Gallery of the stars

Made in Hollywood is another coup for the art gallery, but it comes at a cost to contemporary work

The timing of this excellent new show, Made in Hollywood: Photographs from the John Kobal Foundation, at the Bendigo Art Gallery could have been better.
Sandwiched in between the Wedding Dress and Grace Kelly blockbusters, an exhibition of historic photographs from Hollywood tips the balance of the gallery’s program too much towards both history and celebrity glamour.
It’s been a while since visitors to BAG have been able to contemplate new Australian art: The Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize closed in early April, and there was only time for a brief airing from the permanent collection before American Dreams, the exhibition of photography from the George Eastman archives, took up the temporary display space.
Understandably, BAG director Karen Quinlan must have found it impossible to turn down the opportunity to have the first showing of this Hollywood photography exhibition here.
Again, it’s something of a coup for the over-achieving regional gallery, but it’s a coup which comes at a small cost.
With the building works due to begin almost as soon as the Grace Kelly show closes in mid-June next year, it will mean there may have been no showcase for contemporary work for 18 months by the time the gallery is up to full speed again.
In other words, momentum built from the establishment and growth of shows such as the Arthur Guy Painting Prize for the gallery’s credentials in contemporary art will surely take a hit, exacerbated by the fact that this window of opportunity for such work has been taken up by a historic photography show.
These photographs are, nevertheless, a brilliant opportunity to both enjoy the glamorous history of the most powerful cultural industry of the 20th century, and to understand what kind of values and ideologies were at play during the creative early years of Hollywood’s boom.
John Kobal was, like so many of those central to Hollywood history, an immigrant.
Born in Austria in 1940, he went with his family to Canada 10 years later, then, at 18, to New York with the hope of becoming an actor.
He was even in those early days a collector of memorabilia. Gradually becoming one of the best-credentialled historian of movies ever, he also understood that the stuff the studios were discarding as ephemera – posters, stills, publicity shots of stars – was, in fact, valuable history.
A year before he died in London in 1991, Kobal set up a Foundation to look after his collection, and to raise money for the appreciation of portrait photography.
The show now on at BAG was originally called Glamour of the Gods: Hollywood Portraits, and opened at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California in 2008. It was at the National Portrait Gallery in London in October this year, before touring for the first time to Australia.
For people interested in photography, these prints are, each one, studies in light and form.
For culture-watchers, they are almost too rich to contemplate. Johnny Weismuller in homo-erotic glory as Tarzan, Katharine Hepburn refusing the photographer’s attempt to make her a vamp, and Alfred Hitchcock just so darned knowing about film’s myth-making power: wonderful, challenging stuff.
As always, the show is carefully displayed, with clear wall-texts to tell us a little about when the photograph was taken and why.
It’s a pity that BAG curator Tansy Curtin wasn’t given the opportunity to write a little about the cultural meanings behind the photographs to invite the viewer to muse a little on what kinds of myths Hollywood created. It would be entertaining and interesting to hear what she has to say about the difference between a Marlon Brando pose and, say, a Rita Hayworth.
What did these stars represent?
Made in Hollywood: Photographs from the John Kobal Foundation is at Bendigo Art Gallery until February 12.