Page 48 - Studio International - October 1967

LONDON From the bottom of this panel an open eye stares tear form streaked with flesh-coloured paint.
Where the vulva would be, the canvas has been
out. This clear gaze was intended for the painter
commentary by and it is hard for us to meet. The title of the cut into and opened. This can be seen as an aggres-
painting, Her, implies an objectivity which that sive gesture but it is also essentially an honest one.
Charles Harrison
gaze belies. We are not accustomed to being con- To censor the image, however cruel, once it had
fronted so directly or so publicly with so private an been evoked, however subliminally, would have
emotion. been in the terms of Whiteley's recent paintings a
Brett Whiteley is very much preoccupied with self-deception for the painter and a deception
time (the Chinese character for Time appears at practised upon his audience.
Brett Whiteley at the New London; the bottom of one unfinished painting) and he Brett Whiteley is not alone in exploring in paint
Gwyther Irwin at Gimpel Fils; Anthony speaks of the present paintings as being much (if not in life) the limits of our tolerance to the
Gross at the Maltzahn Gallery; `faster' than his earlier works. This means, as I take knowledge of suffering, the cruelty of psychosis
Survey '67-Abstract Painters at the it, that a more instantaneous, less compromised and the strangeness of passion. There are echoes of
Camden Arts Centre. vision is crystallized in them, and that the original Piché in the anthropomorphic bundle of brown
idea is conveyed with less reference to qualifying skin and white cloth which projects literally from
information or experience. This puts a heavy a painting of Calcutta, and echoes of Bacon in the
Brett Whiteley-Recent Works premium on the breadth and depth of the original dissolution of the self-portrait. In his own paintings
Marlborough New London Gallery experience and puts the painter himself under con- on the theme of 10 Rillington Place Brett Whiteley
2-31 October tinual pressure to sustain this experience at a high has already explored pretty thoroughly the
In Brett Whiteley's first exhibition at the NEW level. Nowadays we all know the jet-assisted way question of his own tolerance and ours, and of the
LONDON GALLERY in 1964 the artist's physical view- to ensure a ready supply of soul-shattering experi- acceptability of subject matter. To what extent
point (frequently an unusual one) acted as a kind ences. Not all the paintings are as lyrical as Her. I does the artist identify with his theme? In a large
of mimesis of his emotional distance from or near- admire Brett Whiteley's courage in divesting him- triptych based on Piero della Francesca's Baptism,
ness to the subject painted- typically, at that time, self one by one of his inhibitions, forcing himself to Whiteley has painted a female figure breasts up-
a female figure in the bath, to which the implied face on the surface of his paintings emotions of raised and legs spreadeagled, open and vulnerable
relationship was a close one. A large three-piece horror or of pity which we are accustomed to to rapist or lover or to both in one. The girl in the
painting in the present exhibition charts a later leave buried. His motives are certainly honest. His bath of Whiteley's earlier paintings was never so
stage in this relationship, which is now presented paintings were highly acceptable a few years ago naked, nor was the painter then so exposed.
in a far more explicit form. A nude figure is and they are much less so now. In the self-portrait Beside the splayed figure Whiteley has enlarged a
spread over the central panel as across a bed. a large-breasted pin-up photograph melts into a photo of a street in Calcutta during an uprising;

Brett Whiteley
Her 1967
oil and mixed media
72 x 93¾ in.