Wieneke Archive Book 4d : Artists - Australian & Other Presscuttings

WHEN Brett and Wendy Whiteley returned to Sydney in November 1969 they rented a three -storey- ed Victorian brick and wood house at No 1 Walker Street, Lavender Bay. The old house perched on an urban hill looking down into an intimate inlet of Sydney Harbor -a setting that would inspire many of his most lyrical paintings. A large wooden yellow and whIte frangipani was nailed to the wall near- est the front door, which was entered by climbing up a perilously rickety set of steps. (Later, when they bought the house. Whiteley added a 13m circular' brick Norman tower with a thatched roof.) The exterior's squalid appear- ance was erased on the inside by the extraordinary view the windows of the studioisitting room commanded. The Harbor Bridge with its clearly enun- ciated steel girders dominated the boats - stately schooners for the local charter trade, small pleasure yachts and estuary trawlers - which dotted the bay beneath. To the left, a fairytale image of an amusement park with pink and green nanarets and towers provided a visual antasy that contradicted the sombre elegance of the multi-storeyed build- ings and the barque -like sails of the Sydney Opera House just beneath the curve of the bridge.. Framing the house on both sides were two parks: one filled with lines of huge palms and brightly manicured grass, the other a small park tangled with Moreton Bay fig trees and underbrush. F. broken and cracked set of steps leading to the Walker Street wharf gave the final touch to thePolynesian- Monmartrc atmosphere that the whole setting evoked. When Whiteley returned he had intended to exhibit his paintings from Fiji . . . of gentleness, of heaven and: propaganda for peace - on vies' within tltree months. It actually took eight months until the show was ready., When the exhibition was mounted, it was the Whiteley everyone had been waiting for. The exhibition took place in June 1970 in the spacious Bonython Galler- ies. It was =catalogued and untitled. Whiteley's original intention to just show the Fijian pictures had expanded to include the whole range of his experience over the past three years, including The American Dream, his Fijian paintings and new works which were reactions to his own homeland. after several years away. Since his exhibition two years before. Whiteley had become something of a pop star figure to the Australian art public. Various friends and artists who had returned to Australia after seeing Whiteley in New York had spread stories ranging from the humorous to the grotesque about his life and work in America. His involvement with Vietnam, drugs, Dylan, his outrages and genius had become almost legendary by the time he arrived on home soil. Laure Thomas wrote: "Not for him the cool and unimpassioned modules of the technological age, the cerebral conceptions, the abdication from anger or love. "He seems to have been driven like a mighty spiritual engine to smash the sickness and vulgarity of the New York scene he obviously hated and to rebuild, to gather the forces of his own place on his own self about him and make them sing. (Passion And Power In Whiteley Exhibition, The Aus- tralian, 16 June 1970.1 This attitude was heightened by the feeling that this was indeed an artist who had experienced a nightmare in hell and who had come back to redeem art from preciousness, elitism and self - enforced Lsolationism. Whiteley, even before the exhibition opened, was -to the culturati and young - a guru, a champion of causes, an artistic spirit larger and more capable than any that had ever emerged on the Australian scene. He was the embodiment of the artist as hero and inspired many reviewers to criticism that bordered on rhetoric. James Gleeson begins an article with a series of synonyms: "BRILLIANT - sparkling with lustre; glittering: shin- ing; very bright; distinguished by qualities which excite admiration.' Gleeson went on in more enthusiastic superlatives. "He shines as no other Australian artist has ever shone." (A Closer Look At Whiteley. Sun - Herald, 21 June 1970.) Without a catalogue it Ls difficult to describe the exact contents of tile show. The task Is even more. complicated because most of the criti- cal