Brett Whiteley

Brett Whiteley to completely forget art history now, you know, just to to see that the apprenticeship is completely over, to go out into nature, to maybe smoke a tiny little bit of joint, you know, which causes a terrific structure in your mind as towards what you're seeing, and to romance in front of nature, to improvise in front of nature, to use art history if you want to in any section of it, to just go out like Vincent, you know, every day with one canvas and come in at night, and you've either got it or you haven't, you know. It's that's what I want to do now, is just produce you know, once-ers that just, that's what I was doing at Bundanon really. I mean, there's a tree and you start to, you know, and there's a bit over there, and and just make high poems about where you are, you know, just intoxicate the, um, suck the best thing out of it, you know, of what's visually in front of you. Use them as stimulants and things. I don't reckon there's any, um... I mean, I wouldn't produce a didactic picture at all now. I couldn't do that, in any way. Well, this power...

Interviewer Responds to that energy. You do not, so then you don't become precious at all with this. Do you know what Do you know what Frank McDonald said? He was looking at those photographs that I took of you at Bundanon,

Brett Whiteley Mhm.

Interviewer painting a picture. He said to me, "My God, do you realise he's like D.H. Lawrence when he paints sometimes?"

Brett Whiteley Why? Why did he go into that?

Interviewer Well, and then I said, and he said, "Have you got my D.H. Lawrence book?" And I said, um, admitting I'd had it for seven years, I finally produced it. Uh, and he showed me a landscape D.H. Lawrence has done with red trees and one of those limp red trees, you know, because your trees and things really don't have...

Brett Whiteley I think D.H. Lawrence is a terrible painter.

Interviewer Some of them were absolutely awful. The figure studies were, but the landscapes, some of the more or two in this book, were sort of limpid forms of, uh... And he said, you know, "He reminds me..." This is Frank McDonald, "He reminds me Those landscapes remind me of D.H. Lawrence's." And I thought, well, amazing sort of... How many people even know about D.H. Lawrence's landscapes? Uh, it would never even have occurred to me until he got the book out. And then I thought there's a sort of, um, pricking point there between you and R.S., that, uh, when you, uh...

Brett Whiteley Just to put it down to me, I'm not a writer.

Interviewer Yes, you are. Yes, you are. Look, isn't it... Even when you read the manuscript, it says it was just a subtle shift of the stars. It would have fitted into something else.

Brett Whiteley Yeah. Hey, I I read the interview of your of that...

Interviewer In this?

Brett Whiteley Yeah, what you And what about that?

Interviewer I think you are a writer.

Brett Whiteley Oh, you're a scrapbook, I mean a scrapbook. There's definitely a difference.

Interviewer Rudi Krausmann wants to produce anything you'll let him in in Aspect from your notebooks. He says you're a genuine poet. And that your thing that you wrote on photographers, for example, he says is one of the more of the most genuine statements ever made about photography. Uh, he wants to print anything in your books. He says Brett Whiteley is a naturally gifted poet.

Brett Whiteley Pinch it. No, that'll be that. Here we go. Clear the tape, then.

Interviewer Mhm. I hate that music. You know, I know I'm old-fashioned and nice, and, oh God, you know.

Brett Whiteley It's not, it's serious, it's just

Interviewer It's such a terrible noise. Yeah. God, it gets me anxious, fuck.

Brett Whiteley Just presume that life's going on. There's taxis and you know you've got a 49-foot Church Street and you pick up and go up and there's bushfires and there's fuck knows what going on out there, and that's just...

Interviewer That's why he plays for me, then?

Brett Whiteley Yeah, I'll play you.

Interviewer I can't stand that. Give me the gools.

Brett Whiteley That It's meant for that. It's It's meant It's an antithesis to peace. It's meant to make you a bit excited.

Music [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing] [singing]

Interviewer Thank God that music's off.

Brett Whiteley Thank God.

Interviewer God, awful.

Brett Whiteley Is that... Brett just thought he'd like to hear something as good as that.

Interviewer I hope you tell him he was doing this.

Brett Whiteley I did. And he's listening to that. That was silly.

Interviewer He loved it, didn't he? Did he like this song, too? Shall I press it?

Brett Whiteley No, this is better. It's the other side of that tape. Here we are.

Interviewer Bye-bye. I guess he's not going to have no lunch, some pieces of toast.

Brett Whiteley He did? I couldn't remember who it was. It's a It's a nice one, isn't it? I love it down on on the bottom of all those beaches.

Interviewer You see in the house?

Brett Whiteley Yeah, and our fridge is full of things to drink so...

Interviewer How do you score that?

Brett Whiteley What friend's that name? That's his son. That's Graeme.

Interviewer How'd you like that?

Brett Whiteley Hello, handsome. Sort of, uh... Who Who are you there?

Interviewer Who's that?

Brett Whiteley This is Brian Sandberg. You like that?

Interviewer Little bit. Just like, um... Kandinsky's a bit of a, you know...

Brett Whiteley Well, he used to paint a lot like this, the second-hand art from Paul Klee.

Interviewer Yeah, but he always clung, you know, to not the other thing.

Brett Whiteley This reminds me of Chinese people from just Chinese rising really, you know, no, it's just Chinese writing, like, basic... It just reminds me of Bacon without the intelligence.

Interviewer Sorry, what What's your name?

Subject Graeme.

Interviewer Graeme.

Brett Whiteley Mhm.

Interviewer Fine thought.

Subject No, I've got a razor blade somewhere.

Interviewer I see.

Brett Whiteley No, do you know what I mean, that in that both of them aren't confident. They really try first time in and it doesn't work, and then they capitalise upon the mistake, they

Subject Yeah.

Brett Whiteley they go in again. So you just get this six times in seething sort of imperfection,

Subject Yeah.

Brett Whiteley and each time they're just sort of stumbling and taking, you know, bits of element of chance and fucking up, and it's all just a whole bundle like a sort of dog shit bundle of mistakes, you know.

Subject Yeah, the art of the controlled accident.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, and that and on that you just get this sort of mysterious ambiguity because the fumble is as good as getting it right.

Interviewer Do you like it?

Subject Yeah. This, yeah.

Interviewer What What What're you on, this Everyone here seems to be on a mission.

Subject On a mission? My mission at the moment is to try and finance the things that are my latest mission.

Brett Whiteley What are you doing now? You want to do a book on him or something?

Subject No, no, no. I'm studying at Sydney Uni.

Interviewer You an art student?

Subject No, architecture.

Interviewer Taking up on James, too?

Subject Uh, partly doing essays and some sort of...

Interviewer Mhm.

Subject No, I'm doing research into Australian art.

Interviewer Mhm.

Subject Thinking about letters to, uh... Letters to... Letters to...

Interviewer What a silly idea, I said to Dad.

Subject Well, they're they're seen more banal in getting other ideas.

Brett Whiteley He's a good one, isn't he, really? I like him a lot, Rowland.

Subject Yeah.

Brett Whiteley A lot of tape in the machine.

Interviewer Yeah. Did you ask for it?

Brett Whiteley It's really cheap stuff.

Subject What're you doing now? You've spent a lot? Yeah.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, I'm just a recorder.

Interviewer Scribes. You're trying to pick up on tricks, he's trying to pick up on something else. I think Rowland's pure.

Brett Whiteley He is.

Interviewer Definitely.

Brett Whiteley My theory about Rowland Schlicht is that, um, quite soon he's going to do his Gauguin.

Interviewer Don't you have notes? Don't you want to take notes?

Subject Yeah, I should have, shouldn't I?

Interviewer You better get your pen out because he speaks very fast, I can tell you.

Brett Whiteley Rowland's a very, very sort of, um, cynical sort of a guy in a way. He's very moral, too, and he's sort of set himself to that marriage and all, and architecture and just sort of being a mule to get money and all that sort of thing, and he really wants to be a painter.

Interviewer You've already lost it. You're going to have to go all the way back.

Subject Oh, that's all right. I'll remember it.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, he knows all this.

Subject Yeah, I do.

Interviewer Yeah, he is. I agree. Quite.

Brett Whiteley How old was Gauguin when Gau- Gauguin took to just, uh... He just said, yeah.

Interviewer 32. Why are you doing Rowland Schlicht?

Subject Why? Because I I know his work since his Central Street coverage.

Brett Whiteley Oh, those ones, yeah. The sort of cubist-y sort of ones.

Subject Well, yeah, the hard-edge, yeah.

Interviewer Yeah.

Subject The sort of thing that he was doing then.

Interviewer Do you like the Power Gallery and that stuff?

Subject Yeah, something like the picture...

Brett Whiteley You reckon that's the best that he's done, that stuff?

Subject Well, not the best that he's done, but that's the sort of work that I like.

Interviewer I think it is the best that he's done.

Subject I would I would think there was something... There was a lot of stuff that I haven't seen. It wasn't until I went to the landscape exhibition and saw what he was doing... I've seen the whole picture of stuff like that. I haven't seen...

Interviewer Did you see the house paintings?

Subject Yeah. Yeah, but they're the ones that I'm trying They're the ones that I've seen.

Brett Whiteley Well, do you think he's just trying to contradict himself? He's basically a sort of T-square artist who is trying to be sensual? And that he's... I mean, there is in his in his character, this kind of, you know, very severe rigidity, this, you know, quite intense intelligence and a kind of almost, um, mathematical way of approaching, you know, what's going on. And there's also like that rampaging Gauguin bloody sort of fucker, you know, high sensualist. Must be a hell of a dichotomy in his lifestyle. I've never seen a wife grey quicker than his did. She moved from youth to middle age, you know, in a month.

Interviewer Wasn't that supposed to be child...

Brett Whiteley She's very remarkable, quite, you know, extraordinary sort of person. But there's no there was no, um, normal middle ground there. There was no sort of, you know, growth from teenager through sort of, you know, and she just really just went crunch over to like being this...

Interviewer Wasn't that supposed to be childhood? Did they have that?

Brett Whiteley No, I don't think so. I I think because of because of the sort of the oddness in in in Rowland's sort of, you know, asks. I mean, if you freed him, if you absolutely just gave him $10,000 and there were the canvases, and yeah, just pick pick Tahiti, pick fucking whatever wherever you want to go, that that that maybe he he could only be like, um... Who are the Which other of those French artists that had to do that sort of thing?

Subject Had to actually work some other life.

Brett Whiteley That's it.

Subject Like a customs clerk.

Interviewer He didn't have to be in Vienna.

Subject Like a Douanier. You'd have to do that, like. Would it be possible for these French artists that have to be like...

Brett Whiteley And it's a hinging to a bourgeois situation, three kids, all the complexities of that, having to work an architectural life and stuff like that, and still, you know, bring art up occasionally out of it, you know. You could have done... You could have done it just the same as Duchamp. Duchamp got hip early, like, don't get any automobiles, don't get any houses, don't get any women, don't, you know, just, um... So he's, uh,

Subject What, Rowland?

Brett Whiteley he's he's the highest Sunday painter in the country.

Interviewer That's a coarse word, the highest Sunday painter in the country. Come on, Rowland.

Brett Whiteley He's already said it himself.

Interviewer Yeah, did he?

Subject I thought he took that criticism of his work, sort of... Pressure, you know, sort of...

Interviewer He took it very well.

Brett Whiteley I think sensuality has influenced his work. I think just how his glands have been going, you know, moving from from 20 to 30, and working in an office and occasionally getting laid and having a kind of rampaging sort of imagination and want, I think that's pushed him back into Matisse. I think that's pushed him...

Interviewer Oh, Matisse could draw, thank God.

Brett Whiteley No, also

Interviewer That's why it was...

Brett Whiteley intellectually, he can also see the writing on the wall that that kind of that kind of painting is just, um, um, you know, blindfold sort of mutterings at the end of the canyon, really. I mean, that that can have, um, it's only just, you know, very short-lived sort of charts, experiments, and you can't make an entire career out of something like that. Anybody that's tried to, look at the way Rothko died. Jesus, I mean, how many times can you do a Rothko? How many times how many times can Barnett Newman go down and have a good lunch? Rubber-stamp painting, I mean, must cause a hell of a moral problem, a hell of a fidget to the brain at night when you, you know, to an intelligence, to just keep going over the same ground. It is, it's the problem of all abstractionists. It's the problem of anybody. You know, abstraction is basically about the business of arriving at a certain point in your life where there are five or six fantastically seething, different forces that want to get into and have their announcement. And in order to feed and equate and give value to each one of those thrusts, each one of those ideals, ideas, you make this kind of odd-looking, never-seen-before, peculiar, mixture chance, this thing which, you know, like, tries to equate all of those things. That's what abstraction is about. And people only get one or two abstractions in their life. You can't be an abstractionist, like a professional blue merchant, a sort of somebody that's just in the business of of of ether all the time. You've got to fucking earn ether. That's why all the abstractions just get boring, and you get repetitious, get get nowhere. So Rowland was quite right to roll back down off those sort of architectural, Léger kind of things, because otherwise it just would have been, you know, um...

