Harry Kent art on Youtube

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Last week i chanced across a Youtube clip of my work at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieJXEk0zD2k !

Seems Dmitry Dreizin, using his immense musical knowledge, aptly set my work from Saatchi Online to music, and unbeknownst to me posted it on the web late last year.

Needless-to-say i was excited to discover it and am delighted with the showcase of my work at Saatchi that Dmitry has put together.

I did so enjoy my visit to the Saatchi Gallery, London, last year. The exhibition space was astonishing and the work on exhibition totally stunning.

Saatchi Gallery, London

Saatchi Gallery, London

So i'm delighted to even have this minor and distant artistic connection to the Saatchi name.


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Brett Whiteley's autopsy

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's autopsy, charcoal & acrylic on paper, 59x42cm

“A large incision was made and the scalp peeled back to reveal the top of the skull, which was then opened up with a saw, disclosing the brain ... the brain was taken and placed in  formalin so that, after a period of time during which the tissues solidified, it could be sectioned and examined. There were no scalp, skull or brain injuries or diseases”.  Hilton, M & Blundell, G, 1996, Whiteley: an unauthorised life, Macmillan pp. 238-9.

As you know, I had made Brett's hair a motif in many of the drawings and paintings in this Whiteley series.

I had gotten to know the angle of his nose, its bridge and bulbous end, his straight mouth and cleft chin. My acquaintance had become somehow intimate and personal.

Then i read that they desecrated his corpse, that they peeled back his scalp, that they sundered the curly hair he was so proud of. That they pickled his brain.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's autopsy, acrylic on paper, 170x156cm

My intial shocked response drew a few quick charcoal/acrylic drawings.

Then i set to work with a floor mop to paint a large image (above).

I wanted to bash and splash.

I combed - literally, with a wide tooth comb - through his brain where his hair should been.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's autopsy (detail)

The work that followed (below) turned out as a rather adolescent piece of kitsch. But it started out as an experiment in process. I was searching for some way to conveying the sense of perpetrated violence. 

So  I took the piece round to a friend who owns a farming property and used the opportunity to 'paint' with a shotgun. I thought that by painting an image onto board and then blasting it from behind with a shotgun i might achieve an outplosion of splinters and shards.  These could then be fix into place on the scene with polymer gloss and, all going well, a dynamic piece taken home. 

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's brain, mixed media on board, 46x66x24cm

I had embedded red and blue party balloons, each containing small quantities of red paint, into a mix of plaster, PVA glue, and cotton threads ... hoping that shards of plaster and shreds of balloon would end up dangling from the gun wound. I also hoped that the outward explosion of paint would register and be read by the viewer for the violent painting event that gave it life.

However, all didn't go well. The agency of media asserted itself, this time against my intentions. The board did not consist of splintery timber but was a 20mm thick piece of flooring particle board i had happened to have at hand. The result was that three shots from a 20 gauge firing 6 shot at 25 meters simply blew a hole through it. It punctured balloons but not explosively. The plaster was too brittle and simply blew away. I returned home with a failed experiment.

But i wanted to keep learning from what i had at hand and so i filled the blast hole with red and purple waterbomb balloons, allowing them to protrude as a cluster of organic lobes. I contrasted the tenderness and fragility of balloons with sharp-edged steel medical instruments.  I framed the piece in polished 0.8mm aluminium sheet, searching for a contrast between the 'organic' and the metallic, between the 'human' and 'medical'. But I lacked the tools and technique for cleanly cutting out a rectangle in sheet metal without distortion.

This small work was meant to be a pilot for a larger work of 90x120 cm. But i became too dispirited to continue and all my painting simply ground to a halt. My blogging lapsed into muteness. For many weeks now.

During which time i have survived a car collision in tact (a young man drove through a red light at speed, flashed across the front of me, i hit the anchors but still nudged him and spun him round while he ripped off my front fender).

To top it off this blog was declared public enemy number one by Google. Since end of June web searches that turned up tachisme.blogspot.com were told by Google that "This site may harm your computer or damage your mind" or some such. Seems their crawler didn't like a linked image of Bob Dylan, now removed. Western civilisation is once again safe.