reviews are impressions rather than discussions of individual pieces. Undoubtedly, The American Dream. which had taken such a toll of White- ley's energies and psyche, was the centrepiece, but other works were equally impressive and almost as large. There was the 3m portrait of Baudelaire which will be discussed later detail; a Japanese room and images of Australia - The Olgas,' kookaburras, Aboriginal totems, pic- tures of the Opera House and Sydney falling into the sea. There were gloriously decorative honeyeaters and frangipanis from the paradise which had rejected hint It was overwhelming to almost all who viewed it. There was also sound, as Laurie Thomas noted: "A sound like a million cicadas pierces the eardrums when you go into Brett Whiteley's exhibition at Bonython Gallery. The cicadas become screaming sirens, police sirens and female sirens, and the medley and the cacophony of cities, sex, despair, joy, evil and beauty. This is no cool withdrawal f Torn life." James Gleeson took another tack: "One becomes lost in the world of BrettWhiteley. For Whiteley's exhibi- tion isn't so much a show of indl%idual paintings as an exhibition of Whiteley. We are invited to share his fears and ecstasies, his ideas and dreams, his passionate love of life and his equally passionate hatred of it," Whiteley had written messages and %turninl s. presentiments and predictions on almost every picture. Reading the reviews of the time it have appeared that a vengeful angel of doom has descended into the midst of the Sydney. art world. He denounced, Australia's vtilgarism and cartoonisin as a pathetic repetition of what had happened to America. He berated the mentality of his countrymen for their all-too -blind attitude to Asia. lie turned his eye on ecology and the environment and demanded a revision. At the same time lie was caressing the public with his sheer magic as an artist. "No one," wrote Daniel Thomas, "can carry curvilinear forms, gentle or violent, across a pictureso well as he." Elwyn Lynn saw two possibilities: "It Marian Street Theatre (02) 498 3166 HURRY! FINAL WEEK ". . . a grand spool" Sun Tele. "Lighthearted play a winner" Sun ELAINE LEE, JOAN SRUCE PIIIWP MINTON THE MURDER ROOM with Torn McCarthy, Brandon Burke& Louise Le Nay Lae. to Sat. 1.15. Diane. 6.30 Sunday 4 30 lined . . Air Cooled . . , Free Patinae 498 3166 2 MARIAN ST. KILLERA THE pictures above and 'he extract below are taken from a remarkable new art _book, BRETT WHITELEY, by The Weekend Australian's art critic, Sandra McGrath. The 232-page lavishly illustrated book will be published shortly by Bay Books at a price of S3.1.96. It will also be made available as a special offer to readers of The Weekend Australian and The Australian. Watch the next issue of The Weekend Australian for details. is a splendid, reckless, sprawling tour de force with an unsequential medley of deranged images that accumulate in shattering climaxes. It's a dreary world where the energising horror is Whiteley's. True or not, it's a vision of life as hell as valid as Baudelaire's but it is Interspersed with flashes of sheer loveliness as Pilgrim in the Slough of Despond sights the Prongs - Land. "Whiteley, the enfant terrible of the Marlborough Galleries, is only partly a combination of Swift, Celine, Daimler and Hogartit for he is no pure prophet of doom: as corny as it may sound, he does glimpse da. n's pearly light and life is real and life Ls earnest. What Whiteley has done amid all the youthful, total denigration of our times, has been to present with 'extraordinary intensity the old theme of the possibilities of good and evil." (How Pilgrim In The Slough Of Despond Sights Paradise. The Bulletin 27 June 1970.) Whiteley hi a sense baffled everyone. He was unselfconscious enough to paint banalities and Picture -postcard material - the kookaburras, Ayers Rock and the. Opera House - as well as to try to convey In glowing surreal images some kind of metaphysical state of being. Most people thought the title of The American Dream was Heaven And Hell. While Whiteley always has one eye cocked on nature he has the other cocked on man. The interaction between the two is often behind some COPY 'RECEPTION art THE AUSTRALIAN Aulf,.RTISEMENTS ARE BETWEEN 9 