Interviewer You mean he rolled down off that... He didn't take notes.

Subject I should have, shouldn't I?

Interviewer You better get your pen out because he speaks very fast.

Brett Whiteley Rowland's a very, very sort of, um, cynical sort of a guy in a way. He's very moral, too, and he's sort of set himself to that marriage and all, and architecture and just sort of being a mule to get money and all that sort of thing, and he really wants to be a painter.

Interviewer You've already lost it. You're going to have to go all the way back.

Subject That's all right. I'll remember it.

Sandra McGrath You mean he rolled out of that because he rolled into sort of Matisse and domesticity?

Brett Whiteley He could see death, he could see death, you know, if he did it, you just... It's just can't start to go over the same ground twice, isn't it, you know? Yeah, and like most painters, they look back on what's been done, and they look at life, and they just think, it's still possible to make the most extraordinary art between the distance of emotion and what's in front of you, between what form can look like, and you don't... If you get an abstraction, I mean, you can't help that. I mean, you're inevitably building towards one, and, you know, when it comes up, I mean, the fact that you go out of figuration, the fact that you go out of literal reference, you know, that doesn't matter, that's only just one of the bloody doors you've got to go through. It's sort of just a matter of timing, it's a matter of inevitability, it's a matter of the architecture of...

Sandra McGrath If you see Roland's life as being a conflict between domesticity, the pressures and the sterility of abstraction or commonality...

Brett Whiteley No, no, that's that's you misfire on that at all. The frustration is the duality between the freedom, plausibly, of being an artist and being a married man having, you know, quite a bourgeois family.

Sandra McGrath And being dependent on creating architecture as well.

Brett Whiteley And I suppose in many ways psychologically that affects his art.

Sandra McGrath In this city it's the best gallery we have. He knew how to do a gallery.

Brett Whiteley Well, yeah, he's a good architect. He's a good visual intelligence. Very cynical guy, though. He's one of the most cynical guys I've ever met. I mean, not sceptical, cynical.

Sandra McGrath He's a real knocker.

Brett Whiteley Mhm. He really is like Patrick White. I mean, almost everything that comes in front of him is imperfect. And he fucking announces why it's imperfect. A lot of people don't like him because of that. I mean, they... Women like him. Certain women are very attracted to him, you know.

Sandra McGrath Very passive.

Brett Whiteley Weak women, you know, women that want to be bleated and things and... And that must give him hell, because he would be lovely if he was a free spirit. But then he needs to have this sort of mole, sort of, hold. He'd never leave Diana. I mean, he'd never just up up stakes and go Gauguin's way out of this, you know, gumboots trail down the road.

Sandra McGrath You know who he reminds me of? It's just an absolute bounce between Ann Thomson, you know, and Robert Walker, because she felt that in living a domestic life with Walker, it took so much, you know, she would paint more beautifully and be more of a free spirit and all the rest of it. She left him, she's trying to paint. That constrictor, the juggernaut, they always being the night, 8:30 all the time, the threat was to be decent painters.

Brett Whiteley Well, painting's got to come from somewhere. Everybody's got to actually, you know, there's got to be cause. And you can run, you can use drugs, you can, you know, rumble people's energies. I mean, it just doesn't come, you know, without an enormous effort, I mean, you know, physical effort and and and urge and will. But that doesn't account for the other element. There's also got to be, you know, some sort of feed-in which is sort of mysterious in a way. And if that comes from another person, it does come from a muse or it does...

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Brett Whiteley Well, you know, it's no use just like rampaging oneself off to Afghanistan with 16 canvases and expecting to come back like with a new fauve period and so on. I mean, I suppose that all artists have got that fantasy like, "I will dismiss it all, all friends, all foe, everything. I mean, I'll just I'll just go right into orbit, I'll go into hermitism," you know, "I'll get the game stricter in order to uplift its stakes" and so on.

Interviewer Maybe some can do that.

Sandra McGrath Yeah, the most...

Brett Whiteley Well, I wish I could do it.

Sandra McGrath Well, the most extraordinary, most most great paintings of women have always been done in a very, very set environment.

Brett Whiteley No, not necessarily. Some paintings have been done absolutely where there's the most incredible fucking pain going on, like Arshile Gorky, with Matta coming along and taking his wife, with fucking nooses all over the house, with cancer in his body, with a garage going up in flames, you know.

Sandra McGrath There's always that, but the normal...

Brett Whiteley All right, those people are involved in expression.

Sandra McGrath The great body of painting, if you see them in museums and things, have all been done in a sort of under one roof, and with that roof is maintained for quite a while, and there's a known environment.

Brett Whiteley So much for supersonic telephone doodles.

Sandra McGrath A known environment.

Brett Whiteley That casualty, the middle ground.

Sandra McGrath Known environment. Known people coming in and out, known mistresses, known jealousies, known tone.

Brett Whiteley Ah, well, I don't know.

Sandra McGrath It worked for Gauguin.

Brett Whiteley It worked for Gauguin. And and and I think Roland is the closest person that I can imagine. He hasn't got the Jew, he hasn't got the third space of the Jew, but he's the closest person in many ways that I know to to Gauguin, to the rebelliousness of Gauguin.

Interviewer Who's Roland?

Brett Whiteley Oh, this guy we're talking about.

Interviewer Where is he, Australian?

Brett Whiteley Well, yeah, he was born here and then went to England. His father's a psychiatrist, sort of queer psychiatrist father. He's white, he's Caucasian. Well, I mean, he's not here. I mean, what are you what I mean, he's...

Interviewer Well, tell me what you think about his sort of paintings.

Brett Whiteley I think he's going in the right direction. I think I you know, I I think he's absolutely right to come away from the...

Interviewer Who's Roland's father? What's his name?

Brett Whiteley ...and Corbusier and those things, I know.

Interviewer Roland who?

Brett Whiteley I haven't seen a lot of what he does, actually. I don't see him very often. I haven't seen what he's done for the last four years, not a single line. I don't know. Have you got some of that?

Interviewer No, I haven't, but they're sort of really I think you took them all.

Brett Whiteley Those those first ones were that were on the, you know, that show, that first, were um they were nicely done, weren't they? The more complicated ones, they're they're quite simple.

Interviewer They're just abstract. I've put them in some sort of...

Brett Whiteley Yeah, yeah, I follow, yeah, yeah. Well, none of this is going to be much use. You're just a sort of anemic flag lover.

Interviewer You can't you can't really see it unless I turn the light off. Is this a style all the time, this uh... Well, is it uh until about 1969 or so it was influenced a little bit, and it started to change into something more...

Brett Whiteley I saw. I see it.

Interviewer ...freer. It's come on the backwards. It runs backwards.

Brett Whiteley He was never an icon maker, was he? I mean, they never represent um sort of uh hieroglyphic absolutes about an experience. He's an architect. He's just playing around with structure, isn't he? I mean, they're just math games, aren't they, really?

Interviewer Do you want to get them down?

Brett Whiteley I mean, the earlier ones were. I mean, I like those coming like that where he's starting to really sort of, you know, you can see it. He's just going to start to get it stringier and more sensual. He's going right through the eye of the needle.

Interviewer Yeah, those are 1957, something like that. Try another one.

Brett Whiteley See, the You need to see these after. Right, from that he moved into

Interviewer Yeah, look at these, look at these.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, yeah.

Sandra McGrath Have a look.

Brett Whiteley What are you looking at?

Interviewer These are the ones I'm looking at, excuse me. Strong.

Brett Whiteley I'd like to sort of check them. And then he breaks into the landscape, right? You come through France. Well, there's one there.

Sandra McGrath Now, have you always...

Brett Whiteley Well, that's a pull from Yellow Christ, Gauguin's Yellow Christ.

Sandra McGrath God, I wish you were this damn organized, Mr. Whiteley. Imagine having a box of these.

Brett Whiteley I've got a I've got a box downstairs, and I've got a book, you've got two books of mine.

Sandra McGrath A whole a whole page of you.

Brett Whiteley It's not like that. No, he's not a schmaltzer. He doesn't really get in it. He just sort of doesn't get up close.

Interviewer Well, this looks good.

Brett Whiteley He sort of works acrylic and things, sort of.

Interviewer There's a self-portrait.

Brett Whiteley Hey? He's quite a good self-portrait. A bit of a trapped feeling, tch.

Sandra McGrath What did happen to that little girl of his?

Interviewer Did you get that, Helen?

Brett Whiteley Oh, I don't know, it's a wobble, isn't it, you know?

Sandra McGrath She's sick.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, but I think that's why, you know. The dichotomy of their difference is because at the very moment of the atomic spunk, you know, that the cancer set then, about a year later it flowers itself. A kid of you know, like a baby having cancer. And the way even Roland discovered it all of a sudden, he was just there one night, late, 11:00 at night, and everything was really quiet, and he turned and looked at her, and he just sort of like, "That kid's really sick. My kid's sick." And you can see it. You can see it like looking at a Belsen, like looking at someone who's from Belsen or something.

Sandra McGrath I think this belongs to you.

Brett Whiteley No, we're we're we're we're mucking your order up, are we?

Interviewer No, not at all. There's one over there.

Brett Whiteley So you used to sit on the donga and read Einstein?

Interviewer Did you? Yeah, yeah. I spent six years at university doing theoretical physics.

Brett Whiteley You're going to You're going to read me the book. I've been thinking about Einstein a lot. You're going to read me the book.

Sandra McGrath I've got a book on him if you just want to read it.

Interviewer I'll talk to you about it if you want to read it.

Sandra McGrath Called The Cosmic...

Brett Whiteley I want to have I want to have, you know...

Interviewer It's so It's too difficult to read. You'd have to spend a hell of a long time.

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Interviewer Verbiage, sheer verbiage.

Brett Whiteley No, I really would like the rave on that. I really would...

Interviewer It's much easier for me to sit down on a piece of sand and draw it out for you in half an hour.

Brett Whiteley Right. Now, here's the here's the here's the intro abstraction. He moved into six canvases, 3x3, of self-portraits. There's Leonardo, he did Bosch, he did Vincent, he did Gauguin, there's the Bosch.

Interviewer Beauty, isn't it?

Brett Whiteley There it is, they're lovely.

Sandra McGrath Mhm.

Brett Whiteley And it's very and there's another another guy on the other side of the city who didn't even know about him, you know, Tim Lewis, did exactly the same thing and worked exactly the same size, 3x3, and coincidentally worked on three of the same pictures. Same Picasso, same Gauguin, and same Vincent. It's called Mind Heart.

Interviewer There's the There's the Picasso.

Brett Whiteley Be nice to see Tim Lewis's again. There's the Vincent.

Interviewer All the same size.

Brett Whiteley All right, all right. It's a nice thing to do. And there's the Gauguin.

Interviewer Wonderful. Wonderful. And then that that there's a self-portrait, somebody, probably his.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, their own.

Interviewer Yeah.

Brett Whiteley I kept saying, "When are you going to paint your self-portrait?" And he did.

Interviewer In the same size?

Brett Whiteley Well, same size. He works thin with acrylics. There's the sort of neat Matisse's, aren't they, really? I guess so. I suppose the first way to come into Matisse is just to go straight to the thing and just, you know, just just doing it. Look at those. I mean, that's just absolutely There's not even a fucking can't see anything of Vincent on Roland there. Strange the way Matisse still sits in the century as though there's some areas that haven't been sort of sucked out of him yet. Ellsworth Kelly went off and sort of pinched the end of a cut-out, I think.

Sandra McGrath I'm not so sure that it is. What else? What's...

Brett Whiteley You know, the more I look at him the more I I, you know, I I just I just want to completely this year, I just want to completely sort of drain it, strain it through.

Sandra McGrath It's the same thing with displacement of objects.

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Sandra McGrath And the weirdness of some of them, too. They are more weird than when one really faces it, because one picks up on it. When one picks up a tooth in your own head, you pick up on the whole earth.

Brett Whiteley Mhm.

Sandra McGrath You don't just think of one tooth.

Brett Whiteley I think no critics have actually talked about, you know, his sickness, actually. The fact that the guy was a pear, you know, he had this enormous fucking stomach and he had gallbladder pl- trouble.

Interviewer He had a lot of intestines out, didn't he?

Brett Whiteley Yeah, he was really There's this whole thing of him being off colour for most of his life and so on.

Interviewer Chest trouble, too, I think.

