0:00

A quick heads-up: in this series. We talk

0:02

about drug use, mental health issues,

0:04

and there's a bit of swearing.

0:15

Welcome to the Brett Whiteley Studio. Have you been here before at all?

0:17

I'm Fenella Kernebone and this is 'Art, life and the other thing'. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians

0:20

of the land on which this podcast was

0:22

made, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.

0:25

Throughout this series,

0:27

I sit down with some of Australia's

0:29

most exciting contemporary artists

0:31

and curators to talk about the artist

0:33

Brett Whiteley, his work and the

0:35

impact he's had on their careers. In

0:39

each episode, we delve into one of Brett's

0:41

artworks, looking closely at the story

0:44

behind that work, the issues surrounding

0:46

it and the impact it has had

0:48

on the Australian art landscape. In

0:51

this episode, we're taking a look at Brett's

0:53

work through a contemporary lens. But

0:55

to do that, we need to understand the backdrop against

0:58

which Brett became an artist. Here's

1:00

Anne Ryan, curator of Australian art at

1:02

the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

1:05

Brett Whiteley came

1:07

of age in the 1960s.

1:11

He really became prominent in the sixties.

1:13

He was a young man who was

1:15

very doted upon

1:18

by his family. He was the

1:20

kind of young boy

1:23

that people recognise

1:25

was going to do something with his life.

1:28

That expectation was

1:30

very conventional for boys, but perhaps

1:32

not so much for their sisters.

1:34

The opportunities that they got

1:36

were slanted towards

1:39

men just structurally within society.

1:42

Male concerns, male ideas,

1:44

male opinions on what was of

1:46

value certainly reigned

1:49

supreme in all aspects of society,

1:51

but also in the art world. So the

1:53

big dealers in Australia and overseas

1:55

were men. The artists that

1:58

they pushed forward by and large were men.

2:00

It was very difficult, and that was the same

2:02

throughout society. So the art world was merely

2:05

a microcosm of what was going on in the broader

2:07

society.

2:11

Like many artists throughout history,

2:13

much of Brett Whiteley's work was inspired

2:16

by the female body. You can see this

2:18

going back in his most early landscape

2:20

works, which were more abstract in style.

2:23

Then, in the 1960s , his style evolved

2:26

and became more figurative as he became more

2:28

and more preoccupied with the female

2:30

form, largely inspired by

2:32

his former wife, Wendy Whiteley. He

2:35

did hundreds of sketches of Wendy.

2:37

One of his most celebrated works, the bathroom

2:40

series, is a result of drawings he did

2:42

of Wendy in the bathtub. From

2:44

here, he went on to include female nudes

2:47

in a number of his paintings, drawings

2:49

and sculptures. Which brings us to

2:51

the artworks we're focusing on in this episode:

2:54

'Sculptures of her', a group of female

2:56

nudes carved out of mangrove wood.

2:59

To see the piece online, go to agnsw.art/bwspodcast.

3:06

They were made from wood that

3:08

Whiteley found along the shores of the

3:10

Lane Cove River here in Sydney, and

3:13

they are female nudes. They're

3:15

very sinuous. They feel very

3:18

much responding to the natural form

3:20

of the wood. But they are also

3:22

works that speak to a far

3:25

longer tradition in Western

3:27

art, but also further back looking at

3:30

the female body, in particular,

3:32

in space. They are differently

3:34

sized again, that's a response partly

3:36

to the materials that he's using, and

3:39

they have a beautiful sense of

3:41

languorous movement in space.

3:44

A couple of them have got their arms

3:46

extended above the head and then their hands

3:49

back on the head. There's a sense of the

3:51

shift of weight in the form, the hips

3:53

sticking out, the backside

3:55

sticking out, the head, the breasts,

3:57

the spine. They're really

3:59

quite beautiful, lyrical works and

4:02

some of my favourite sculptures by Whiteley.

