuous conceptual ‘event’: a series of boxing matches between artists and photographers. Big names had flown in from Europe and across the Atlantic. So far, the artists had won every round, though each fight was recorded on videotape—a point the photography faction claimed as an overall victory. A number of photographers were accused of cheating. A disciple of crazy Eadweard Muybridge insisted on wrestling with his opponents, naked. Shoot-outs between trigger-happy Polaroid teams took place at dusk.
    Gerald didn’t bother crossing the river. He’d returned to the hotel, bewildered.
    â€˜What about the Tate Gallery?’ Hofmann asked, being sympathetic. The Tate had a fine collection of stripe paintings. He’d been planning to go.
    â€˜Don’t bother. I was told that instead of the paintings —can you imagine—they’ve tracked down the actual subject or place. And these were carefully photographed—understand?—so a person could see what the scene really was like. So at the Tate there’s