‘Baldessin/Whiteley: Parallel Visions 31 August 2018 – 28 January 2019, NGV
Published in ‘Troublemag’ and ‘Jackdaw’
![](https://i0.wp.com/alexandrasasse.com/wp-content/uploads/Evening-coming-in-on-Sydney-Harbour-1975-Brett-Whiteley.jpg?resize=553%2C662)
Prolific, intense and successful, Whiteley’s art and life have been difficult to separate. Twenty-six years after his untimely death, his work lives on as part of our present whilst his colourful life story fades into the fabric of history. Baldessin/Whiteley: Parallel Visions at the National Gallery of Victoria (until 28.1.19) is a chance to reassess. Brett Whiteley and George Baldessin, printmaker of figurative expressionist etchings, were born in the same year but there is little else to tie them together and I will leave Baldessin to another time.
The Whiteley works span his entire oeuvre – from his 1956 travelling scholarship win and early abstracts to his late Sydney Harbour pictures, stopping by his London Christie works and his New York period on the way.
![Painting by Brett Whiteley depicting the township of Sofala in a simplified and flattened composition.](https://i0.wp.com/alexandrasasse.com/wp-content/uploads/Sofala-Brett-Whiteley.jpg?resize=587%2C450)
The earliest paintings – tentative, evocative, nuanced – are heavily influenced by Lloyd Rees and Russell Drysdale; the latter was the judge of Whiteley’s scholarship win. In Sofala (1958) earth-rich reds, warm greys and creams are woven into a flattened and simplified image of a country town. The horizon line sits up close to the top edge of the painting – we are immersed in a sparse domestic world clinging to life on a harsh but harmonious crimson land. Shades of Nolan, Drysdale and Tucker infuse Whiteley’s sensibility at this stage. His later rococo line is absent, pre-dated by the pared and scraped back forms more consistent with the drought and angst-stricken images of Australia that had begun to make such an impact on London, chiming, as they did with the mood of post war existentialism.