4:05

I like them because of their organic

4:08

quality. I like the feeling

4:10

of the movement of the body

4:13

and the weight of the body through

4:16

the wood and the way that the

4:19

wood has grown naturally. Nature

4:21

has had just as much a hand

4:23

in the creation of these sculptures as Brett

4:25

Whiteley did, and

4:27

I like that about it. I find that very

4:29

elemental, and it makes me think about

4:32

ancient sculpture and ancient fertility

4:35

objects and these

4:38

objects that are fashioned by hand

4:40

out of the creation of the

4:42

earth and nature. I find

4:44

them quite beautiful.

4:46

Brett Whiteley's appreciation of the

4:48

female form is present throughout

4:51

much of his work, and in this way he's

4:53

not alone.

4:54

The female nude in Western

4:56

sculpture goes back to

4:58

the Greeks and the Romans, and it's been

5:01

a conventional subject in

5:03

painting and drawing and sculpture

5:05

for thousands of years.

5:08

Of course, the nude originally started

5:10

off in its ideal form as the male

5:13

and transmogrified over the centuries

5:15

into the female nude, particularly from

5:17

the 19th century on. So

5:19

Brett Whiteley is working within a tradition

5:22

a Western art tradition that looks

5:24

at the female nude, in particular

5:26

as a important, valid subject

5:28

for art. Of course, with our

5:31

contemporary eye and since the great

5:33

work of the feminist art historians in

5:35

the 1970s and subsequent

5:37

to that, we read it

5:39

differently than it would have been

5:41

read, even in the

5:44

times when these sculptures were made by Brett

5:46

Whiteley. And you can't

5:49

separate contemporary

5:51

experience in contemporary readings from

5:53

how we experience these works today.

5:55

I think that Brett

5:58

Whiteley, in choosing these subjects,

6:01

is obviously speaking to his own

6:04

interest in the female

6:06

form not only

6:09

as a formal

6:12

object in space and part of that

6:14

tradition, but also through male sexuality.

6:17

He was certainly an artist that was very much

6:19

of a generation where that was expressed.

6:21

He came of age in the sixties when

6:24

sexual liberation, that, you know,

6:26

people in the sixties thought they invented

6:29

sex, of course. But it was certainly something that

6:31

was becoming far more spoken

6:33

about and

6:35

public. Of course, now

6:37

with our lens of the year

6:39

2020 looking back, we can also see

6:41

all the problems that were inherent

6:43

in that and all the power structures that were inherent

6:45

in that at the time.

6:47

Given where we are today, how our thinking

6:49

and our politics have evolved, I wonder

6:52

how Brett's work sits for Anne today?

6:54

Every artist is a product of their age.

6:57

But the great thing about art, good

6:59

art that manages to

7:01

transcend the time in which it

7:03

was made is

7:06

that it continues to have a resonance,

7:08

whether positive or negative. But it evokes

7:11

some discussion

7:13

and some feeling, and

7:15

I think that the

7:18

intentions of the artists are one thing. But

7:21

good art is also

7:23

subject to the subjective readings

7:25

of those who view it. And so if I

7:27

look at a 19th-century studio

7:30

nude made in France

7:32

in an atelier with

7:35

men and women artists first coming

7:37

together and first being allowed to draw the nude

7:39

together - which only happened in the last

7:42

120 years - I'll

7:45

read that in a different way now than they were reading

7:47

it at the time. And so

7:49

feminist theory, queer theory, all

7:52

sorts of different ways of reading works

7:54

of art have subsequently

7:56

emerged. And that just adds

7:58

to the richness of the body of work like

8:00

this.

8:01

Considering how our analysis

8:03

of art has expanded, where does that

8:05

leave us with Brett's work today and

8:08

how we look at it? Should we hold him

8:10

up to a contemporary standard or

8:12

accept his works as part of an era?