Brett Whiteley You know. And also this dexterousness, you know, I mean, he couldn't go wrong. Just dip the brush and do the bloody thing. I mean, he was just like a Zen person. And once you've done that, what do you do for the next six hours? Because you can't keep repeating it. Then you've got to run up like trying to prove to people why, you know, and try and explain why the thing looks so good, so he became the great sort of doctor theorist, you know, spent most of his time analysing and discussing what he was about because he just had this knack of being able to sort of make it limp, make it right, make it sort of naive. His line is just amazing. It's the most joyful thing that's ever ever best snail that's ever come on Earth, isn't it? I mean, it's just fantastic thing to look at Matisse's line.

Interviewer There's pigeons, look.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, I've done that with pigeons. I've even killed a pigeon talking to it. You know what I mean? You don't learn much from that.

Sandra McGrath You get soft.

Brett Whiteley Hey, but what about Freud, you know, and all that sort of thing? He's had these 17-year-olds around and he's a 53-year-old and stuff like that, and he's doing them. I mean, what were you, just a wanker, or just sort of I mean, was he fucking them?

Sandra McGrath Matisse on that?

Brett Whiteley Mhm.

Sandra McGrath He was supposed to have been... after a bourgeois marriage.

Brett Whiteley Must be pretty weird, though, you know, to sort of have these beautiful girls come in every day and you draw them for hours, and they just go out again. You don't, you know,

Sandra McGrath You go back to your wife...

Brett Whiteley Yeah, you don't get the Perth woman, so I mean, it's completely opposite to the fan, but that's, I mean...

Sandra McGrath Did you see You saw the film, I told you, about Matisse. Oh, you didn't see the Matisse film where the model comes in. I've never seen a film with Matisse painting, though. Uh the model comes in, a Negro woman comes in, and she goes behind the screen and puts on a sort of feathery coat, and sits down in this chair, being in his hotel in the south of France, and he begins drawing. There's no, "Hello, how are you? Good morning. Nice to see you." Uh No, she just comes in and and he starts to work on the mouth. First thing you know, he's funny enough at that, the bikini, he starts with a mouth always.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, so you see the mouth that he's doing, you've seen the Baudelaire, you just see his Baudelaire, just that bloody rip after Baudelaire lost it, but he sits with a glass of beer not doing anything, I mean, like that mouth. He made a code of mouths, actually. Bows and and bird flights and li- you know, the whole thing. He real- really ran a language about a mouth. Bacon's obsessed with mouths.

Sandra McGrath And the other thing in this This film must have been done in, I don't know, not long before he died. The other thing is his grandson coming in, and he does his grandson in a sailor suit, and while the cameras are clicking away, he does six drawings of his grandson, and, of course, the last one the one uh

Brett Whiteley It's, that's it. It's trying to get to the sort of absolute skeleton, you know, what is it there? I mean, there's a million variations. It's not just a matter of like just start in, there's the shoulder and things like that. It's just that real Zen thing of just slop with the brush for a quarter of an hour, not saying a fucking word, and just sort of going, "Fshoosh," and there's a fucking arm, you know. Oh, Jesus, like damn it's the paint, like, what's happened? And to keep it simple, I mean, don't elaborate it, to just arrive at that absolutely reduced structure where there's just this whiff, this spirit, just this sort of chassis, just this sort of essence. That's who he was so good at, just to be able to peel all the fucking thing, millions of thoughts away, and just get to this kind of brevity, you know, deliciously exceptional and limp, all that lovely limpness.

Sandra McGrath He couldn't do it at once, you know. I mean, this one...

Brett Whiteley Oh, he made a lot of mistakes. I stood there and corrected them all the time.

Sandra McGrath No, what I mean is when if he was doing a drawing of me now, the first drawing would have all the ribs in the sweater and all this jazz here and the and everything, the gold, whatever these the gold necklaces and everything. The whole thing. And then the next page, he'd eliminate the ribs. You saw that when we were going in the store.

Brett Whiteley Sure, but that's just invention. There's a distinction between sight and invention.

Sandra McGrath No, it wasn't sight, it was elimination. It wasn't invention, it was just, "What mark is going to stand for

Brett Whiteley Well, elimination is part of invention.

Sandra McGrath the rib? What's going to stand for... You don't want to do that whole fucking thing, now, yeah? What What what mark do I make that stands for that?" That's what it really got down to, you know, I mean that...

Brett Whiteley No, that's No, he's beyond that point. It's like now, where can that go? What would happen if I really made, if I made shoulders that were as big as sumo wrestlers, if I made them into actually fonts and things? It's just That's invention. That's Picasso was mostly about that. You know, how do you actually sort of create something that has never existed before? Matisse didn't do that. Matisse just refined the hell out of what was already there.

Sandra McGrath Well, isn't that invention in a way?

Brett Whiteley No, that's editing. That's style.

Sandra McGrath Style is invention.

Brett Whiteley No, style is just how you do it, not what you do. Picasso changed the syntax completely. Matisse just wrote with better penmanship.

Sandra McGrath Oh, come on, Brett. You can't reduce Matisse to penmanship.

Brett Whiteley I'm not reducing him, I'm saying he's the greatest calligrapher of the century. Look at the way he handles line, look at the way he handles flat colour. Nobody's touched him on that. Nobody.

Sandra McGrath What about the cut-outs?

Brett Whiteley The cut-outs are the ultimate reduction, aren't they? They're pure sign, pure vibration. He just cuts right into the color with the scissors. No pencil, no drawing first. That's why they're so powerful. It's direct. How do you actually concertina? How do you take the octopus and pull it inside out? You know, what if I made an eye that's fucking 12-foot wide and the next eye is as big as a flea? What I mean, just a matter of just playing around with nature, just to see what, you know, where you might get to. It's just intellect. It's just playing games. It's like those people in in Oxford. If somebody says, you know, this day basically is indigo, you know, you don't accept that. You go to the opposite end just to see where it'll lead. I mean, you go to opposites in order to try and expand. And a lot of Matisse is about that. And they're also hanging around that old cantankerous bloody Cézanne, that yardstick that doesn't seem to be much use now, does it?

Sandra McGrath I don't know. I see the crossword... A mastery of discipline. Mastery of discipline is something else.

Brett Whiteley Picasso, though, it's his anxiety that's interesting. It's the one thought, the one...

Sandra McGrath No one's picking up on Picasso, it's Matisse's strength.

Brett Whiteley Oh, Jesus, there'd be some people who'd slaughter Picasso. You could take, you could take, you could pick one period of Picasso and work on it for three weeks, and you'd and you'd start to actually move move the space up a lot. You'd you'd move up the whole room five or six decimals. There's a lot in Picasso, a fantastic amount of fertility of ideas.

Sandra McGrath It's almost as if all the others have just dropped Picasso because he was such a one-man band that there's just no way to compete with him. It's a bit like Pollock, where no one's felt like they can tackle Pollock.

Brett Whiteley Nothing comes from Pollock. Nothing. Total finish. That's Cubism condensed. That's All they all that did for the Asians was to say, "Okay, you've got permission to go ahead and make some television sets." It just, it just let it just let the it just let Asia free. It was the first card that the Westerners came up with that just said, you know, that's it. We've just gone through the eye of the needle. There's no figuration, there's nothing, we're just into that same space that you cats have known about. Just flicked the card over. Pollock's nothing. Car accidents and drunken romanticism. He just gave the atomic thing of like America's about to go. Just announced the '50s. He set the Vietnam War in motion, I mean, all that whole...

Sandra McGrath Violence.

Brett Whiteley It's just it's just they're just it's just a symbol of an atomic time, of a of a particular moment in American evolution. Visually, they're nothing. I mean, there is no picture plane, it's like just staring through into bloody grass, or barbed wire, is it? Out in the infinity with a telescope? It's just trickiness, it's nothing. It's boring. Completely useless. No art will come from Pollock at all. Nothing has in the last 10 years, and nothing will.

Sandra McGrath Well, it's just a lot was a final stop.

Brett Whiteley It's not fertile. Not like Picasso, not like Matisse, not like Lloyd Rees. Not like me. Artists will pick things out. I mean, they'll just see some quirk of mine. I mean, odd thing in nature that uh like you could get a whole stretch that'd come, you know, 15, 20 years from now from some other kid. I have kids coming around here and they came look looking at things like that. It's really ludicrously embarrassing, because because I mean they don't know. All they're doing is just they're just coming they come like Sherlock Holmes hunting.

Sandra McGrath Hunting for clues, yeah, hunting for a lead, a master.

Brett Whiteley No, it's just intuitive, you know? You just, you know, somebody goes on a car trip for 15 miles, and which house that they which tree, which bit that they really... The process is so subtle, you know? Critics and all that sort of thing haven't got a fucking scant chance at it. They're just they just sort of make parties,

Sandra McGrath They have people

Brett Whiteley have people sitting around drinking and talking and believing it's all right. Money, all what's in worth, too, I guess, human spirit on the wall. How much would you pay for that Rembrandt there? What's that what's that bit of nose worth? Is that worth a million dollars? Sort of thing? It's all mystery, isn't it?

Sandra McGrath Metaphor. Not mystery, metaphor.

Brett Whiteley Well, this is the proper way of learning how to die. Still Yeats, you know, look at Yeats, that's another thing.

Subject It's seeing Sydney, it's must be his eyes are different. The woods, the color of the trees. They are softer. Yeats.

Brett Whiteley Yeats. Do you like Ivan Meštrović?

Sandra McGrath Who's he?

Brett Whiteley I made a point of not liking the Slavs.

Subject Notice if it's Slavs... We leave the Slavs alone, don't we? I turn my back on them.

Sandra McGrath Why have you turned your back on them?

Subject Too passionate. I'm not comfortable with them.

Sandra McGrath Are you Yugoslav?

Subject Part Austrian, part Yugoslav.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, God, this looks like the Mediterranean Mexican.

Sandra McGrath You don't look like a Yugoslav to me. What else?

Subject I turned my back on my looks.

Sandra McGrath Yeah, what is the mixture? It's not just pure Yugoslav?

Subject And Austrian. Austrian and um...

Brett Whiteley Navajo, no?

Subject Navajo.

Sandra McGrath Where did you What's the name besides Austrian and Yugoslav?

Subject Everything, probably, everything. It's a big mixture, I believe. In fact, we probably share the same ancestors. Going back 1,000 years, everyone's integrated. In fact, I'm statistically...

Sandra McGrath 统计 statistics?

Brett Whiteley He is.

Sandra McGrath I have got American Indian blood, not much.

Subject Well, that's probably some poor American Indian that uh slipped down to South America and slipped back to Spain, and came back out and ask, immigrated to America, and here we are. Hello, sister.

Brett Whiteley And what you should have had is just one full touch of midnight. About 1833, when a big black buck, fucking full spade, come in from the cotton field and just banged some white owner there, and you get a sprint off that. It'd just be a Wouldn't it be a beautiful canyon to be able to refer to? You've got none of that, you see.

Sandra McGrath Yes, I have. Indian.

Subject Oh, I'm sure I'm sure she has. I'm sure she had all of that. In Alabama, they would have had it.

Sandra McGrath In Alabama, it would be a It would be pretty unusual if there weren't some spades somewhere, wouldn't there?

Brett Whiteley Well, I wonder if these in the New Yorker's ark people, they reckon they reckon within a year and a half, the Russians are going to freak. The economy can't hold and there is a kind of, you know, Solzhenitsyn running around the bloody place trying, you know, screaming and saying it's going to happen. The Russian is going to freak. So the There's going to be a schizophrenic break right down the middle of the thing, and they they're going to be the first to throw the bomb, not the American. The American's too soft, too...

Sandra McGrath Soft!

Brett Whiteley The Americans The Americans are learning how to die properly. The Americans are the great people. The Russians are the fools.

Sandra McGrath They created Korea, Vietnam. They're the most violent people in the world. They've got the greatest PR job going. The last war since the Second World War...

Brett Whiteley They're going they're going into every extreme knowable. They'll take any drug, they'll take any death, they'll take it all off.

Sandra McGrath People who created Korea and Vietnam.

Brett Whiteley Right, and there's no longer any paranoia in America, you know. In the last two or three years, it's just amazing. I lived there fucking five years ago, and I could hardly even wake up every morning, I was so bloody nervous, and the whole thing is just absolutely altered. America is coming through. America is making it. America is producing the thing which is its own seed, which is quite remark- Of course there's fascism, and there's the most incredible shit going on there, but there's also the most sensitive and extraordinary intelligent people on earth still living there, and still wiring it and bringing it through. Now, as for the Russians, they do it. They're going to crack it in two years, and that's going to And they're going they're going to get the, you know, the the the the the staff, and there'll be this Noah's ark of various things, and they'll get who they're going to pick from America. I mean, though their telegram comes through to Norman Mailer and to John Cage and to Bob Dylan, and all of those cats, like, um, "Be here in 48 hours," or, you know, I mean, you know, or work your own bloody burnt path behind. You're half out, you know. Are they going to work the mixture of getting, you know, what species can you You can mix a kid up, you know, you could actually you know, we could work our own way of working out, you know, history and heredity, just because that you know, families only brew up things. We spoke about that the other day. I mean, you don't get a great clergyman unless about 400 people work on it for a couple of centuries. You don't get an artist unless the thing, the genes work and the luck happens, and so on, that you, you know, that it's all a matter of brewing and cooking, and you know, and taking time on it. And they can do this really quickly now. They can do it computers, they can actually work out, you know, should he have a bit of Indian? The next cell from him in relation to a It's If they analyse him sufficiently as towards, you know, the Freudian...