So what next? I don't know. I have images in my head but can't face my studio. I think i'm just wearied by the whole academic process of painting for assessment. I have come to believe that painting belongs in art schools, not universities. Painting belongs to practitioners, not academics. Let universities research and teach art history, art theory and art criticism, but let art schools and artist communities teach the praxis.

I enjoyed the first couple of years of my Masters course when i was energised by the whole adventure of painting and free to explore the world of portraiture. But now i face my final semester. There are papers to be written, formal critiques to be presented. The adventure and lightness is gone, replaced by the grimness of assessment.

I am sick of being judged. 

Brett Whiteley dances on water

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley dances on water, oil on hardboard, 90x120

Brett Whiteley, to my imagination, was always associated with water:

... his paintings of Sydney Harbour with their oceans of Ultramarine, his celebrations of Lavender Bay where he lived overlooking the Harbour, his series on waves that reference Taoist philosophy and Japanese water paintings.

source savill.com.au

(Prophetically enough, i see in this weekend's The Weekend Australian Review that Savill Art Galleries is offering Whiteley's Seagull (1988) for sale - the painting featuring a large white breaking wave).



... but also his whole life. This was a life not so much writ on water as one of walking on water. Indeed, waltzing on water. He saw painting as riding a fluxus, the artist as one who who plumbs the unconscious to retrieve its pearls as images, arts culture as a pool of illusions and tricks, and fame a wave to be surfed.

... yet i am left with the sense that he was always secretly afraid of sinking.

The image i have created contains a touch of surrealism as homage to Whiteley, the Australian Surrealist. It contains an elbow from Salvador Dali, the Sorcerer's Apprentice from Fantasia (battling the odds of mad and mystic water), and Schubert's Erlkönig wooing us away.

The image is ambiguous. Is the figure a demonic and omnipotent magician conjuring the wave? Or is he being overwhelmed and drowned by the tsunami of fate? Is he pirouetting with glee before sublime immensity or is he defensively fleeing the overwhelming darkness?

BW wanted to believe enough in his giftedness to enable him to walk on water ...  to be superhuman, semi-divine, a mediator between Man and the Gods.

But in fact he was all too human.

Daedalus-like, quietly he sank one night in Thirroul.

But it was not defeat for i also see him dance Zorba's dance of triumph-amid-catastrophe in the deserts of the heartland.

source myopera.com

As i watch Zorba, i see Brett as Bob Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man
"to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow."


Ah, but we who remain have not forgotten.

Brett Whiteley holds court

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley holds court, acrylic on masonite, 73x87cm

'Brett did have a genius. A genius for self promotion ... That's what his great genius was for --- creating the myth of Brett Whiteley'.  [Jeff Makin]

'His great talent was for painting but it was not enough. It was never enough. He needed total attention'.  [David Millikan]

James Gleeson wrote of Bett's 'aesthetic integrity being swamped by showmanship'. 'He is an actor masquerading in a cultural charade'.

It was all theatre, the white BMW with BW numberplates, the red camellias he placed under the wipers, the black or white costumes, the sad-eyed addicted wife ... People loved the white suits and the rag-top BMW. They loved the bare bottoms on the beach, the auto-erotic touch, the idea of the artist as an act ... He was mobbed by schoolchildren, recognised wherever he went'. [Hilton & Blundell]

'From early on he was taken up by the glitterati, shallow people who responded. Then came the money-making exercise. It was pretty sad'. [Frank Watters]

all quotes from Hilton, M. & Blundell, G., Whiteley: An unauthorised life, Macmillan: Australia.

Brett Whiteley in the abstract

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley inspired, oil on canvas, 46x60cm

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"A painting is a record of the extremely intensified moments of life - where more than one space, two senses of time, more than the law even seems to work, where the emotional forces seem to be propelling one to a dangerous limit, where reason and explanations become too enfeebled or too speeded up to matter."             Brett Whiteley

 
Why does Harry keep banging on about Brett Whiteley? Isn't it time he switched to some other theme?

Well, one reason i haven't is that i still find plenty of motivation to pick up a brush when i mull over 'Brettness'.