8:15

I think for contemporary

8:18

feminists looking at

8:20

Brett Whiteley's work, there are as many readings

8:22

as there are contemporary feminists,

8:24

let's be honest. But I think

8:27

looking at the way Whiteley

8:30

chose his subjects, the way

8:32

he chose to depict his subjects

8:34

milieu in which he was

8:37

prominent, the period in which he was

8:39

prominent. Yes, of course, there were problematic

8:41

things for our contemporary eye. But

8:43

at the same time it

8:45

doesn't mean that we can

8:48

disregard these works. I think

8:50

that's the... anything historical, we

8:53

always tend to colour it with our own

8:55

perception and our own position in

8:57

the year 2020 and I think

8:59

a feminist reading of this work,

9:02

it's not it's not even overdue. It's been happening

9:04

for a long time, and I think that

9:06

it's perfectly valid and perfectly

9:08

interesting, and I don't think it detracts

9:11

from the actual visual power of

9:13

these sculptures as objects in space.

9:16

So, yes, you can look at Brett Whiteley's

9:18

work now through a contemporary lens,

9:21

but considering it through the context of the

9:23

time it was made is also important.

9:25

But does this mean we should avoid criticising

9:28

Brett's nude paintings of women in

9:30

the same way we would a contemporary artist?

9:33

I think when you look at historical artists,

9:35

you have to be very careful not to

9:37

transpose your contemporary

9:40

understanding of the world on them

9:43

too harshly. I

9:45

think it's good to evolve.

9:48

It's good to take

9:50

on other perspectives, whether that be

9:52

from a feminist perspective,

9:54

queer perspective, even understanding

9:57

different cultures and races

10:00

and all the different things that we're now

10:02

we talk about more honestly, even

10:04

things like mental illness. Whereas

10:08

it's really important to understand context

10:10

for historical art and

10:12

and you can make moral judgments

10:15

about it, but you have to be careful

10:17

about that because to truly understand

10:20

what an artist does and what motivates

10:22

them, one has to have empathy

10:25

and imagine their position

10:27

and their upbringing and familiar

10:30

and the politics that was around them and

10:32

the culture, everything

10:34

impacts on it. So history

10:36

is important, and it's important to

10:39

have that empathy and to place

10:41

yourself in the past and try and understand

10:43

all the forces that were in

10:46

play at the time because

10:48

we're no better or worse than those people were.

10:53

Motives, politics, culture. It's

10:55

all significant history. In particular,

10:57

it shapes the way that we look at an artwork

11:00

like Brett's nudes, and it also

11:02

shapes the way artists today respond

11:04

in their own work. So

11:06

let's now consider more contemporary representations

11:09

of the human form, how things

11:11

have evolved and what impact this has

11:13

retrospectively on Brett's work.

11:17

I'm Deborah Kelly. I'm an artist.

11:20

I'm from Melbourne, actually, but I've lived

11:22

in Sydney for 20 years,

11:25

and you wanted me to introduce my work,

11:27

which, of course, a very curly question. I think

11:29

most artists probably need to have a little lie down

11:31

before they start answering. How long have

11:33

you got?

11:35

Deborah Kelly is a mixed

11:37

media and performance artist. Her

11:39

work, particularly her more recent work,

11:41

explores the tension between the idealised

11:44

body and the diverse body. Contesting

11:47

the history of nudity in art has been

11:49

a big part of her practice.

11:50

I mean, there are of course those

11:52

ancient little

11:55

statues which are called

11:57

Venuses that are found all over Europe,

11:59

and they're like 25 to 35,000

12:02

years old. They're possibly

12:04

trading things or religious things

12:07

or just recently a

12:10

feminist archaeologist has

12:12

proposed that maybe

12:14

the reason they have no feet and no facial

12:17

features is that because they

12:19

are self-portraits by pregnant

12:21

women, which is

12:23

such an amazing thing to think about,

12:26

I reckon, because of course,

12:28

mirrors hadn't been invented, so they don't know what their

12:30

faces are like and they're so pregnant,

12:32

they can't see their feet. So

12:34

I just love that idea.

12:38

If we go back to early civilisation,

12:40

the female body was a symbol for well

12:42

being and fertility. But

12:44

for Deborah, when she is contesting nudity

12:47

in art, what she's really contesting

12:49

is nudity during the Renaissance period.

12:51

Why? Because this is when the relationship

12:54

between male painter and female model

12:56

really started to change.

