First-Time Entrant Wins Archibald Prize

The 2006 winner of Australia's premier portrait painting competition, the Archibald Prize, is a painting called The Paul Juraszek monolith (after Marcus Gheeraerts), by Marcus Wills, who'd entered the competition for the first time.

Wills's painting was inspired by an etching entitled Allegory of Iconoclasm created by a 16th-century Flemish artist, Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder. Wills's painting contains 29 portraits of the Australian sculptor Paul Juraszek (and some of Juraszek's sculptures). Wills says he doesn't see the painting as a religious comment, but rather as "a kind of an allegory about the artist."

Writing before it was declared the winner, The Art Life blog said: "The painting is just so outrageously unfashionable, unique, and brave it should win its own award." One thing I think is certain: it'll spawn many a copy and variation of its own.

Some critics are raising the question whether Wills' painting borrowed too much from the original, or whether he has made a new masterpiece. The work took Wills a good year to finish -- would anyone who was merely copying something do that? He admits that towards the end of the process he was feeling pretty burnt out and finding it hard to finish: "I wasn't sure how it was going to look." Read more...

• Will winning the award provide Wills with long-term success and happiness as an artist? Find out what previous winners have experienced...