Sandra McGrath Are you a science fiction freak, Brett? You listen to that?

Brett Whiteley No, not really, I've never read that.

Sandra McGrath Brewing up a bit of Put a bit of Indian in him and a bit of...

Brett Whiteley Well, if they get to know that, definitely they'll get it right. I mean, is he a good enough Yugoslav to take it? And write the whole of Yugoslavia off, you know, if he's the one to do it, you know. And and when his when his club gets up in the comics, whose cells are supposed to be, which women have been working up the cause that I mean, you could get supermen quick, you know. You could get actually If you get You can add on bombs that knock out fucking 7/8 of the earth, even if the orange doesn't break in half and you've got nearly six months before the thing even gets over its drug habit, you know, and then trees come alive again and they can re-land, how many are you going to re-land? And what kind of thing would restart? Because life's never going to go on. I mean, you know, when when the Holocaust comes...

Sandra McGrath You can't kill everybody off in this universe, can you?

Brett Whiteley Oh, you fucking can. You can take out the Middle East, you know, before I can finish smoking this cigarette.

Sandra McGrath You can't.

Brett Whiteley You fucking can! By pushing buttons they can do it now. They can knock off fucking 60 million people like that. And they'll do it. They will. You know, we're not we all of a sudden haven't got wiser. I mean, I just spoke to a cop on the phone there. Humanity hasn't gotten any better. Hitler was only fucking 45 years ago. Look at the First World War. And look how quickly the increase of it. You know, we've got these bombs. We're going to use them! Yeah, and they're not going to be put away.

Subject Far back as the First World War.

Sandra McGrath Why did you Why did you lose Czechoslovakia?

Subject It's a death of a culture.

Sandra McGrath What?

Subject It's a death of a culture.

Sandra McGrath Well, how does that woman, Maria Mihailovich, exist?

Subject Well, she ran away with culture's life. Like a loss of Tibet.

Brett Whiteley Tibet haven't lost anyway. Tibet's just...

Sandra McGrath Do you know that about the Communists?

Subject I don't know. Any culture that that loses its national pride... Cultures lose, national identities change.

Brett Whiteley The Tibetans lived for fucking 600 years feeling as though they had an atom bomb about five yards above their head. I mean, you can imagine an icon of a city of everyone living in. Have you ever seen those films, the way Tibetans even move and so on? The whole sort of sort of ant-like structure, as though they've got this enormous fucking icon above their head, which any second could just migraine them completely out. And they've And look at Have you read The Book of the Dead? Have you ever in that thing of like psychic, you know, to pick up as a fucking fire bugle right now? You know, like like telepathy?

Sandra McGrath Does that make you very anti-socialism, very pro-capitalism? What does it make you then?

Subject Nothing. Sad if I think about it.

Sandra McGrath Well, what what position does it put you in? You just can't say it makes me sad. What is...

Subject Happily into being a gypsy.

Brett Whiteley Well, gypsies will definitely walk out. Because you won't be an ear whisperer to Mao Zedong if they get to the one, if they get to a one government, one ramp. And China is the most powerful thing, isn't it? Everyone's going to China, everyone is is tugged towards the fact that they have worked out that you want...

Sandra McGrath That's a big That's that now appears to become more and more of a myth now. It's a kind of an enormous conditioning.

Subject Yeah, but Brett, they're they're men. Still they're just men.

Brett Whiteley On pure on pure intellect, no knives, no guns, nothing, no clothes, you're just in a room with a Chinaman, and you're going to have to work it out. The Chinaman will do you. They'll do the white man. If it is who We work magic, we work we work bluff, we work art. You bring up any trick that we've got, and the Chinaman will still see to it. They have got it. They are the center of sanity. They are just waiting it. If the if the thing's going to go on, it's going to be theirs. Not the Chinese, not the African, not the not the Russian, any of that.

Sandra McGrath Don't you feel that? I I did for a while. I went for a month. I feel they're enormous confusions.

Brett Whiteley Jesus, that's the one word I'd never use about a Chinaman. I've never seen confusion in a Chinaman. That's a Confusion!

Sandra McGrath Confucius. Confucius confusion.

Brett Whiteley No, ha ha ha. You mean no, ha ha.

Subject Do you really feel that?

Sandra McGrath If If you read people who you think should know, and what they tell you is accurate, how would you know? You know, I've never been there. And even if we went... So, the point is that the things I have read over the last three years, there's been an enormous shift in people who've been there lots of times and now've gone back again in the last six months, and that's what they say. There's enormous paradox between the fact that the Chinese are very happy to keep their country...

Brett Whiteley Because it's changing very rapidly.

Sandra McGrath And they all...

Brett Whiteley They see America is just a bath of freedom. And you need to have freedom in order, you know, to do it. And America now, you know, America is not producing leadership. It's it's dying. You go to America, even the fucking street signs, everything about In New York, you arrive in New York and you say that is a town If you ever see photographs of a past civilization, the Tower of Babel, or you go and look at Rome and see why it crumbled, anywhere that's gone under, America is sewn in its go-underness. You know, everything about that place...

Sandra McGrath You're contradicting what you just said five minutes ago.

Brett Whiteley Where's the contradiction?

Sandra McGrath No, no, what? In America's free...

Brett Whiteley Everyone's going to be like America.

Sandra McGrath They've found the seed. You said they found the seed and the most intelligent people in the world, they're really...

Brett Whiteley No, they've got they have got some of the most intelligent people on earth, wiring it.

Sandra McGrath You what? One minute, one minute they're down and out and, and they've gone, and the next minute they're the most...

Brett Whiteley Right, and some of the...

Sandra McGrath powerful geniuses who are really controlling it.

Brett Whiteley Right, some of the most intelligent people who are in America have set up the thing for Nixon to have gone over, to, you know, to have connected with the Chinese. You know, the whole West Coast and that whole hippie sort of thing is kind of Chinesing itself. You know, is much more to do with that sort of...

Sandra McGrath You're just flipping, you're not sure yourself what you're talking about.

Brett Whiteley Look, the danger in America is pure fascism, you know. It's just a pure military mind that is unadaptable, that will kill you. It doesn't matter about feelings, thought, religion, art, any of those things. It'll just do it because, you know...

Sandra McGrath Well, now they've took a peanut farmer from Georgia to become the next president, which undoubtedly he will be.

Brett Whiteley Because they need some entertainment. You know, Washington is just, you know, it's just the new Hollywood. It's got nothing to do with power.

Sandra McGrath Carter said, "We're running out of power."

Brett Whiteley I mean, what do you How do you What do you reckon the Chinese make of Howard Hughes?

Sandra McGrath I don't know. If they pay attention to him, they're only interested in his...

Brett Whiteley Oh, of course they do. They think about him a lot. Everybody thinks about Howard Of course they do. He's one of the most powerful capitalists, extraordinary man.

Sandra McGrath Well, did he leave...

Brett Whiteley He arrived at a He arrived at a point...

Sandra McGrath Did he leave a will? And he has seven wives fighting over him?

Brett Whiteley No, he's two, actually.

Sandra McGrath And all his money left to the Humane Society or something, I mean, what does he mean? He's just dead and gone. So he left a million dollars or a billion dollars in trust to seven wives fighting it. So what? He's an He's just an absolute symbol...

Brett Whiteley Well, his vulnerability, you know.

Sandra McGrath of the meaningless of capitalism. That's the only thing to think about it. If they give it five seconds' thought...

Brett Whiteley Well, that's one thing on it. There's also the humanity as towards the fact that he did slowly pull away from people and, you know, and and became a monk. And that hermitism, that capacity of ending your life in isolation is an enormously part of the whole Asian stance. You go through Of course you do. You go through cycles of money, you go through cycles of fucking, you go through cycles of health, and you arrive at 68 or something like that where your cells and your energy, you know, so you can't really, you know, describe it to anyone, you can't place it on anyone. You know...

Sandra McGrath What if I made an eye that's fucking 12-foot wide and the next eye is as big as a flea?

Brett Whiteley I mean, just a matter of just playing around with nature, just to see where you might get to. It's just intellect. It's just playing games. It's like those people in Oxford. If somebody says, you know, this day basically is indigo, you don't accept that. You go to the opposite end just to see where it'll lead. I mean, go to opposites in order to try and expand. And a lot of Matisse is about that. And they're also hanging around that old cantankerous bloody Cézanne, that yardstick that doesn't seem to be much use now, does it?

Sandra McGrath I don't know. I see the crossword. Master of discipline. Master of discipline is something else.

Brett Whiteley Picasso, it's his anxiety that's interesting. It's the one thing.

Sandra McGrath No one's picking up on Picasso. It's Matisse and his strength.

Brett Whiteley Oh, Jesus, there'd be some people who'd slaughter Picasso. You could take one period of Picasso and work on it for three weeks and you'd start to actually move the space up a lot. You'd move up the whole room five or six decimals. There's a lot in Picasso, a fantastic amount of fertility of ideas.

Sandra McGrath Fertility of ideas. It's almost as if all the others have just dropped Picasso because he was such a one-man band that there's just no way to compete with him. It's a bit like Pollock, where no one's felt like they can tackle Pollock.

Brett Whiteley Nothing comes from Pollock. Nothing. Total finish. That's Cubism condensed. All they All that did for the Asians was just say, "Okay, you've got permission to go ahead and make some television sets." It just let Asia free. It was the first card that the Westerners came up with that just said, you know, that's it. We've just gone through the eye of the needle. There's no figuration. There's nothing. We're just into that same space that you cats have known about. Just flick the card over. Pollock's nothing. Car accidents and drunken romanticism. He just gave the atomic thing of like America's about to go. Just announced the '50s. He set the Vietnam War in motion. I mean, all that whole...

Sandra McGrath Violence.

Brett Whiteley It's just a symbol of an atomic time, of a particular moment in American evolution. Visually, they're nothing. I mean, there's no picture plane, staring through into bloody grass. Barbed wire, is it? Out in the infinity with telescopes? It's just tricky. It's just nothing. It's boring, completely useless. No art will come from Pollock at all. Nothing has in the last 10 years, and nothing will.

Sandra McGrath Well, it's just a lot was a final stop.

Brett Whiteley It's not fertile, not like Picasso, not like Matisse, not like Lloyd Rees, not like me. Artists will pick things out. I mean, they'll just see some quirk of mine. I mean, odd thing in nature, you could get a whole stretch that'd come, you know, 15, 20 years from now, from some other kid. I have kids coming around here, and they came looking at things like that. It's really ludicrously embarrassing, because that means that they don't know. All they're doing is just, they're just coming, they come like Sherlock Holmes hunting.

Sandra McGrath Hunting for clues, hunting for a lead, a master.

Brett Whiteley No, it's just intuitive, you know. You just, you know, somebody goes on a car trip for 15 miles and which house, which tree, which bit that they really, the process is so subtle, you know. Critics and all that sort of thing haven't got a fucking chance at it. They just, they just sort of make parties.

Sandra McGrath They have people

Brett Whiteley sitting around drinking and talking and believing it's all right and money, oh, it's worth too, I guess, human spirit on the wall. How much would you pay for that Rembrandt there? What's that bit on his nose worth? Is that worth a million dollars, sort of thing? It's all mystery, isn't it?

Sandra McGrath Metaphor. Not mystery, metaphor.

Brett Whiteley Proper way of learning how to die. Still Yeats, you know, look at Yeats.

Subject It's seeing Sydney, it's must be his eyes are different. The woods, the color of the trees. They are softer. Yeats.

Brett Whiteley Yeats. Do you like Ivan Meštrović?

Sandra McGrath Who's he?

Brett Whiteley I made a point of not liking the Slavs.

Subject Notice if it's Slavs... We leave the Slavs alone, don't we? I turn my back on them.

Sandra McGrath Why have you turned your back on them?

Subject Too passionate. I'm not comfortable with them.

Sandra McGrath Are you Yugoslav?

Subject Part Austrian, part Yugoslav.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, God, this looks like the Mediterranean Mexican.

Sandra McGrath You don't look like a Yugoslav to me. What else?

Subject I turned my back on my looks.

Sandra McGrath Yeah, what is the mixture? It's not just pure Yugoslav?

Subject And Austrian. Austrian and um...

Brett Whiteley Navajo, no?