12:58

The first reclining

13:01

nude was painted by Giorgione in like

13:04

1510 or

13:06

something. But those 500 years,

13:09

500 something years of

13:11

those paintings, the oil paintings

13:14

of especially the reclining

13:16

nudes, they proposed

13:18

women as a sex class. They proposed

13:20

women as decor, and they insist

13:23

upon a certain kind of, um,

13:25

passivity and receptivity,

13:28

which mustn't, of course, be

13:31

overly desiring, because then

13:33

you would tip over into being a slut. So

13:36

they posit a certain kind

13:38

of use for the female body,

13:41

which obviously is our task

13:43

to shatter.

13:45

Much of Deborah's work is in response

13:47

to this what many refer

13:49

to as the male gaze, which,

13:52

in a nutshell, is a theory where women are represented

13:54

in the media and the arts in a sexualised,

13:57

passive way that empowers men

13:59

and objectifies women. Debra's

14:02

work 'LYING WOMEN' [2016] is an animated

14:04

collage where cut-out nudes from art

14:06

history books dance and leap across

14:08

the screen in a feminist critique

14:10

of the male gaze.

14:12

'LYING WOMEN', an entirely different kind

14:14

of work that I made, is

14:17

a video which is in the collection

14:19

of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and

14:22

it is a stop-motion animation

14:26

that shows hundreds and hundreds

14:28

of reclining

14:31

nudes cut from a

14:33

very great many abandoned

14:35

art history books. Partly

14:38

I'm cutting the art history books in

14:40

revenge because that's

14:42

the art history I was taught, it

14:46

seemed that only European

14:48

men could make art. When

14:51

I studied at school and

14:53

even at university, there

14:55

was nobody of colour

14:58

and no women at

15:00

all. And that was very formative,

15:02

obviously. So I've spent a long time

15:04

trying to add

15:06

to that canon and also to

15:08

destroy it, of course. So that's

15:11

another one of the amazing things about art. It

15:13

can be making something creative that

15:15

also has a destructive intent, in a

15:18

way. I mean, I intend

15:21

to grapple with the archives and

15:23

to genuinely fuck with them.

15:25

Brett Whiteley is part of that archive.

15:27

His drawings of women are all curves

15:30

and flesh. Words like 'erotic', 'sensual'

15:32

and 'sacred' are used in the titles.

15:35

And yes, there's plenty of reclining

15:37

going on. So, in this way,

15:39

has Deborah been motivated by Brett

15:41

Whiteley? Let's look at her [2014] series

15:44

'No human being is illegal (in all

15:46

our glory)'.

15:50

'No human being is illegal (in all our glory)' is now 21 portraits

15:52

of naked people. In

15:55

that work, nakedness stands

15:57

for innocence in a way.

15:59

But it also stands for

16:02

the human being in the world

16:05

versus the borders

16:07

of geopolitics. So

16:10

those naked human beings are

16:13

obviously symbolic, but they're

16:15

also individuals, and I guess

16:17

that's one of the great things about art, you can be thinking

16:19

about a whole lot of different things simultaneously.

16:22

So I guess part of the point

16:24

of that work, that work did attempt to think about a lot

16:26

of different things at once, borders

16:30

as well as who is excluded

16:32

in the regimes of exclusion. But

16:34

it also sought to address the museum

16:37

itself in terms of what kinds of bodies

16:39

do we see represented? Slim,

16:42

white bodies almost

16:45

exclusively. So

16:47

'No human being is illegal' also

16:49

sought to open an aperture

16:51

into the institution

16:54

that would allow for a much more

16:56

magnificent array of humanity

16:58

to be seen and to be

17:00

beloved.

17:02

Galleries are full of female nudes,

17:04

imaginary ones or otherwise. We

17:06

just accept them as part of the world of art.

17:09

But here's a question. Are we as accepting

17:11

of the male body? Deborah's experience

17:14

exhibiting her own work suggests that we

17:16

might not be.

