Almanac Book Review – Brett Whiteley: Art, Life and the Other Thing

Brett Whiteley: Art, Life and the Other Thing

Ashleigh Wilson

Text Publishing

$49.99

 

Brett Whiteley passed away in 1992 in a lonely hotel room in Thirroul on the New South Wales south coast. It was a sad and quiet end to a life that was anything but. Whiteley, Australia’s most accessible and popular artist was a two-time Archibald prize winner and an artist who captured Sydney and its surrounds better than anyone before or since.

 

Ashleigh Wilson, arts editor for The Australian newspaper has written a fine, detailed and enthralling book about Whiteley, his art, his addictions and his genius. With assistance given in interviews with Whiteley’s former wife and muse Wendy Whiteley, Brett Whiteley: Art, Life and the Other Thing gives a real insight into the mind of a flawed but shining star.

 

Living in Lavender Bay on Sydney Harbour gave Whiteley ample inspiration to paint the Harbour and Opera House. His use of blue in his paintings was phenomenal. His bird paintings beautiful; Whiteley saw himself as a bird and in the mid-70s it was his career that took flight. The Archibald victories came in quick succession in 1976 and 1978. In 1981 Whiteley moved into a studio in Circular Quay, Wendy by his side, and with their daughter Arkie as both inspiration for some of Brett’s work and often the adult both Wendy and Brett needed as their addictions to heroin set in.

 

In the 1980s Whiteley’s output was strong, despite criticism from sections of the Art glitterati in Sydney that Whiteley’s work was neither as strong nor straight-forward enough for their liking. Wilson talks to, and about his friends like Billy Connolly, Mark Knopfler and Bono, his peers and colleagues like Francis Bacon and Patrick White. Whiteley became a fixture at every Dire Straits concert the band played in Australia and across the world, and Knopfler was one of the few truly great, friends Whiteley had. They spent much time together. Bob Dylan too; it was at Whiteley’s Surrey Hills studio in 1986 that Dylan held his press conference for his and Tom Petty’s up-coming Australian tour. That led to art lessons for Dylan and a shared view of the world.

 

It would be wrong, in fact it would be unfair to suggest that Whiteley was an addict first, then an artist. And it would be a travesty for Whiteley’s legacy to be undersold because of his high-profile drug addiction. Whiteley was a brilliant artist, a painter and thinker on a different level to most of us. He was an Aussie, but he conquered the art worlds of Britain, America and Asia. He took plenty out of life, but he gave so much more.

 

This is a thrilling book that does immense justice to a painter, poet, thinker and man who saw life as a challenge and something to be manipulated to be made better, different. Wilson writes with enormous skill and passion, and it’s clear he has more than a passing liking for his subject matter. A terrific, long-overdue book on a truly great artist.

 

CHRIS MICHAELS

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