Subject Navajo.

Sandra McGrath Where did you What's the name besides Austrian and Yugoslav?

Subject Everything, probably, everything. It's a big mixture, I believe. In fact, we probably share the same ancestors. Going back 1,000 years, everyone's integrated. In fact, I'm statistically...

Sandra McGrath 统计 statistics?

Brett Whiteley He is.

Sandra McGrath I have got American Indian blood, not much.

Subject Well, that's probably some poor American Indian that uh slipped down to South America and slipped back to Spain, and came back out and ask, immigrated to America, and here we are. Hello, sister.

Brett Whiteley And what you should have had is just one full touch of midnight. About 1833, when a big black buck, fucking full spade, come in from the cotton field and just banged some white owner there, and you get a sprint off that. It'd just be a Wouldn't it be a beautiful canyon to be able to refer to? You've got none of that, you see.

Sandra McGrath Yes, I have. Indian.

Subject Oh, I'm sure I'm sure she has. I'm sure she had all of that. In Alabama, they would have had it.

Sandra McGrath In Alabama, it would be a It would be pretty unusual if there weren't some spades somewhere, wouldn't there?

Brett Whiteley Well, I wonder if these in the New Yorker's ark people, they reckon they reckon within a year and a half, the Russians are going to freak. The economy can't hold and there is a kind of, you know, Solzhenitsyn running around the bloody place trying, you know, screaming and saying it's going to happen. The Russian is going to freak. So the There's going to be a schizophrenic break right down the middle of the thing, and they they're going to be the first to throw the bomb, not the American. The American's too soft, too...

Sandra McGrath Soft!

Brett Whiteley The Americans The Americans are learning how to die properly. The Americans are the great people. The Russians are the fools.

Sandra McGrath They created Korea, Vietnam. They're the most violent people in the world. They've got the greatest PR job going. The last war since the Second World War...

Brett Whiteley They're going they're going into every extreme knowable. They'll take any drug, they'll take any death, they'll take it all off.

Sandra McGrath People who created Korea and Vietnam.

Brett Whiteley Right, and there's no longer any paranoia in America, you know. In the last two or three years, it's just amazing. I lived there fucking five years ago, and I could hardly even wake up every morning, I was so bloody nervous, and the whole thing is just absolutely altered. America is coming through. America is making it. America is producing the thing which is its own seed, which is quite remark- Of course there's fascism, and there's the most incredible shit going on there, but there's also the most sensitive and extraordinary intelligent people on earth still living there, and still wiring it and bringing it through. Now, as for the Russians, they do it. They're going to crack it in two years, and that's going to And they're going they're going to get the, you know, the the the the the staff, and there'll be this Noah's ark of various things, and they'll get who they're going to pick from America. I mean, though their telegram comes through to Norman Mailer and to John Cage and to Bob Dylan, and all of those cats, like, um, "Be here in 48 hours," or, you know, I mean, you know, or work your own bloody burnt path behind. You're half out, you know. Are they going to work the mixture of getting, you know, what species can you You can mix a kid up, you know, you could actually you know, we could work our own way of working out, you know, history and heredity, just because that you know, families only brew up things. We spoke about that the other day. I mean, you don't get a great clergyman unless about 400 people work on it for a couple of centuries. You don't get an artist unless the thing, the genes work and the luck happens, and so on, that you, you know, that it's all a matter of brewing and cooking, and you know, and taking time on it. And they can do this really quickly now. They can do it computers, they can actually work out, you know, should he have a bit of Indian? The next cell from him in relation to a It's If they analyse him sufficiently as towards, you know, the Freudian...

Sandra McGrath Are you a science fiction freak, Brett? You listen to that?

Brett Whiteley No, not really, I've never read that.

Sandra McGrath Brewing up a bit of Put a bit of Indian in him and a bit of...

Brett Whiteley Well, if they get to know that, definitely they'll get it right. I mean, is he a good enough Yugoslav to take it? And write the whole of Yugoslavia off, you know, if he's the one to do it, you know. And and when his when his club gets up in the comics, whose cells are supposed to be, which women have been working up the cause that I mean, you could get supermen quick, you know. You could get actually If you get You can add on bombs that knock out fucking 7/8 of the earth, even if the orange doesn't break in half and you've got nearly six months before the thing even gets over its drug habit, you know, and then trees come alive again and they can re-land, how many are you going to re-land? And what kind of thing would restart? Because life's never going to go on. I mean, you know, when when the Holocaust comes...

Sandra McGrath You can't kill everybody off in this universe, can you?

Brett Whiteley Oh, you fucking can. You can take out the Middle East, you know, before I can finish smoking this cigarette.

Sandra McGrath You can't.

Brett Whiteley You fucking can! By pushing buttons they can do it now. They can knock off fucking 60 million people like that. And they'll do it. They will. You know, we're not we all of a sudden haven't got wiser. I mean, I just spoke to a cop on the phone there. Humanity hasn't gotten any better. Hitler was only fucking 45 years ago. Look at the First World War. And look how quickly the increase of it. You know, we've got these bombs. We're going to use them! Yeah, and they're not going to be put away.

Subject Far back as the First World War.

Sandra McGrath Why did you Why did you lose Czechoslovakia?

Subject It's a death of a culture.

Sandra McGrath What?

Subject It's a death of a culture.

Sandra McGrath Well, how does that woman, Maria Mihailovich, exist?

Subject Well, she ran away with culture's life. Like a loss of Tibet.

Brett Whiteley Tibet haven't lost anyway. Tibet's just...

Sandra McGrath Do you know that about the Communists?

Subject I don't know. Any culture that that loses its national pride... Cultures lose, national identities change.

Brett Whiteley The Tibetans lived for fucking 600 years feeling as though they had an atom bomb about five yards above their head. I mean, you can imagine an icon of a city of everyone living in. Have you ever seen those films, the way Tibetans even move and so on? The whole sort of sort of ant-like structure, as though they've got this enormous fucking icon above their head, which any second could just migraine them completely out. And they've And look at Have you read The Book of the Dead? Have you ever in that thing of like psychic, you know, to pick up as a fucking fire bugle right now? You know, like like telepathy?

Sandra McGrath Does that make you very anti-socialism, very pro-capitalism? What does it make you then?

Subject Nothing. Sad if I think about it.

Brett Whiteley That's to be... one line at the end that just states it. You've got all that mist behind it, you know? Yeah, of course there's just a very quiet picture. Oh, she puts music, yeah, I'll put some music on. That's the one the Metropolitan Museum bought.

Sandra McGrath This one? Australian Bush.

Brett Whiteley Can I put that on there? Yeah.

Sandra McGrath Last year. Done in 1975 as well?

Brett Whiteley Maybe four. Straight in the New York drawing catalogue.

Sandra McGrath We're going to New York together. Stay in a hotel across from the Metropolitan again.

Brett Whiteley Right opposite the Metropolitan?

Sandra McGrath Yeah, it's a great hotel. It's a cheap hotel, too.

Brett Whiteley I didn't know this one. I remember sitting outside the Metropolitan and looking along there.

Sandra McGrath You know, there's a sort of pink and white striped awning with the only sidewalk cafe in New York.

Brett Whiteley What's it called?

Sandra McGrath The Stanhope.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sandra McGrath That's where you stayed.

Brett Whiteley That's where I stay. I get the biggest turn-on. Leo Castelli's is just around the corner. All the galleries are just close by.

Sandra McGrath Oh, I thought I was going to go to the Stanhope. It's a bloody fortune.

Brett Whiteley I don't know where the Stanhope is.

Sandra McGrath When you came here, where did you live, Brett?

Brett Whiteley Mhm.

Sandra McGrath Did you buy Lavender Bay when you came here?

Brett Whiteley No, we just rented this, this wasn't a flat. These walls weren't out and things like that. This is my studio and we lived in the kitchen.

Sandra McGrath In the kitchen?

Brett Whiteley In the kitchen. In the kitchen! In there was a bedroom. In there was a bedroom. We lived in the kitchen and I painted in this room.

Sandra McGrath How did you find this place?

Brett Whiteley Through Wayne.

Sandra McGrath What?

Brett Whiteley Through Wayne. Serendipity, to say the least.

Sandra McGrath No, no. How did you find this house?

Brett Whiteley Through Rowan Sclater, he lived underneath.

Sandra McGrath Oh. Oh, I remember you down at Palm Beach at Tony's. Remember when Jeffrey Smart and I went down there and said, wasn't it okay to live in here?

Brett Whiteley No, that was years before. That was after Christie, I came back for 18 months.

Sandra McGrath Jeffrey and I went down there.

Brett Whiteley When we first met. God, that's ten years ago, Sandra.

Sandra McGrath No, that was a different house altogether, because that was at Palm Beach. Whale Beach, Whale Beach. That was different. Ah, see. That's good, but Peter wants to adjust the drawing chat box.

Brett Whiteley Where's my notebook? I wanted to write the other night at 3 o'clock in the morning, and I wanted to write...

Sandra McGrath Oh, what did I say to you about that notebook? You know that white notebook you sent me?

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Sandra McGrath He's right about that. That is, that that's the size he wanted.

Brett Whiteley No, these photographs won't fit in that, you see.

Sandra McGrath Yeah, I know, but that's the size he's...

Brett Whiteley Yeah, he's getting an art library-type book, you know.

Sandra McGrath No, but that's the size he, you and he both decided was the best size.

Brett Whiteley No, I showed him the fucking manual over there and I said, I want to take those photographs and move them over to a book.

Sandra McGrath No, wait, we're talking two different things here, we're talking two different books. The book to put the photographs in is the size, actual size of the published book. That's the right size.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, but Sandra, because I don't want to go through the business of having to get every photograph, you know, reproduced smaller so it'll fit in that book.

Sandra McGrath Most of them you wouldn't, would you?

Brett Whiteley Well, they're... They fit, but you can't get all of them, they'd almost have bleed pages.

Sandra McGrath Oh, no. I don't know about that either. What's up there? I'll put it up there, I'll take it down.

Brett Whiteley All I've got... Yeah, I've got all the drawings up. That they are... So they've got 10%.

Sandra McGrath Is this Cezanne here with the grapevines?

Brett Whiteley No, that was the Cole Valley last year.

Sandra McGrath They're all up for me.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, all those would, but the colour ones wouldn't.

Sandra McGrath I think we'll just refer to that. I think it's the right size for a book. I think it's readable, it's... La la la. La la la la.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, perfect.

Sandra McGrath There's one.

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Sandra McGrath You've marked that up.

Brett Whiteley No, he sent that. It's got two pages of mock-up there, three pages of style. I'll rip that out, I don't want that.

Sandra McGrath Just paste it across that. Early Whiteley, how early is that? How far back do you go?

Brett Whiteley It's, um, Tom Roberts. Three pages of Tom Roberts, look.

Sandra McGrath Can I have some scotch tape, please? Ah, so this isn't early Whiteley?

Brett Whiteley Whiteley, Whiteley.

Sandra McGrath It smells ten times better.

Brett Whiteley You're doing this tonight?

Sandra McGrath What?

Brett Whiteley You're doing this...

Sandra McGrath I'm doing well, today. No, will you allow me... Oh, maybe. Get one on all of the drawings.

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Sandra McGrath You did, too!

Brett Whiteley On the edge.

Sandra McGrath Come on, Brett.

Brett Whiteley I'll have to wipe those, they're going to fuck up every one of those photos.

Sandra McGrath You did it! You clean it off. Bloody dry.

Brett Whiteley No, that's dry, yeah. Two hundred dollars. Don't let them stick, mate. If there's shit on that, let's get it off, you know? Must have been sweet tea, for fuck's sake.

Sandra McGrath Nothing is. Which side of the paper's up?

Brett Whiteley Oh, I just put music, Greek, you know, from Greek, you know, songs.

Sandra McGrath Did you see it, the Greek cover?

Brett Whiteley Yeah, I put the screwed-up sword in their head.

Sandra McGrath Where are the Balzac bronzes?

Brett Whiteley They're in London. Under a bed in London.

Sandra McGrath Who's bed?

Brett Whiteley Pat and Penny Allen, you met them.

Sandra McGrath Oh, yeah, Wendy knows.

Brett Whiteley Yeah. They got them cheap, too. What Moore wanted to have them for.

Sandra McGrath Are they the new series of them, lithographic series?

Brett Whiteley They're in a box. A beautiful box.

Sandra McGrath How many, how many in...

Brett Whiteley Eight, uh, 20 sort of thing.

Sandra McGrath So they've got, well, every one is reproduced there. That's...

Brett Whiteley That's, that's an early one that I want reproduced.

Sandra McGrath Cross out that photograph. Early...

Brett Whiteley It's called, um, Charlotte Lane.

Sandra McGrath Charlotte Lane.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, and it's about, um, 19...

