Brett Whiteley 1939-1992

By Katie Bono

Brett Whiteley, The balcony 2, 1975, oil on canvas, 203.5 x 364.5 cm

Brett Whiteley was an Australian celebrity artist who was constantly heralded as a genius. He cultivated a persona through grand canvases and general recklessness with friends such as Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Dire Straits. Whiteley was born on April 7, 1939 and grew up in a suburb of Sydney, Australia. Whiteley’s self-described artistic epiphany occurred when he came across a book on van Gogh on a Sunday School outing. He described an immediate connectedness of soul - by subscribing to this origin myth, Whiteley aligns himself with the concept of male genius perpetuated by Vasari in the Lives of the Artists. In his early career in the 1960s, Whiteley aligned himself with the Australian radical left. He believed strongly in Australia becoming part of Asia and ridding itself of its English roots. As a result, a lot of his work during this time was characterized by Orientalist tendencies. He painted many female nudes within landscape paintings linking the female body to nature in a way that was very similar to how Matisse painted. Consequently, these sexual landscape paintings have been subjected to many Freudian readings.  

In 1960, Whiteley left Australia to travel to England, Italy, and France. He treated it as a cultural pilgrimage to his sources of inspiration - in his work Whiteley really valorized European high culture despite actively supporting Australia distancing itself from Europe. During his time in London Whiteley became the youngest living artist to sell a painting at the Tate. Early in his career, Whiteley enjoyed massive critical acclaim, winning the Archibald, Wynne, and Sulman prizes. His works have an element of opportunism - this combined with his rockstar persona led to Whiteley’s works selling extremely well throughout his career. During his time in France, Whiteley began a series devoted to women in bathtubs. His work Woman in a Bath II (1963) represents many themes from the series. It is an attempt to delve into the sensuality of everyday activity and is an exploration of figurative representations. Here, Whiteley focuses on metaphysical reality and tends much further towards realism. The woman depicted is likely his wife Wendy Whiteley. Wendy was Brett’s high school sweetheart, and their relationship was both a source of artistic inspiration and tumult. They were married for thirty years before divorcing in 1989.  

After his European tour, Whiteley went to the United States. His disgust with American consumerism and warmongering is represented quite clearly in his painting An American Dream (1965). Whiteley then moved to Fiji for a bit before returning to Australia and settling in Sydney in 1969. In the latter half of his career, Whiteley’s political interests decreased, and his works became increasingly introspective. In his work The balcony 2 (1975) Whiteley’s preoccupation with Australian beauty is evident. It is one of many large-scale paintings depicting expansive views. In the 1980s there was debate among critics about whether Whiteley’s work had become kitschy and repetitive. His overall oeuvre has many mixed critical reviews which is typical for celebrity artists, especially ones with such a distinctive persona. Brett Whiteley died from a heroin overdose in 1992 at the age of 53 but has since been commemorated in a number of ways - principally in an opera about his life that came out in 2019.  

Bibliography

Stratton, John. “Brett Whiteley: The Last Australian Romantic.” Art Gallery of Western Australia, 1996 https://espace.curtin.edu.au/bitstream/handle/20.500.11937/21000/145809_Pages%20from%20Stratton%20-%20Whiteley-3.pdf?sequence=2.  

“The balcony 2.” Art Gallery NSW. https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/116.1981/.  

“Woman in a Bath II.” The Tate Gallery. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/whiteley-woman-in-a-bath-ii-t00670.  

Sebag-Montefiore, Clarissa. “Brett Whiteley Partied With Bob Dylan. Now His Life Is an Opera.” The New York Times. July 26, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/arts/whiteley-opera-australia.html?searchResultPosition=1.