17:18

So the work went on to

17:20

tour for four years - thankfully,

17:22

because I didn't have anywhere to put it - and

17:26

when it was in Penrith, which is in the Bible

17:28

belt, I believe, somebody

17:30

or somebodies plural made

17:32

a lot of complaints. And then they went

17:34

into the gallery, which is not

17:37

under very strict invigilation, and

17:39

they scratched the penises

17:42

of three of the works with

17:45

keys, full

17:47

depth scratches. Nobody

17:49

was upset by the female nudes because they're

17:51

used to seeing naked ladies in galleries,

17:53

I guess. But

17:55

life-sized men they were

17:58

totally freaked out about. So in the

18:00

very end, before the work went into

18:02

storage, I had to

18:04

take myself up to Noosa

18:07

with big magnifying

18:09

goggles and tiny little brushes

18:11

and try to repair the penises,

18:15

which is an extremely strange

18:17

job, one of the weirdest

18:20

things I've ever had to do as an artist.

18:23

Here's

18:27

something that may not be as well known to

18:29

you. Wendy Whiteley, Brett's

18:31

former wife, was the one who in fact

18:33

went to art college. Brett went

18:35

too, but he dropped out early to take

18:37

a job at an advertising agency. And yet

18:40

Wendy isn't known for being an artist.

18:42

She is most famous for being the subject

18:44

of so many of Brett's paintings and drawings.

18:47

So how did that happen? Here's Wendy

18:50

to answer that question, talking

18:52

about the role that she played in Brett's

18:54

artistic life.

18:56

People keep saying to me, 'Why did you give

18:58

up your career for your husband?' I thought

19:00

about it. I was having a ball,

19:03

I was doing what I wanted to do. I

19:06

didn't have that kind of raw ambition

19:09

that he had. I don't know whether it's

19:11

masculine or feminine frankly anymore. But

19:13

he had it in spades. He

19:15

wasn't going to settle for mediocrity.

19:17

We had this really great bathroom

19:20

that had a lovely old claw foot bath but

19:22

a big heater, which is in all the drawings,

19:24

great looking thing, which

19:27

you had to get the hot water to come

19:29

gurgling out of. And you know,

19:31

I'd get in the bath. Well, there were great objects

19:33

already there, all of them

19:35

with a kind of sensuality about them, in a way,

19:37

because they were curved, they weren't sharp-edged. He

19:39

just started the drawings and then returned

19:42

to figuration much more closely.

19:45

In a way, he ended what

19:47

he wanted to do with abstraction,

19:50

you know, and so he started to return

19:52

to figuration. They're not photorealism

19:54

by any means, and they're still abstracted

19:57

to a large degree. But it

19:59

is the return to figuration and

20:01

obviously with a fairly clear narrative

20:03

or theme. So the next exhibition

20:05

he had was 'Bathroom', and

20:07

I was the model.

20:09

She was the model, he the painter,

20:11

the creator. Throughout history,

20:13

the relationship between male artists

20:16

and female model has often been carved

20:18

up in this way. In fact, women

20:20

are often called 'muses'. But

20:23

how does that dynamic stack up today?

20:25

It's a question that I put to Mitch Cairns,

20:27

who we heard from in episode two.

20:30

In 2017, he was the winner of

20:32

the Archibald Prize, Australia's

20:34

most prestigious portraiture prize.

20:36

He won with a painting of his partner,

20:38

Agatha Gothe Snape, an artist

20:40

in her own right and a 'recalcitrant

20:43

muse' by her own definition. In

20:45

this painting, she's sitting on a yoga

20:47

mat in an angular, almost awkward

20:49

pose. Like many Archibald

20:51

winners before him, it was a controversial decision,

20:54

but that's part of the fun, right? Mitch

20:56

says she refused to sit still and stop what she

20:58

was doing so that he could paint her.

21:01

And that's very much about the agency of the

21:03

subject as well. It's such a

21:05

co-produced object, the

21:07

portrait, and I don't think she was

21:10

deliberately trying to make the task

21:12

of making a painting of her more difficult.