Sandra McGrath Where is it?

Brett Whiteley 57.

Sandra McGrath Where is it?

Brett Whiteley East Sydney. You know, in East Sydney, you know, over there. That should be, uh, you know, before The Soup Kitchen or something. There's about sort of seven or eight things I want to reproduce, very early.

Sandra McGrath Don't, you know, throw them all together.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, that's what we deserve, actually.

Sandra McGrath I mean, did you agree on the title of the book, The Soup Kitchen?

Brett Whiteley That's a preliminary for The Soup Kitchen.

Sandra McGrath This is a book. Most important thing is whatever I'm doing now, put it up so they can see all the drawings and see what's happened. You know you've got to put the pictures in chronological order, don't you?

Brett Whiteley Well, I just got to put this out to the fan. It's my, for me now, really, just to, to really make some sense of it, so I can take a look. Because you're...

Sandra McGrath You're right.

Brett Whiteley It's trailing anyway, it's making the way there.

Sandra McGrath Then when we get the right jumping, the correct, the right times and places and everything... People will be referring to this book for a, you know... Once whatever's wrong in this book it'll be wrong for a long time.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, yeah.

Sandra McGrath Tell me what you built back here. You did the exhibition, the first thing when you came back in '68, wasn't it? The first exhibition that was at the Bonython.

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Sandra McGrath You had The American Dream, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, the Fiji, and Australian...

Brett Whiteley Didn't have Rimbaud. Rimbaud came after that. I had Baudelaire.

Sandra McGrath You had Baudelaire and after, Rimbaud.

Brett Whiteley Yeah. Fiji and I had Australian Aborigine stuff. Australia, Australia, you know, waratahs and, um,

Sandra McGrath There are no Australian animals in that at all, no, what?

Brett Whiteley Straight Australian animals.

Sandra McGrath No visuals from that?

Brett Whiteley Yeah. Oh, yes. There's some downstairs, little tiny Ektachromes that were taken in Sydney and Melbourne that, you know, sort of, um, um, uh, shots of the show, but not in the visuals sort of thing.

Sandra McGrath You get the energy, I'd like to put that in the book, because that's what...

Brett Whiteley I don't know where they are now. But I know they're there, they're in files and things down there. I'll... There's definitely some photographic reference of, you know, of that time.

Sandra McGrath And that was in 1970. Yeah. Following year, 1971, what did you do then?

Brett Whiteley Yeah, I went into portraits.

Sandra McGrath Portraits of, portraits where they, um...

Brett Whiteley That was the portrait show: Mao Tse-tung, Rembrandt, Vincent, all the, all the scrolls, the scroll that you've got, the scroll that Patrick White's got.

Sandra McGrath Was also that, it was the Van Goghs, wasn't it, too, at Bonython?

Brett Whiteley Yeah, the Van Goghs.

Sandra McGrath Oh, the Van Goghs. Oh, then...

Brett Whiteley Right, and the big Rimbauds, too, because I went into Rimbaud. It was down at Palm Beach. I went down to Palm Beach after and stayed in Hobson's house in that period.

Sandra McGrath Yes, that's what, that was when Jeffrey and I came down, Mr Hobson's.

Brett Whiteley I serviced Hobson's.

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Brett Whiteley Oh, yeah, that was the second time. That was...

Sandra McGrath That was the only time I ever went down there with Jeffrey.

Brett Whiteley Well, didn't we have a lunch

Sandra McGrath We did at the...

Brett Whiteley originally with, um, that little, little, knackered, little queer guy that runs that magazine?

Sandra McGrath Right, then we went out and got, uh, we went and got a dog after that.

Brett Whiteley A dog? At a pound?

Sandra McGrath We went and bought a dog.

Brett Whiteley At the pound or what?

Sandra McGrath No, a pedigree dog.

Brett Whiteley Who? You, you and Jeffrey did?

Sandra McGrath No, not the first time, no.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, alright, alright, yeah.

Sandra McGrath Anyway, uh, and also, the big paintings that you did, the sort of pastiches of Van Gogh's cherry orchards and all that, they were in that same show, weren't they?

Brett Whiteley Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah.

Sandra McGrath They were, weren't they?

Brett Whiteley Yeah. And then it was taken to Perth. I had a small show in Perth. I never declared tax on that, mate, and I sort of, so I don't want so much fuss about all that sort of thing. And I still had money from that guy. But there was a small show of Vincents.

Sandra McGrath Just of his stuff?

Brett Whiteley Well, there was Vincents and there was Rimbaud. Rimbaud was sold over there.

Sandra McGrath Rimbaud was sold to who?

Brett Whiteley Whelan. He's still got it. He's trying to sell it, but it's hard to...

Sandra McGrath And the Baudelaire belongs to...

Brett Whiteley Whelan, too.

Sandra McGrath God, he did well, just to have the...

Brett Whiteley I wanted him to have the two. He had the portrait of Baudelaire and Rimbaud.

Sandra McGrath I feel let down about the transparencies. I'm ringing the National Gallery to get some transparencies, so, um, I won't believe that I've been asked to fill in an art gallery, I've got to get some slides.

Brett Whiteley Oh, they don't do that. They shouldn't do that.

Sandra McGrath Alright, so '72, '73. The drawing show. Ah.

Brett Whiteley Ah, portraits, portraits. After portraits, what happened after portraits?

Sandra McGrath Waves. Just talk about the waves. Tell me what you want to get across in the waves.

Brett Whiteley The Baudelairean sense of the infinite. The sea's the fantastic thing to stare at, isn't it, because it's seething, it's pure energy. And yeah, it's just amazing. It's the most beautiful visual thing. It's got so many poets off. I mean, everyone's fascinated by the sea because it is... I mean, the sky is eternity, isn't it? If you stare at... if you lie on your back on a hill and look at the sky, a blue sky, after a while you start getting pins coming out of it hitting your eyes, because there's just no... there is just endlessnessism. But the sea is this kind of... hungry, lapping, bloody seething, over-rolling, eclipsing, spitting, bloody, you know, energy. It's like looking into a fire. Why does everyone sit around and stare in fires? I mean, a fire's more compulsive than a television set, because it's just pure energy. It just is, isn't it, mate? I like the idea of blue. I mean, I could never paint blue.

Sandra McGrath I'm thinking about this thing about you and colour, and I was thinking that the blue, the ultramarine blue that you hit on to beginning with, didn't begin with the waves and with the blue in the landscape, but it began with...

Brett Whiteley In the '60s?

Sandra McGrath They began as the backgrounds of the Christie and Monroe portraits, some of the cover of... Right, that was the first time that I actually could bring it in on the portraits. And the yellow? We were talking about the drugs and yellow. When I was first painting abstractly

Brett Whiteley in in London, those pictures like the Tate Gallery one and stuff like that, there wasn't one flick of blue in it, not even a postage-stamp piece of blue. Blue represented like the impossibility, like the complete opposite to my... I couldn't paint a blue picture. Blue I just couldn't use. I mean, you know, if I could just get one little snippet of blue into a picture it would just be a... And it's almost like an overhaul of like going right into blue. Blue represents morality to me, in an alchemical sense.

Sandra McGrath Why? Why did you pick on blue?

Brett Whiteley Well, because blue is the last flash you get before you get pure gold, in in alchemical terms.

Sandra McGrath So it's rather like...

Brett Whiteley In Marlen terms? Merlin terms. Well, you take everything and you put it in the red, you know, you actually fire everything up and smelt, you make a big soup of everything, and you get all of the colours of the heats and so on. And then you ultimately get to a white, you get to purity, and you go through white, and then you get to a final flash of pure blue before the before the gold spunks. And alchemical colours are black and red and white. They're the major. I look at colour that way, but I don't really think about it in... I'd like to sort of drain Matisse this year. I'd like to sort of squeeze Matisse, the end of that sort of thing. I'd like to have... I'm changing that thing, I'm having that nude there, a very, very bright red, colour it like this almost, like that rose. I want to produce almost ridiculous fauves, I want to clear out colour, in a way. See, I don't reckon painting's anything except just try and run it up so that it just amuses you. And if you can't see it, if you can't see the sight that you want to, it doesn't really matter. If you get pocket money at the end for having done it, that's okay, but painting doesn't mean anything, you know? It doesn't have any it doesn't have any um I don't think... I think a lot of people can't do it. Yeah. That's entertainment and decoration.

Sandra McGrath You're cynical. What I'm about to tell you, though, is that blue in the background of the one that's on the cover of the Robert Hughes thing is exactly the same colour blue. And you're saying, you know, it's... Well, ultramarine's pretty weird. The more you squeeze it and the

Brett Whiteley more you push it on, the more it goes into midnight, the more it goes into indigo, the more it becomes bitumen. You know, ultramarine really in many ways is just a skin, it's just a glaze, you know, it's just the sky. It's the only blue really, you know, it really is the only...

Sandra McGrath What in nature is really ultramarine blue? Cornflowers?

Brett Whiteley Yeah, they're part of it, they've got a bit of cobalt. Sky at certain times have got it. Certain women's eyes, certain jewels have got it. I mean, it depends on your spirit, doesn't it? I mean, if you analyse the blue in every person, you'd find a lot of you'd find a lot of turquoise people, people who basically are vegetarians, people who basically need a lot of yellow, you know, they like grass, they like the greens, they like a blue that gives to a green, they like to go back down to the sun, you know. I like I like a blue that gives itself to heat, you know, that wants to take heat into purples, into into purples and you know where like the fire, you know. I mean, how much The blues that you get out of a fire are the ones that I want, not not the blue you get out of, you know, out of nature.

Sandra McGrath Why do you think you used that background blue then on Christie Monroe? You think that was what you were really saying then?

Brett Whiteley Morality. It was moral- I wanted to have a really strong moral background. If ever I really want to just think about, you know, justice and and rightness and and you know you know how it works and science and things like that, I'd like to sit in a cell that is pure ultramarine. It makes my mind think about rightness, about morality, about about the science of good and evil and and right and wrong, and and and weighing those things up. That's what that colour means to me. That's ridiculous, I suppose.

Sandra McGrath There's no basis for it in anything I know. It's your own private colour system.

Brett Whiteley Yes, it's an obsession.

Sandra McGrath And the yellow? Remember we were talking about how you hate...

Brett Whiteley I like the violence in it. I love the violence in ultramarine.

Sandra McGrath But you realise the yellow that you used also, some of the yellow landscapes...

Brett Whiteley I don't like yellow. Yellow's mad, it's...

Sandra McGrath It's the same yellow, though, that you used with Christie, the background Christie's that yellow.

Brett Whiteley Oh, no, that was more to do with Africa. The yellow... Yeah, sort of savannah countries and sort of soft bananary sort of glazes and, you know, apricot, apricot heat, sensuality, I mean allowing colour, generous colour. No problems, no crime, nothing in the road. Pure yellow is madness, you know. If you put a person in a completely yellow room, they'll go mad quicker than anything else. It's the colour of the sun, it's the you know, it causes because you don't get any relief from it, you don't you don't get any gas in it. It's like pus. It's like you know, it's like virginity gone wrong, yellow.

Sandra McGrath I think that's Van Gogh's problem. I think that's what he related to so well. Colour is soul, isn't it really? I like it intellectually. I mean, I like to produce a picture that actually, you know,

Brett Whiteley really hurts somebody's eyes. I mean, not in an optical sense, but just like sort of burgundies smashing against violets and indigos and I mean Gauguin was a fantastic revolutionary colourist. Jesus, what a what an amazing ability to be able to like never play it down, I mean always get angry and do it, you know, be outrageous. I can't do that. I mean, I'm not a colourist, I'm an Asian. I don't want much colour. I only introduce colour as a sort of ping! It's good that you draw well, then, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, but then I mean they're not that's not I'm going through this thing. I'm trying to get superior, you know. I can't imagine you'd ever go back to black and white, though. Well, I could. I was looking at the rain the other day. I can produce a picture as big as that about rain. I'd love to do it, I'd love I've got a melancholia in me which just I could just have such a ball for two days, rolling glazes and knocking it back out again and sandpapering and just putting whites on top of milks, and I love that muted bra- bloody, you know, reduced, anaemic kind of sort of melancholic... You should do it. A companion piece to that, for the rain. I think you should do it on that same canvas you've got downstairs. Hang them together. I haven't got any canvases. Have you got any canvases? This jaw's gone out again. Have you got any canvases?

Sandra McGrath No. Why don't you order some?

Brett Whiteley I've got I've got to order some some for Bali. I want I know exactly the size I want. Halfway between two by two and three by three, and I want eight of them, and one roll of canvas.

Sandra McGrath Why don't you do just one rain, or whatever it is, that's what we got. Just have it here, get your...

Brett Whiteley No, I want to go. I don't want to stay. I don't even want to finish these. I thought, I've got to finish these before I go, I'm dutiful to do that, but I'm not even going to do that.

