Thursday, June 20, 2013

Death and Ashes: Sport vs.Art


Once again I am disappointed to be Australian. On today’s ABC News 24, normally an intelligent and partial news source, Ricky Ponting’s retirement from Australian cricket was given ten times more coverage then the death of Jeffery Smart.

3 sentences were allocated to Smarts passing - he painted urban landscapes (no image was shown), he studied in Australia and Europe and he was an ex-pat living in Italy. Nothing was said about his life long contribution to Australian art.

The section of Ponting’s achievements covered, his vast contributions to cricket, and the significant effects his retirement will have on the Australian team and ‘our’ performance at the Ashes, and was given 3 ½ minutes.

I don’t want to take away this moment from Ricky, but what miffs me is why that kind of coverage couldn’t be equally given to an iconic Modern Australian artist. If sport, which let’s be honest is not news, can occupy 10 mins of news time on most channels, why can’t wider cultural activities and achievements also be broadcast. People will argue that its not popular enough, but isn’t that partly because it there is so little coverage.

So for those of you interested in finding out a bit about this great of Australian Modernism here is a youtube link.

 
Jeffrey Smart
 Jeffery Smart Cahill Expressway. 1962

1 comment:

  1. I know. Makes me feel hopeless. You can't expect more of the general public with the Australian media in the shape it's in.

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