21:14

I just felt that in

21:16

some ways she sort of

21:18

entrusted the facility,

21:21

perhaps? She

21:23

entrusted the fact that we've been together at that point 12

21:26

years and, of course you can make

21:28

a painting of me. I don't really feel

21:30

like I need to sit here and make explicit

21:33

this contract that we're about to

21:35

enter into, and that gives

21:37

the whole exercise much more

21:39

latitude and space

21:41

and air. And I think it

21:44

made the task more challenging, but I think that very

21:46

much speaks to her as a person. So

21:48

in a way, she sort of imposes their parameters

21:50

upon the project, which I was

21:52

thankful for. It was less about

21:55

me, sort of pushing, pushing

21:57

out. So her kind of absence,

21:59

in a way, made

22:02

an image. Making a

22:04

painting of your partner is a strangely

22:07

grounding exercise in amongst

22:09

all of that, but she never sat for me.

22:11

So I had to draw

22:13

make drawings from memory, and I had

22:15

to make drawings of her

22:18

in the apartment. So she

22:21

obviously allowed me to make

22:23

the painting. But she didn't sit for me,

22:25

which kind of speaks

22:27

to a bunch of things. It sort of

22:29

speaks to the sort of chaos at the moment, and it

22:31

also [speaks] very much about

22:34

asserting herself, I think,

22:36

which is that something that can't be separated

22:38

out from the painting.

22:39

Agatha's refusal to sit for Mitch

22:41

and Mitch therefore creating the artwork

22:44

out of the chaos at the moment could

22:46

in fact be behind his Archibald win .

22:49

Perhaps it's what made it stand out to the judges,

22:51

which, depending on how you look at it, means

22:53

that even in her refusal, Agatha

22:56

was still a muse of sorts. This

22:58

dynamic is one that Mitch has thought about a lot,

23:01

and I wanted to know, looking back at

23:03

Brett and Wendy's relationship, if he

23:05

thinks there's any similarities to be drawn.

23:09

I can understand why Wendy might not

23:11

like the term 'muse' because it's something

23:13

that, it's very much something that's been

23:15

projected onto her, surely. I'm

23:17

sure she would not have been consciously referring

23:19

to herself as the muse, because it's the

23:22

daily life, it dramatises or

23:25

it makes more performative their relationship and

23:27

what the day-to-day-ness of being together would have

23:29

been. When, of course, there's a

23:31

relationship between him and her in the

23:34

artwork and then the images.

23:37

It labours the point perhaps,

23:39

even though there's a real term with a real meaning and

23:41

it is historically loaded, it's

23:45

maybe the desire to step back from

23:47

something which is so

23:49

clear, the clarity of the term,

23:51

which is, you know, when something appears

23:54

or comes across as quite obvious,

23:57

there's a natural sort of recoiling,

24:00

regardless of what what it is. It's very

24:02

nice to sort of to

24:04

resist, and to resist is

24:06

a fantastic way to proceed.

24:09

These last few

24:11

years we've seen many changes. One

24:13

of them has been a strong shift in how we talk

24:16

about power, including how

24:18

male artists choose to portray women

24:20

in their work. Brett, like

24:22

many artists before and after him,

24:24

was inspired by the female form.

24:27

He enjoyed painting, sculpting, drawing

24:29

and celebrating them. But in doing

24:32

so, he was also containing them,

24:34

their voices and sometimes their art.

24:37

Some would argue that Brett was making

24:39

work 'in his time'; that was the

24:41

way things were. But how should we

24:43

criticise his work today against

24:45

these larger issues? The

24:47

world has a long way to go before the voices

24:49

of women, people of colour and minority

24:51

groups are truly given an equal amount

24:53

of space. We can acknowledge

24:56

and continue to enjoy the beauty

24:58

within Brett's work, but we must

25:00

also recognise their place in a

25:02

long history of the female form

25:04

being relegated to an object for

25:06

the male gaze. Thanks

25:13

to Wendy Whiteley, Mitch Cairns,

25:15

Anne Ryan and Deborah Kelly. This

25:18

podcast has been brought to you by the Brett

25:20

Whiteley Studio in collaboration with

25:22

the Art Gallery of New South Wales. If

25:24

you want to see more of Brett's work, go to his

25:26

studio. It's open to the public from Thursday

25:29

to Sunday, and admission is free. My

25:31

name's Fenella Kernebone. Thanks for joining me.