Sandra McGrath When are you going?

Brett Whiteley Maybe two and a half weeks. I'm still resurrecting my body.

Sandra McGrath You look you look fantastically healthy.

Brett Whiteley Ah bah, it's very deceptive. Yeah, I know. That's what I want for myself. I find that more beautiful than anything else at the moment. When I look at somebody who's healthy, I just find them princes and princesses, they just find they just glow.

Sandra McGrath I must say, you're looking better.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, I'm moving up. But I'm a very impatient person, you know. I mean, I'm waiting for a tide. I've got to wait for a tide. I want the fucking waves to come in and go over me. Every day I just get this little another little prick-

Sandra McGrath Prickly.

Brett Whiteley yeah, another little prickle and on it goes. Fucking one month, drip, drip, like a stalagmite, you know. I've just got to get better.

Sandra McGrath Well, you're a lot better than you were last week.

Brett Whiteley Mm.

Sandra McGrath Nine here, like.

Brett Whiteley Well, I want to get gargantuanly strong. I tell you, I want fucking fantastic speed. I want to really I just want to clear that out, I just want to blaze.

Speaker 3 Easy.

Brett Whiteley A couple of years, I want to blaze.

Sandra McGrath I'm going to take that one. You've made this progress in a week. It's big. Doesn't really, I think.

Brett Whiteley Wouldn't be completely... My body's still itchy. I still feel Look at look at that, there's a lump there, there's a fucking you know, the poison's still in me. It's still still I've got a plug here. I scratch myself. I feel I can feel it in my jaws, and I can't sleep, and I'm still, you know, I'm still loaded with poisons, and it's just slowly, you know, evaporating. It's like watching a dam under the sun, you know, you just come back every day and you notice the tide's gone down a bit, so like that's just really dragging. So tempting to get a telephone call and just, you know, go the other way. One shot and you're just...

Sandra McGrath You've got this right turkey on the walls. Keep...

Brett Whiteley No, I have to do that.

Sandra McGrath Something you've written in your head.

Brett Whiteley I know the payment, the maths is just so evil. You pay $200 for a bag of chips. It's ridiculous.

Speaker 3 I'd pay $5 for a bag of chips.

Brett Whiteley Well, you know, if you if you if you were in jail and you'd never, you know, but they were giving you Asian food, you know what I mean, you could get on that thing of like a one caramel malted and a bag of chips, I'd give $1,000 for it.

Sandra McGrath A hamburger. Remember what I...

Brett Whiteley Right, a Bronco Burger from New York! I get cravings on that. I go through fan- you get the fantasy trip on things like a glass of milk and you sit there for 20 minutes: 'This is Afghanistan goats' milk. It's been floating...'

Sandra McGrath Wait till Fiji, when you go there and you can't get any milk.

Brett Whiteley I bought a goat and started to play with its tits.

Sandra McGrath Bet you didn't get any milk.

Brett Whiteley I did! I love goats' milk. I love the I love that... See, there's an ultramarine in goats. You smell a goat? Everything about goat, goat's milk, goat's cheese, everything about it is a really strong odour, isn't it? Strong sort of... And there's also things, mulberry leaves and everything in there.

Speaker 3 You know that ultramarine and orange are colours of the high?

Brett Whiteley What are?

Speaker 3 Ultramarine and orange.

Sandra McGrath Who says?

Brett Whiteley Oh, you mean complementaries? In opposites.

Sandra McGrath What do you mean, colours of the high?

Speaker 3 On the high, you get...

Sandra McGrath Why is it ultramarine?

Brett Whiteley Well, that that varies with each guy then, mate.

Sandra McGrath Who says so?

Speaker 3 I do.

Sandra McGrath You go ultramarine and orange?

Brett Whiteley Well, I tell you what, I shoot my arm with $100 worth of heroin, I don't get any fucking colour up at all. I don't get any I don't, you know, you take acid, you get a colour up. You get a You've got to take mind-bending, hallucinogenic drugs to to actually increase colour. You don't get any change in your mind at all with heroin, you know. All you get is just this amazing nervous system body drug. Your whole body undergoes this hot bath orgasm, you know, so you can move without pain, you can sprint, you can be still, you can dance, you can sleep, you can I mean, it's just an amazing body thing. It's not a matter of the mind at all. It doesn't you don't hallucinate from it, you don't um you don't get any new turns of imagination. In fact, you kind of get to a kind of sort of mole-like blindness really. You get to a kind of sort of insulation, sort of I mean, that sound downstairs there could be sort of the ice-cream sellers in Arabia, you wouldn't mind. You cocoon yourself. That's what you do with it.

Sandra McGrath Was the last painting you painted on heroin the one that we did down at Bundeena, the big one? What's it still... Which one?

Brett Whiteley It's a fucking joke, it's a fucking lie. I hate it too. Which one? Mm. This promise is such a fucking evil thing, actually.

Sandra McGrath I saw this I saw this television programme on televi- heroin on television two nights ago.

Brett Whiteley Oh, every time you turn on television this is here, everyone's fascinated by it. It's not dramatic, though.

Sandra McGrath Well, this woman called Mrs Dalton, Sheila Dalton, she seems to be the only of all the sort of 12 people interviewed and all the people seen at methadone clinics and everywhere else who didn't look too good. Walter and I agreed, the people they interviewed on methadone, they were so zonked out, they didn't make any sense at all.

Brett Whiteley Sure, your hair falls out, your teeth falls out. I mean, methadone's terrible. Methadone's just one of those, it's a sort of concentration camp bloody you know, after-rings.

Sandra McGrath Keep everybody quiet and calm.

Brett Whiteley Super painkillers, you know, it's a synthetic morphine.

Sandra McGrath Anyway, this woman said, just out of curiosity to throw up her argument against you that she wants to see heroin legalised, for the simple reason, she says, is if you can get go to a doctor, you have to sit around a boring waiting room for an hour and a half...

Brett Whiteley And get a methadone prescription.

Sandra McGrath No, and you get heroin.

Brett Whiteley Where, in London?

Sandra McGrath No, no, you didn't listen to me. She said...

Brett Whiteley Legalise it.

Sandra McGrath If you legalise it, all right, and you just have to have a script, and you go in to the doctor and you have to sit in the waiting room and you after an hour and a half everybody with their boils and their babies and everything else, you get in there and the doctor gives you your...

Brett Whiteley A smack prescription. How much? You wouldn't get a stone off it, you'd just...

Sandra McGrath No, no, he gave you what you wanted, he gave you what you...

Brett Whiteley The thing is, the sky's the limit with the drug.

Sandra McGrath No, but he said she said that if it were free or for little money, if there weren't the black market, if there weren't the romance, she says, a bit similar to what you've said, that a part of it is the lifestyle, the circumstances involved.

Brett Whiteley The religion, right.

Sandra McGrath The religion of it. If you remove all that from it...

Brett Whiteley It's like sort of...

Sandra McGrath you just went and had to sit...

Brett Whiteley It's exactly the same as sort of reasonable, intuitive schizophrenia. I mean, clinical schizophrenia is that you can't stand life, your mind can't hold the the life situation that you're in, and you run up in the other side of your mind an invented world to deal with that, and therefore you get two minds. And then one of them starts to take over, or you get this wobbliness and so on, and you and no one understands you. That's what schizophrenia is about.

Sandra McGrath

Brett Whiteley understands you. That's what schizophrenia is about. It's an invented world because you cannot deal with the world that's around you. Now, heroin is not dissimilar, that, you know, the world is—the circumstance and existence of it like that. You take a jab of the fucking thing, you feel amazing, and you know, and then it quickly gets this train going where you've got to find the money, you've got to find the—the make. And you just substitute all of your emotions and let the whole rest of the garbage go, and all your friends and houses can crumble, and tax can, you know, and cops can go, it doesn't matter. Because you're just on the thing of trying—trying to maintain a kind of normalness by getting the drug to fit. You know, it just becomes a substitute. It just becomes something to do, because nobody knows what to do. Nobody knows how to handle the infliction of life.

Interviewer Affliction.

Brett Whiteley Affliction, infliction.

Interviewer Infliction's nice.

Brett Whiteley Yes.

Interviewer Infliction of life. Silly thing with drugs. I guess you understand that people who don't have anything to do—a lot of people in the world who really have nothing to do. They have no purpose, no family, no reason, no... Just getting, finding...

Brett Whiteley Well, I don't—I don't think the world will ever arrive at a point again where you're going to get relationships between human beings where they really can achieve something. I mean, you think about something like Chartres, where you've got an architect and you've also got some politicians, you've got some money, you've got some fucking cops, you've got some guys that can cut up stone, you've got a whole lot of fucking slaves, and you get this—and you get this spirit going, you get this whole bloody—and there's rocks and there's movement and there's bloody money, and there's this fucking thing comes up out of the ground over 16 years, you know. I mean, we're never going to get to things like that again. Look at it, it's just a miracle, you know, just right. They got it—everyone was on the right track at the right time. We're not—we haven't got the civic duty thing like that. We have just fallen apart. How many years have we got before—look at the bombs they've got! I mean, you know, if anybody loses their temper, just how big a crack are you going to get, you know? It's just going to be Noah's Ark stuff. I mean, the only answer is just going to be a few flying saucers, like it's going to happen on Tuesday and everyone just gets out of space like that. I mean, before you can even say like, bang out Russia, they can do it. Before you even say it, they can press the button and have it happen.

Interviewer It's just not going to happen.

Brett Whiteley Oh, what are we going to do? Our grandchildren are going to go through sort of ritualistic reverse Nazi trips? Rather than burn books, we're all going to stand around and watch like the last atom bomb slip into the sea? We haven't got any more bombs, we can't do it anymore, we've got rid of the migraine, we've got rid of the jinx of the devil?

Interviewer The extraordinary thing is that it's very hard to get rid of those bombs. You can't put them in the ocean, you can't put them in the sea, you can't put them in the ground.

Brett Whiteley Well, we didn't spend fucking millions going up to the moon for nothing. We use that as a garbage tin. Take the whole fucking lot up there and put it on the moon.

Interviewer Couldn't do it. Couldn't do it, can't do it. They can't get rid of them that way.

Brett Whiteley So look, the world's doomed. It's the only pink globe, it's the only pink one, it's the only breast, it's the only one that's got a little bit of a heart pulse. It's the only vulnerable globe in the universe.

Interviewer How do you know?

Brett Whiteley Because you've seen photographs.

Interviewer Of the whole universe?

Brett Whiteley No, no, of the Earth. It's the only pink one. All the others are stringiest, you know, they're all...

Interviewer Yeah, but there's only nine others to compare it to.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, we haven't got our telescopes big enough, have we?

Interviewer No, we haven't got anything big enough.

Brett Whiteley Two to four to 16. Let's get the fucking lens in the top of... Yeah, it just goes like, Jesus, what do you see in there? Right at the end of your eye, like the dot to the pupil, you know.

Interviewer Well, you're probably right, because you can see it just as well going backwards in as going out.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, right.

Interviewer I don't see any difference between the dots in an ant's liver and a photograph of the universe.

Brett Whiteley No, no.

Interviewer Mm.

Brett Whiteley Yeah. Yeah.

Interviewer I want you to do something really practical. I want you to turn that stove on to 250, because I've got some gnocchi and other things about to eat up.

Brett Whiteley Okay.

Interviewer Now, turn off 550.

Brett Whiteley We're not crisping up the earth again.

Interviewer Last time I brought him some lunch, he crisped it up. He—I brought him two amazing, beautiful hamburgers, and I said, "Okay, just turn the oven on because I don't know how to use his oven."

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Interviewer It's very lethal to me, his oven. He turns it on to 550, and half an hour later our whole meal was turned into a...

Brett Whiteley Hey, look!

Interviewer Not that one. The other's right. Hm? Hey, good looking. Look at what she got for me. How much for that? Huh? How much was that one? Hey? I did a whole big portfolio of them. Just do that. Do that and not paint at all, just do that. Huh? What? It's easy. I mean, look. This is my book, and I sold my drawings, you know. And I only sold two paintings, sold all my drawings.

Brett Whiteley Good man.

Interviewer And I did all the drawings in a matter of a day, made more money than the paintings I struggled with for months.

Brett Whiteley She said, um... No, Euan's mother said, um, that she was very impressed with your drawings.

Interviewer Yeah, did she? Good. I really feel for her. It's a beauty, isn't it? If you could get hold of just a teaspoon of this, you could better go up to the...

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Interviewer At least we had lunch before we came. You had lunch? That's late, isn't it? What time is it? 2:30. It is late.

