Gang-gang: Old Masters and new philistines slug it out over windmills

We bring you (roll up! roll up!) Rembrandt versus Tony Abbott and Claude Monet versus Joe Hockey. The two artists (and other Old Masters, English romantics and Impressionists galore) found windmills irresistibly lovely and painted windmill-enhanced vistas. But the two Australians have famously declared that they find windmills (wind turbines) ugly. Barracking readers, in these Liberals versus Painters slugfests (he wrote, his suppressed sports reporter coming out in use of the s-word) where will you stand?

Back to these (alas one-sided) bouts in a moment.

Meanwhile the wind farms and wind turbines debate whirrs newsworthily on. Wednesday's announcement by the ACT government of its second wind auction adds an extra breeze to the discussion. Even before this there's been the coalition government (starring the openly windmill-despising PM and his Treasurer) wrestling with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation over the government's ban on wind-farm funding. The government's anti-windmill Senate committee has been taking anti-windmill submissions from everyone, from some NIMBY monks on the Monaro to the respected Flat-Earth institute, the latter arguing that the windmills trap stardust and sprinkle it everywhere, giving us freckles.

Coincidentally this mild-mannered column has with words and artworks been singing the praises of the windmills' good looks. Several supportive readers have made the point that artists seem always to have liked windmills.

But on Tuesday a chap's letter to the editor raged that windmills "destroy beautiful landscapes". He said that he had travelled the world without ever seeing unobtrusive coal mines or power stations (blots on the landscape that wind farms seek to replace) but that he had seen "thousands of wind turbines destroying hundreds of beautiful views".

In response reader Anna Howe seethed back (to us) that "I love the modern day windmills around Lake George and elsewhere. As for the CT letter writer who has never seen a coal mine and thinks wind farms ruin beautiful views, has he never seen a landscape by an old Dutch master in which windmills add to the view?"

"It seems that neither he nor our dual-citizenship PM can remember the coal-caused pea soup fogs that obscured every view of London and caused thousands of deaths – a quick check on Google turned up a report on the fog of 1952 that killed 12,000. Trust that you [this English-born columnist] can remember this from your youth even if Abbott is too young to do that."

Yes, as several readers are pointing out, some of the world's great painters went out of their way to paint traditional windmills, finding character and loveliness in them. Dutch and Flemish old masters (including Rembrandt) couldn't leave them alone. England's landscape and seascape giants John Constable and J.M.W. Turner painted windmills again and again and then so did the Impressionists, including Van Gogh and Monet.

We are not sure that this is a perfect analogy, for the old, rustic windmills and the new streamlined ones are not exactly alike. But the analogy makes the valid point that a man-made structure that sticks out in a landscape can beautify a place and/or add interest to it. Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey may have their areas of expertise (although none leap to mind at the time of writing) but in matters of aesthetics and landscape loveliness we find them trounced by Rembrandt and Monet. And, although so as to be charitable we will keep this opinion to ourselves, Abbott and Hockey are probably incapable of finding beauty in anything other than perhaps, in Hockey's case, a beautifully-proportioned cigar.

Perhaps, though, those Liberals can see beauty in dogs, and are enjoying today's column's amusing dog picture capturing the familiar scenario of a tireless dog outlasting its exhausted master.*

Our excuse for this picture is to herald Saturday's pioneering extravaganza of a dogs' day out, A Pooch Affair. We knew it was bound to have some redeeming features (redeeming its use of the awful Americanism "pooch" in its name); and sure enough it has.

The utterly indoor event (a rare thing in the world of dog jamborees) for dogs and owners, will be all within two of the cavernous pavilions of Exhibition Park (EPIC). It will sport attractions such as A Doggie Diner, Doggie Mall and Doggie High Tea.

But as well as these novelties and a galaxy of activities for the tireless beasts and their owners the event will give those showing kindness to waif dogs a chance to appeal to a mass audience. So for example ACT Rescue and Foster (using the witty acronym ARF), famous as a retriever (pun intended) of abandoned dogs from the brink of euthanasia, advises us that it will have some of its endearing dogs there. What's more there will be information about every dog it is currently trying to find a foster home for.

Other dog-loving, dog-sensitive organisations will be there too and please, please support them for without a dog being saved from euthanasia and being given a loving home in the first place the possibility of it ever attending a treat like a Doggie High Tea at something like a pooch (shudder) jamboree is purely academic.

A Pooch Affair is this Saturday 18 July at Exhibition Park from 10am to 4pm.

*David Welch's painting is from an exquisite new book Dogs In Australian Art by Steve Miller. It is published by Wakefield Press.