Brett whiteley biography australian artist graham
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Larry Schwartz
Two years after his death, a tangled web of bitter feuding and intrigue continues to haunt the memory of artist Brett Whiteley.
SHE too was once in thrall to the devilish lure of heroin. So when Brett Whiteley’s former wife heard that the artist’s body had been found in room fyra of the Thirroul Beach Motel she was not so surprised.
“Hardly,” says Wendy Whiteley, now preparing his inner Sydney studio for its opening as a museum. “I mean I was an addict myself … Death can happen, yes. I was fully aware of that.”
Brett Whiteley knew what it meant to teeter at the edge as though his very creativity depended on facing some inner abyss. “Art should astonish, transmute, transfix,” he once wrote. “One must work at the tissue between truth and paranoia … One must virtually describe the centre of the meaning of existence.”
And in a biographical note for a late 1970s exhibition, he wrote that he “imagines he w
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Brett WHITELEY A.O. (b.1939; d.1992)
“He was an indefatigable figurative artist who enriched his subjects - landscapes, Lavender Bay, birds, trees, animals, autobiographical orgies - with an indelible human sensuality.”#
Much has been written about Brett Whiteley, one of Australia’s most acclaimed and prolific modern 20th century artists. Brett once wrote about his art “Art is the recognition of the attempt, the degree of care and love brought to the game of defining time, and the terror of nothing, with the right shapes - the right amount of irony and opposites, the collective victory of choice by one individual at one moment.”^
Born Sydney, Australia 1939. From 1948-56 Brett attended Scots College, Bathurst and Sydney. In 1956 through 1959 he worked at Lintas Agency and studied sporadically at Julian Ashton Art School, Sydney. 1959 saw him awarded an Italian Travelling Scholarship at the age of 19; first living in Rome and then Florence in 1960 with his girlfriend W
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Intrigued by Brett Whiteley, the bad boy of Australian art, and want to know more about his extraordinary life and fantastisk career? Then you need to join the AGB Book & Film Club, because Whiteley fryst vatten the focus of the November discussion. You can either read the award-winning 2016 biography bygd Ashleigh Wilson, ‘Art, life and the other thing’, which fryst vatten available in book shops or online, or watch the 2017 documentary ‘Whiteley’, directed by James Bogle, which is currently available for viewing on ABC iview.
Both present a fascinating picture of one of Australia’s most remarkable artists, from the stellar launch of his international career in the 1960s to his untimely death in a beachside hotel room in 1992.
The AGB Book & Film Club is an initiative of the Art galleri of Ballarat Association. To join the discussion, register at the Art Gallery website - https://bit.ly/3e24RMB
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