Brett Whiteley It's a perfectly natural and obvious way to come in. You come in through then, you come in through toothpaste, you come in through that squirt, right? And then you just get that more and more tuned in. You get to that thing of like, 16 brushes, one of them absolutely just like a—like one kingfisher in a roll like that, or another slop, you know, and just get to that—the higher skin is per- You know, it's good, a year drawing, and you...

Interviewer I can do it, I always manage to... I always sort of... ...drawings.

Brett Whiteley Well, she got wide sheet drawing.

Interviewer Are you married?

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Interviewer Oh, no. I've been married twice before, so I'm allowed to get married again. A Balinese wedding. You've had a Balinese wedding? Come, we have to treat it like... Seriously... Din-tits, din-tits.

Brett Whiteley I'm really intrigued by women that have a—have a dark—a darker thing inside, and the further out you go, the—the lighter it gets. The hair gets lighter, the eyebrows are dark. She's got spade eyes, almost.

Interviewer Oh.

Brett Whiteley Patrick White's truism about that blue-eyed club, blue-eyed people and their club.

Interviewer What's that? What'd you say? All of us have got the same colour eyes.

Brett Whiteley Right, the—the people with blue eyes are involved in—in the most, um, um, stringent club of the lot. They recog- recognize each other on trams from 80 paces, and there's this— and they can't stand each other. There's one element of like, of non-recognition. There's also this sort of, um, part-flutter closeness, and so on. And it's also, you know, it's the Celtic and Gaelic. There's like—there's the—the—all of the element of, um, treachery and, um, cruelness with it, too. I mean, it is—it's like snow, in a way, and it's—it's also got the blaze of optimism. It's a very weird feeling, you know, having blue eyes and seeing other people with blue eyes. You know what it means. It's just sort of—you mean that, you know? What—I mean, so I can understand how people who've got coffee-coloured eyes, I mean, that's so much easier a thing to—to have to work—

Interviewer None of us belong to your club. No, we don't. We have a very select club. It's called, uh, Warm Limpid Eyes. Limpid eyes! I haven't seen that, so I make sure the colour of them—I know they're not blue. I always—I've always felt incredibly inferior to people with blue eyes. You have? I have, I've felt sorry for you. Really?

Brett Whiteley Well, actually—no, it's a perfect division. That's right, because you came up with the spades stuff like that, you know, and—but you weren't a spade. I mean, the spade thing like holds to that as fire. People with blue eyes think that anyone who's got brown eyes actually has had—is had to do a whole lot of like, really silly things, had to hang around fires, crush nuts, do pedestrian activities. I mean, there's a—there's a lower sort of monkey sequential sort of thing. Anyone who's got blue eyes has actually, you know, had to work, you know, different psychological, different philosophical sort of... It's more like a Zen thing, sitting under a tree somewhere and it's more blazey, more awkward, more abstract, you know. You're much more fundamental.

Interviewer What would our average star's eyes have been? Probably brown. Brown? Black. Brown, very dark brown.

Brett Whiteley Yes.

Interviewer I hadn't thought of blue eyes.

Brett Whiteley Mm.

Interviewer Really? What an amazing statement to be thrown around.

Brett Whiteley Mm.

Interviewer 90% of the world—certainly 50% of the world's blue eyes. No! No way! All of Asia has brown eyes. Yeah, and they're—they're—that's 60% there, and they have all the Africans with brown eyes. All South America. All the Southern Mediterranean.

Brett Whiteley And all of the Celt, the North thing, you know, the Gaelic and all that English sort of, you know. You check eyes there and you've got all sorts of things going from grey to greens, and you know, and you can understand that. There's cats and there's, you know, there's, you know, there's chill people and stuff like that.

Interviewer My mum's got bass-speckled eyes. I mean, the weirdest thing. She's got yellow eyes with brown spots on them.

Brett Whiteley Fantastic. Sounds fantastic. The young queer sort of film actor, I can't think of his name, who has the bluest eyes I've ever seen, like there's two fucking emeralds, how about that weird?

Interviewer I don't remember this. Well, she was so attractive to men, actually, she was just...

Brett Whiteley Maybe it was.

Interviewer No, I'm trying to think of his name.

Brett Whiteley In the—which film was this?

Interviewer A speckled trout.

Brett Whiteley Yes.

Interviewer Like amber.

Brett Whiteley Blue is your tweed there, you know.

Interviewer Not any color I haven't seen.

Brett Whiteley You know, as strong a blue as that, sort of.

Interviewer Yeah, and he had stronger.

Brett Whiteley Like emeralds, sort of, yeah.

Interviewer Where are you from? Yugoslavia. How long have you been here?

Brett Whiteley Really? The sister got the blue?

Interviewer Ice blue. Pale blue. What would—what would your mother do?

Brett Whiteley Which sister, mate? Who—the one with the...

Interviewer His sister.

Brett Whiteley No, no. That night, though, that same night that we were all here?

Interviewer Yeah.

Brett Whiteley Oh, the dark gypsy one? She didn't have blue eyes.

Interviewer She did, pale blue eyes.

Brett Whiteley Oh, green, there was a green thing in there.

Interviewer No. Terrifyingly blue. Ice blue.

Brett Whiteley That gypsy chick, that's your sister?

Interviewer Yeah.

Brett Whiteley Really? Fuck.

Interviewer We'll ring up her home tonight.

Brett Whiteley How about that? It just—it's strange. If you miss on one fact, you can get the whole thing wrong.

Interviewer No, I haven't got a sister. This looks—this looks like sort of a bachelor pad you're setting up here. I mean, you know, a couple of weeks ago when I arrived here it was sort of quiet and calm, and now there's parties going on.

Brett Whiteley Oh no, I'm not ready for a party.

Interviewer There's no parties at all. Quiet afternoon. I want—I want Frankie to get an ear, and rest in peace. Well, he's having it. I want you to stir the— Well, they're safe in here. Where? We're capturing him, we're taking him away to the...

Brett Whiteley I'm getting very worried about this money, because those boys are going to put the fucking night in the cells again, I can see that.

Interviewer Well, they are. Listen, I can ring up someone that can get them out.

Brett Whiteley She's just two years older than I, and her—and her son, who's been charged, is 17 and 1/2, 18.

Interviewer What's the difference? No, it's a terrible experience.

Brett Whiteley Of course it is, it's a terrible...

Interviewer So what? What they've done is a terrible experience. If they've done something to warrant it... Everybody writes books about them. Let them write a book about it. Let them have some experience for what it's about, and then they can do something good about fighting it. What's the point in saving everyone from the experience? Oh, it is terrible. Yeah. Draw a clean breath. If you've been in Australia—they've never lived in Australia, you know. What do they put in prison for? One marijuana joint. You know, it's treated like a criminal, a murderer.

Brett Whiteley Didn't—couldn't you find the money to appeal it and things like that? I mean, you just...

Interviewer Excuse me, they put us in the prison straight away, I mean, just stay for one night.

Brett Whiteley Oh, I see, I see.

Interviewer Right, anyway. We had a cell, absolutely nothing, not even a shit hole, no toilet, nothing. Padded out, it had a cement floor and a padded thing. You couldn't see anything.

Brett Whiteley Why padded?

Interviewer Sort of a beating, you know.

Brett Whiteley Was it a watch house?

Interviewer You might have been put in space now, they wouldn't do that. Space and all. We had a surfboard on our car, and the Gold Coast police were very strict, Southport.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, this is the same, this is the same.

Interviewer Might have been the only cell they had. Probably.

Brett Whiteley How much stuff did you have?

Interviewer One joint. They thought they'd found magic mushrooms in the back of the car.

Brett Whiteley What were you—what were you charged with, possession of marijuana? What's...

Interviewer Possession of a dangerous drug.

Brett Whiteley Did you get a $100 fine next day?

Interviewer I had a $300 fine.

Brett Whiteley You got $300? Who—who foot that? You phoned through to somebody to pay it and you're out?

Interviewer I was very fortunate. My brother-in-law was holidaying, honeymooning up there, and he paid for it, otherwise we'd been still in jail.

Brett Whiteley Yeah, what—what would they—if you hadn't paid the fine, what would they have given you? What sort of sentence?

Interviewer Uh, three months. Do you know the new law coming in now, I mean, that's—that's almost nothing compared to—the new laws that's coming in very soon says if you get picked up for drunken driving, that's a week in prison and no bail, no outside. I think that's fair enough. I don't think people should drive when they're drunken. It's too dangerous. Yeah, but I mean, all the...

Brett Whiteley I've lost my licence, not for drunken driving, but...

Interviewer Turn that light on then, will you?

Brett Whiteley No, just getting a—just...

Interviewer Smoking marihuana doesn't actually harm...

Brett Whiteley making a U-turn, two speed fines, one negligent driving, you know.

Interviewer Yeah, but I mean, look, I don't—I don't think they drive any better with marijuana than they do with, say, alcohol. Oh, they do. Well, it's everyone's opinion that they do, but I mean, I've been with people who are on—who are driving and have had...

Brett Whiteley You wouldn't even know whether the person was on marijuana. Marijuana suddenly makes you very alert about what's going on.

Interviewer It makes you cautious.

Brett Whiteley Of course it does. You're not going to have any...

Interviewer You drive much more slowly, for a start. Whereas with alcohol, you think you can just, you know, you think you...

Brett Whiteley No, alcohol, yeah, yeah. I mean, if you're over the hill on alcohol, yeah, definitely don't get in a car. I've—I nearly lost my life to some fucking creep with that. No, alcohol, when you're really pissed...

Interviewer Why have you lost your licence for?

Brett Whiteley Oh, just—just driving too fast a car, you know, just speeding.

Interviewer That was the downfall of you, getting that fast, smart car, wasn't it?

Brett Whiteley Well, I've never had—I've been driving for 15 years and I've never scratched anything, I've never been charged with anything. I go buy a fast car and within a year I've lost my licence.

Interviewer That's right. You've got to make something out of it. You do got to make something out of it. Some cars you just can't drive slowly. He used to drive fast. What's that smell, something drag over there?

Brett Whiteley Yeah, a bit of paint or something. Yeah, it's drag. You'd like some music?

Interviewer Yeah. We haven't had an interview yet, have we? This is...

Brett Whiteley No, it's, uh, that's good.

Interviewer That's scratchy, like. I'm the old lady from...

Brett Whiteley She just goes and entertains her friends with all this sort of stuff. Doesn't go down on any records. They just come round at 3:30, they just put the shit on and they go, "Oh, I was over there today and I get on and they all sit around and go, 'Oh God, that's something to say.'"

Interviewer "And the words he uses! Whoo!" It's funny that you talk so fast. Darling, take—that's one of the problems of getting these things transcribed.

Brett Whiteley Well, it's just quickness, that's all.

Interviewer It's just impossible. When I was doing it down in the country, taking

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Interviewer notes from the tapes you'd done for me, oh, it was agony.

Brett Whiteley I wonder why that is, actually. I wonder what it is about that sort of thing, because if I could say what I mean—I mean, I'm getting it three times faster than I can say it.

Interviewer Well, the Italians speak about the same way. It's nothing, it's just the way...

Brett Whiteley [Italian accent imitation]

Interviewer Sure, it's nothing.

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Interviewer And so do the chinky-poos and the... I'm having lunch with Clouston, so I'm proud. You found out this morning that you needed some prints. And, uh...

Brett Whiteley Yeah, I like it.

Interviewer I put the hard word on and said that I was looking for a job.

Brett Whiteley Frankie's talking about...

Interviewer Yeah, I put the hard word...

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Interviewer I don't know.

Brett Whiteley You know.

Interviewer Yeah.

Brett Whiteley That's right.

Interviewer No.

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Interviewer Sure.

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Interviewer Okay.

Brett Whiteley Right.

Interviewer Yeah.

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Interviewer Yes.

Brett Whiteley Right.

Interviewer Mhm.

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Interviewer Yeah.

Brett Whiteley Sure.

Interviewer Right.

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Interviewer Okay.

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Interviewer Right.

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Interviewer Yes.

Brett Whiteley Right.

Interviewer Yeah.

Brett Whiteley Sure.

Interviewer Right.

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Interviewer Okay.

Brett Whiteley Right.

Interviewer Yeah.

Brett Whiteley Yes.

Interviewer Mhm.

Brett Whiteley Yeah.

Interviewer Sure.

Brett Whiteley Right.

Interviewer Yeah.

Brett Whiteley Yes.

Interviewer I'm having lunch with Clouston. So I'm trying. You found out this morning that you were looking for some prints. And, uh... I put the hard word on and said that I was looking for a job.

Brett Whiteley Clouston you're talking about?

Sandra McGrath Yeah, I put the hard word on him and said I was looking for a job.

Brett Whiteley You didn't.

Sandra McGrath Clive—well, not the hard word, I just said I was looking for a job.

Brett Whiteley Why? Because you're fed up with being a critic? No, no, I'd already shaken that. You can't be an art—involved with an art gallery, and also be a—