But another is that many of my drawings and paintings, though entitled with 'Brett Whiteley' in the title, could be about anybody. The physical likeness is pretty loose at the best of times.
In these most recent paintings likeness has been abandoned altogether. These are abstract figurative works - experimental, Expressionist, free-style, gestural. They nevertheless purport to be portraits but quite possibly are not. This very problem was raised for discussion during my Fukushima series here in May of last year.

I title them Brett Whiteleys because i had him and his life and art in mind as i worked. But viewers (if i still have any) should feel free to retitle them as they please. What's in a name?


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Brett Whiteley remembers

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley remembers, acrylic on canvas, 50x60cm

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'Memory is a wilful dog. It won't be summoned or dismissed ... It can leave you howling and it can make you smile.’

Elliot Perlman, The Street Sweeper

So i thought about Brett's memories, especially those of Wendy and of his heyday in the 1970's ... memories in the midst of his isolation and depression in the 1990's.

I wanted an image that did both - suggested Brett 'howling' and suggested Brett 'smiling', as the wilful dog came and went.

Brett Whiteley ponders fate

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley ponders fate, oil on canvas, 50x60cm

I'm seeking to make non-conventional images about an unconventional painter - my own images that express something of my own sense of the man and his art.

Why paint this way? I'm searching for expressive power and freshness. I'm turning to pure colours straight from the tube, mixing only on the canvas, for freshness and saturation. I'm turning to colour to carry emotion rather than produce accurate physical likeness.

How to render hair in a way that is not simply 'painting in'? How instead to trust in the agency of the medium to supply a myriad of marks which suggest hair texture? How to rely on plastic qualities of oil paint like paint viscosity, fluid dynamics of solvents, effects of suction and gravity? How to do enough yet not do too much?

detail from Brett Whiteley ponders fate

This painting is part portrait and part Rorschach. It was made the same way an inkblot is made.

Its ambiguous marks rely on the viewer to read form and meaning into the work.

Without the viewer this portrait would not be complete.

So thank you, gentle viewer, for visiting this blog and finishing this portrait for me.


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Brett Whiteley tangled up in blue

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Harry Kent, Whiteley tangled up in blue
oil on paper, 30x42cm

"I became withdrawn
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keeping on
like a bird that flew
Tangled up in blue."
                            Bob Dylan, Tangled Up In Blue

This is a series of 16 monoprints in oil on  29.5x42cm A3 Canson Oil Sketch 290gsm paper.

Although i call it monoprinting, actually sixteen impressions were made from a single image painted by brush onto plastic sheet. Impressions were taken by hand using an linoprint roller. Therefore pressures were inconsistent from one print to the next. I regarded that as a plus rather than a minus for it introduced some random vagaries that stopped the whole exercise simply becoming mechanical.

They are intended to viewed as a single work that traces the fading of image from heavy impasto  until only a ghost remains. If ever exhibited, they would be hung beside each other in a horizontal run along a wall at face height. Or maybe in 4 x 4 grid 118 x 168 cm as a single work.

Not so visible in photographs is the Viridian of the shadow side of the figure's face. However, it virtually spent by the 6th printing.

The dominant colours however are Ultramarine and Prussian Blue contrasting with the red-orange of the figure's hair. Brett Whiteley had red hair in real life though the colour has now taken on symbolic overtones for me. In my iconography his red hair repersents his passion and creative fire. Ultramarine is Brett's wild blue yonder where all things are possible while Prussian Blue is the darkness in his soul.

As the series advances the fire is gradually extinguished and darkness subsumes the figure.

As i worked, i also had my earlier drawing Brett Whiteley fades away in mind which was a response to a critic's comment:
"there is something unsettling in the way the BWS [Brett Whiteley Studio] is part gallery and part shrine to the memory of man who was once vital, and then faded away."

You can read the resulting discussion here.

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Brett Whiteley in Ultramarine

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Harry Kent, Whiteley in Ultramarine
oil and acrylic on canvas, 76x102cm

Brett Whiteley loved Windsor & Newton Ultramarine.