AM -4.30 PM MONDAY TO FRIDAY IN SYDNEY, MELBOUR NE CANBERRA, BRISBANE 9 AM -4 PM MONDAY TO FRIDAY IN HOBART 9 AM-2PM MONDAY TO FRIDAY IN PERTH THE AUSTRALIAN a .. A play that rerna.ns a classical comedy ... I diverting civilised fun suavely directed by Mr Ewing wits .1 rye always fn the humanity in the piece. Just as Mr would wish. S.M.H. MUST GLOSS MARCH 31.1 Neil SK non's uproar.o., LAST OF THE RED HOT !. S Itll =MI I LOVERS 1 directed by Jon Ewing - nab Benda Ccurnw, 15A,,Kg,e Deni.e. 1', Harris. Len Canerrn,,,, Nightly at IL Sat S met pm Book now at Moans (02) 929-M177 78 MacDougall ft, Milton's Point wromitismisenieener6 SCULPTURE EXHIBITION APPLICATIONS ARE NOW BEING TAKEN FOR ENTRY IN A SCULPTURE EXHIBITION AND SALE TO BE HELD OVER A 2 WEEK PERIOD. COMMENCING 18th JULY, 1979. AT AUSTRALIA'S LARGEST SHOPPING CENTRE FOR FURTHER DETAILS AND ENTRY FORMS: PHONE (02) 633 1588 1 59-1 75 Church St, Parramatta 2150. est& SHOPPINGTOWN PARRAMATTA of his most powerful works of this period. It would be unfair to summarise this exhibition without saying that behind' the breathlessly expansive reviews there was no reservation. Almost to a man, there was also a feeling of suspended disbelief or suspicion. The reviews, with one exception, are notable for this almost schizophrenic reaction to this particular group of works. Elwyn Lynn again saw bins as a showman good enough to both use and despise the mass media. His messages were not, he felt, prophetic but rather' collages of opinions. Daniel Thomas found aspects of the exhibition slightly sado-masochistic. "There are lots of sharp spears, beaks, needles for impaling with pleasure." James Gleeson, whose review had started with such enthusiasm, found "when he put on the dark glasses of criticism" that the ideas, the Philosophies, as they were expressed in the jottings and statements written into his works, were in the end "classical hippisras in which the ideals of peace and love are cocooned in woolly thinking. They offer no concrete programs, no intellectuality, clear or precise proposals about how the minenium is to be attained." This attitude was most forcefully expressed by Donald Brook who two years earlier had in a rare moment of exuberance announced Whiteley as being "absolutely and without reservation first rate. It is weird, beautiful, nasty and authoritative. Whiteley's Essendon Grammat. School DELPHI SOCIETY Subscription Sorbs 1979 McNab House Lactose Theatre Woorite Place, East Bailor We are proud to present our artists: Thursday April 36th Thursday June 210 Thursday July 1901 Thursday Sept 13th La Romanesca Early Music Consort Hartley Newnham, CounterTenor Ruth Wilkinson, Recorders,Viol da Garnba Ros Sandi Recorders, Renaissance Flute Jon Griffiths, Lute The Collegium Trio Stephen McIntyre, Piano Mary Nemet, Violin Phillip Green, Cello Melbourne Mandolin Orchestra Plucked string orchestra comprising Mandolins and Guitars Melbourne University Faculty of Music Brass Ensemble Season subsai Mon bided Adults $16.00 Shulents $10.00 Enquiries:Concert 'onager DELPHI SOCIETY P.O. bee 1311 ISSD.DON. 1040 093 PARADISE PRESENT JULIAN REAM E, mail l ',conc. Ard l House, Als1112S. tic v :54:V11 011T Centre. April I ol isnene hills Brook', Hill.Nlay I. AG:029 Without consul will give on ch at sight that I! best of today' Talent, 8 Febr Morning Hera But Brook with some "clumsy and visual try commentaries =question t answerable up our mina mystical cult activity, as nti by-products, I. respect. I ant seems to me vision of a v through this indulgent and as a child's: advocacy is to pitched to coin He reached there are still painter, but ground to co the pretentlol But what Sydney's wit almost univei young as a la Gleeson, tryii . of Whiteley hint had to cool and sob' the exhibition: the point of Ir: able to del exhibition "CI of his dazzliii brilliance of i. the "magical : It Is importa of the mainstr this exhibitioi year the don.i artists as Rich Frank Stolle minimal arte, r "ONE OF THE BEST NIGHTS OUT MONEY CAN BUY" kemeoxismiANt ALM. 14/7/7S Australia's Original Theatre Restaurant Writtrn & Directed by Coloeort Starring liaD ric TOTtilE mAlargnnwijohnsonimn featuring Wine & Dine from 6 pm I liar Rd. 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