In some of his most iconic paintings one drowns in a Sydney Harbours of blue, looking for splashes of white - a yacht, a bird, a palm - on which to cling so that, Alice-like, we aren't sucked down into some surreal world.

I finally feel ready to move onto oils after my charcoals and inks in search of a vision of Brett . So this image is based on my Brett Whiteley in lino block prints [here].

It is actually a large monoprint with some subsequent adjustments by brush and solvents..

Some days earlier i made a series of 16 monoprints in oil on A3 paper. They are intended to be viewed as a single work. I haven't been able to photograph and blog the set because of the danger of smudging the paint when handing 16 pieces at a time. And so i am posting this painting first although it follows on from them.

The bottom half of the background is actually Prussian Blue and i wanted the flame-haired Brett (following on from my Brett Whiteley sees red set below) to be be set against the darkness, both standing out against it and progressively being swallowed by it. Foremost in my mind was the tale of the passionate Aussie larrikin artist reduced to isolation and depression.

I crowded the head into bottom right corner, seeking a sense of 'being squeezed out the picture', of 'everything crowding in', of 'struggling to remain in the frame' of fame.

It is so hard to keep your flame burning when you are no longer flavour of the month.

close-up of print and brush marks

But this work is not chiefly about composition. It is very much about painterly mark-making and texture. In many ways, it is more a figurative abstract than a portrait. The the fresh primary colors and knobbly lavish paint-work is what  first strikes the viewer when presented with the actual work rather than a photo.




This effect is heightened by the size of the work. While not huge, nevertheless a height of over a metre gives it a decided presence.
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Brett Whiteley sees red

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Harry Kent, Whiteley sees red I
charcoal, ink and acrylic on Arches paper, 42x61cm

Brett once described his childhood as being filled with Napoleonic rage. (He liked everything in heroic proportions).

His sister Frannie, in her biography of Brett, writes of his childhood sense of abandonment when he was sent to boarding school and when the marriage of his parents failed and mum left home. And his grief over the loss of some close friends in death such as Joel Elenberg. And in his final years his sense of isolation, loneliness, and depression.

In his younger years he had been an obsessive hoarder (birds eggs, stamps, money, soft drink) and later, hoarding firewood made him feel secure. No one has said he was a kleptomaniac but he did used to pinch stuff. Frannie records the small skull artifact he stole from a Balinese grave despite the taboo attached. Blundell, in his unauthorised Whiteley, tells of the time Brett bestowed a massive collection of art books on a friend in London - all previously stolen from a library and hoarded.

I think all the above is symptomatic of Brett carrying a void within that longed to be filled. He hungered for love and belonging,  and sought an artist's fame and public approbation as the next best thing.

Harry Kent, Whiteley sees red II
charcoal, ink and acrylic on Arches paper, 42x61cm

When he met criticism or downright rejection of his work, he was cut adrift, disoriented, filled with despair ... filled with rage. Frannie records his sense of profound hurt when critics attacked him. She had seen him literally cry over harsh criticism. Instead of enjoying accolades after thirty-five years of hard work, in his final years he was bewildered as to why he should be dealt with so cruelly.

Harry Kent, Whiteley sees red III
charcoal, ink and acrylic on Arches paper, 42x61cm

His wife Wendy once said that while he was nice to live with, he could be vicious and switch from gentle to hard in a second.

He painted about rage. Rage against the dying of the light. The rage of the baboon with its paws nailed to addiction. Protective fury over his paintings if they were damaged or threatened. Fury at being told what to do by others.

Harry Kent, Whiteley sees red IV
charcoal, ink and acrylic on Arches paper, 42x61cm

And in his discourse there was fire.

Seems to me he spoke with passion and conviction, holding forth interminably as if to allow no silence in which doubt could creep in.

Frannie speaks of his his endless flow of wisdom, one-liners, put-downs and penetrating witticisms and idealistic tirades on everything from Communism, Australia's need to Asianize, war, pacifism, the Australian psyche, Bob Dylan, and always ...

... art.

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Brett Whiteley listens to Bob Dylan

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley listens to Bob Dylan I,
ink on paper, linocut image 20x15 cm

Brett Whiteley described Bob Dylan as ''the most satisfactory voice in pop, I think. There's sort of mango and Courvoisier and the best sort of hissing and low gravel Jewishness on it.'' (here).
But Dylan's importance for Brett Whiteley went beyond a mere appreciation of the voice.

His sister, Frannie, records in her biography [see below, p. 126] of Brett that
"He found an intellectual and spiritual brother in this man, whom he eventually met almost thirty years later. Brett was obsessed with poet-musician Dylan ... He collected his albums and was intimate with every song as though they were speaking to him directly. He listened to Dylan almost daily for most of his life."

I believe that he discovered in the person of Dylan the kind of intuitive artist, gifted genius even, that he himself aspired to be ... a bringer of gifts from the gods. He saw in Dylan a kindred spirit writ large. In short, he idolized the man and the musician.

Brett Whiteley had himself always wanted the gift of music making. He had wanted to be a rock star. If he couldn't have the fame, notoriety and kudos that came with rock stardom, then he would live the life of a rocker as an artist.

Brett Whiteley played Dylan's music full bore as he painted. He hated silence. Couldn't work in silence. He even soundproofed his studio so that working in early hours would not attract complaints from the neighbours.

Back in 1967  Brett Whiteley moved to New York for a couple of years. He made his home in the crazy Chelsea Hotel.

Hilton & Blundell  provide a lively description of the setting: "'The Chelsea was not part of America, had no vacuum cleaners, no rules, no taste, no shame,' wrote former resident Arthur Miller, 'It was a ceaseless party.' It was where Dylan Thomas died in a drunken stupor and Sarah Bernhardt slept in a huge coffin in the pyramid-like cottage on the roof. ... Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey in its seedy rooms. It was Andy Warhol made one of his first films, Eugene O'Neill and John Huston wooed lovers and punk rock-master Sid Vicious would kill his girlfriend. It was the alma mater of New York pop culture. ... Rock hell-raiser Janis Joplin became Arkie's (Brett's daughter) occasional baby-sitter ... Brett would talk about how Jimi Hendrix would riff up and down his guitar when they were together."

The Chelsea Hotel was immortalized in song by Leonard Cohen with a song of the same name celebrating his tryst with Janis Joplin. At one time or another, Tennessee Williams, Thomas Wolfe and Gore Vidal had stayed there. The Mamas and the Papas and the Grateful Dead could be seen visiting.

It was also the centre of the Manhattan drug trade for artists, especially musicians.

The Chelsea Hotel was also where Bob Dylan lived in the 60's, where he wrote Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. Brett kept a huge portrait of Dylan on the wall of his modest penthouse apartment there. It was an acquaintance and adoration that would last the rest of his days.

I sometimes wonder whether Brett Whiteley didn't style his Afro hairdo after Bob Dylan. Yes, Brett had naturally curly red hair that would grow into a mop when long (Donald Friend in his diaries described it as "a great frizzy 'Orphan Annie' halo"). But the shape and tight ringlets, and the comment someone made about how wiry and stark it felt to the touch makes me wonder if he maintained it using product to get 'the look' of his idol. Brett Whiteley's hair has become a motif for me in this series.

source fanpop.com

The 1967 is also when the rock musical Hair blew us all away with the same free-wheelin', high-energy, experimental, counter-culture celebration that i believe marked Brett Whiteley's out-look.


Hilton & Blundell  describe the occasion of Bob Dylan's 1986 Australia tour press conference. "Brett was frantic about what to ask his his hero. He sweated on it for weeks before the Great man arrived, while friends contrived to have Dylan's press conference held at Brett's 'stude' in Surry Hills."

Brett's circle said that he was thrilled to have Dylan there but also desperate for Dylan to respond and understand what he was on about. When finally it was Brett's turn to ask Dylan some questions,  it was as if Brett believed a cosmic collision of personalities was about to take place according to Kate McClymont. She saw Brett as wanting verification from Dylan about his own sources of inspiration and his benediction. But this press conference did not deliver the public affirmation Brett had wished for that he and Dylan were inspired artistes together.

Brett's sister Frannie writes of the time in 1992 when Bob Dylan came to Sydney for a return tour. Brett had bought tickets to every show and carried with him every night a copy of the catalogue from his recent exhibition in case he got the opportunity to present it to Bob. Dylan's minders were under orders not to admit anyone new to his dressing room. But Brett was not new and the opportunity came. Dylan looked at drawings and asked, "How'd you do that man?" Brett was elated over meeting, "Tastic".

But better was to come. The following day Dylan came to the Brett's studio. They spent a couple of hours together looking at Brett's work and discussing painting. All his life Dylan's student, in those sweet hours he now found himself his hero's teacher.

A month later, Brett Whiteley was dead.

And what of Bob Dylan?

On a 1990's recording of Brett Whiteley's favourite music, Dylan is heard to say in an interview,

''say hello to this guy Brett Whiteley. Is he still painting? He gave me some drawings the last time there and they still look good to me.''

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley listening to Bob Dylan II,
ink on paper, linocut image 20x15 cm

In this second version of my linocut i deliberately inked the cuts so that they would show, rather in the style of early German Expressionist woodcuts, while in the top version's printing i had masked out these cuts with paper to obtain clean areas of white. Which is better is a matter of taste.

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Brett Whiteley in lino

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley in lino I, linocut on paper, image 20x15 cm

This is my first excursion into the world of linocut block printing. I've never previously attempted either woodcut nor linocut. But the direction these ink and charcoal drawings have been heading has made me want to 'have a go', as we say in Oz.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley in lino II, linocut on paper, image 20x15 cm

Brett Whiteley himself produced 8 linocuts in his career.
David Brigitte lists them here as:
1. Waves, 1977, edition of 8 + A/Ps
2. River 1977, edition of 8 + A/Ps
3. River & Landscape 1977, Edition of 8 + A/Ps
4. Fruit Dove 1980, edition of 25 + A/Ps
5. Sydney Harbour by Night 1981, edition of 20 + A/Ps
6. Light Globe 1981, edition of 10
7. Warming & Reading 1981, edition of 10
8. Reading 1981, edition of 10
and all were all printed by him and in low numbers, so are quite rare.

However, reportedly David Preston established Etchers Press in Brett Whitely's Reiby Place Studio in 1978 and  subsequently created numerous linocuts and etchings for Brett Whiteley, John Olsen, Judy Cassab and Charles Blackman.

I started to play with colour but it lacks the starkness that attracts me to B&W.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley in lino II,
linocut and oil on paper, image 20x15 cm

Here is one of the lino printing blocks. I took more care with the direction of the cuts second time round.

linocut block for Brett Whiteley in lino II

And finally, here is lino II slipped into a black frame with a double white matt.

Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley in lino II, mounted.

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Brett Whiteley's meditation

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Harry Kent, Brett Whiteley's meditation,

charcoal on paper, 59x42cm

"To draw you must close your eyes and sing."   
                                                                   Picasso

Alison Croggon's review of Whiteley's Incredible Blue, a recent play about Brett Whiteley written by Australian dramatist Barry Dickins, contains a brief para summarizing not only the Dickin's play, but also Whiteley's artistic career:
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"Whiteley is a compelling figure: part artist, part charlatan, myth-maker extraordinaire, he died of a heroin overdose in 1992, aged only 53, in a country motel. So much of his work is trashy product for the cannibalistic art market that at once made and destroyed him, and yet his sublime gift for colour and line gave us some of us our most iconic paintings. Dickins, however, isn’t interested in moralising, nor in biography. What he has created instead is a poetic riff that recreates Whiteley’s restless imaginative excesses, a theatrical meditation on art, beauty and self-destruction."
[read the whole review here].

While regrettably i have not seen the production (though would dearly love to), i was struck by the similarity of artistic intention between Dickins' play and my humble efforts in this evolving series.


The notion of a work being a 'meditation on art' stayed with me.
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... and i began to think about BW's love for Eastern drawing traditions, interest in Buddhism, rapture for Tai Chi  (his sister Frannie says it was the closest he came to actual meditation).
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... and i began to see his art works as Do-Zen, or moving meditations - the traces left by his body in meditative dance.
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... and i began to look for Brett Whiteley's Buddha nature.


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