Lawrence Daws

Sandra McGrath Oh, thank you. I can send it back to you anyway. I'll forward it to send it back to you. Oh, I'm still talking about this — I'm not talking about it, I'm just looking through this catalogue which has the Calcutta 1966 rather grotesque painting in it, which, again, I'll let Mr Daws describe as one painter's vision of another's.

Lawrence Daws Well, that's that's that's the so-called triptych, but there is a bigger and better triptych. I thought it might have been in this show, but obviously... Yes, here it is: Fidgeting with Infinity, one of his greatest paintings ever. Based on that chance stop at Calcutta on his way back from Australia to London, and seeing the horror of Calcutta, the seamy side of Calcutta life. Uh, it triggered several paintings, but including the Calcutta, which has this almost leprous hand or blurred arm with a hand up, wrapped in bandages, coming out of God knows what. And again on the side, a mixture of images, including street life and begging and so on. And that's juxtaposed with his 18 Tangier postcards, which are each one is about 2 ft by 20, 2 ft, 2 ft 3 by 24 inches. Most of those are still in existence. And they relate very much to his great, what I call the great triptych of the Fidgeting with Infinity, I think. I think the way, something happened when he did the Tangier postcards and the Fidgeting with Infinity.

Sandra McGrath What do you mean, something happened?

Lawrence Daws Well, I think the code was set. It tells it all here, actually. It's telling... Ah, here: 'At the end of, end of '65, Brett and Wendy and the one-year-old Arkie returned to Australia. But after six months, were on the move again back to England. The stop at Calcutta on the way triggered one of his great, great paintings, the fusing of the nightmare side of Calcutta with the beautiful Piero della Francesca Baptism, which resulted back in London in the extraordinary triptych Fidgeting with Infinity. The Calcutta experience and the two months then spent in Morocco and the 18 Tangier postcards paintings, hammered away in Brett's unconscious a strata of unknown darkness and threat, which was not to be unravelled until his return to Australia in 1969 and the probing cathartic Baudelaire and Rimbaud portraits unfolded.' And so on. That's, that's not just my way, it's my view of it. I think that really set set the coda there for a whole lot of stuff.

Sandra McGrath Let me just check this. In the same catalogue is Arkie in the Bathtub, 1967, and Australia, Arkie in the Bathtub, I might add, looks about, I don't know, she'd be about four years old. Oh, yes. What's the date? 1967. She'd be two and a half. Two and a half, sorry. Wrong, wrong number. I'm hopeless with figures. Um, and then also this is Australia, trip back November 1965, July 1966, it was painted. There's the great nude. Beautiful. The Fidgeting with Infinity, where is that now? Philip Bacon had it. Did he? I'll be darned. Here, it's here. I'd love to go see it. You see it often, don't you? All the bits of it. I haven't seen it often, to... An extraordinary painting, Fidgeting with Infinity. Absolutely extraordinary. Why do you think the highway... In one of my chapters in my book I'm doing symbols, and the highway is one of them. Where do you think he picked that from?

Lawrence Daws Oh well, I've said it. Exactly where I think he picked that up from. You'll laugh, but I'll tell you.

Sandra McGrath I will laugh, probably.

Lawrence Daws We're talking about him coming up the farm and altering, you know, adding lines to his Giacometti reproduction, bit of Kohl's lines and altered line in William Scott. The one image he invariably pulled out on every visit, and this is true, and never attempted to alter, was an early 1947 painting by Lloyd Rees, The Road to Berry, which is here in the New South Wales Art Gallery. I'm sure Brett saw this very early on in his life. It seems to me that this image had become a metaphor for his own road to himself. And it is a sad irony that three weeks later halfway which is between here and Berry he died, which is in Thirroul in fact. Halfway to Berry. It's just, you know that road in that beautiful little painting? He referred back and back all the time to that beautiful little painting, Road to Berry, in a thing. And I reckon the road thing is, that's what, that type of metaphor, you know.

Sandra McGrath Well, the reason we're talking about roads here is because in the right-hand triptych of Fidgeting with Infinity there is a road, a black tar road with white marker lines in the middle. Then there's the baptism in the centre, with a sort of huge, lewd female form and a bubble above the Christ figure, and then the left-hand one is the vultures waiting, picking the bones of the corpses in Calcutta, with a cross on the hill behind them.

Lawrence Daws That's it, exactly.

Sandra McGrath Oh, this is the Holman Hunt studio. I'm going to...

Lawrence Daws We used to play squash against the end wall there when the owner wasn't here. Big wall, wall with that. And there's the boxes on the... On the cover of this Marlborough catalogue is

Sandra McGrath a photograph of the studio, the Holman Hunt studio, with the boxes leaning against the wall where Laurie and Brett played squash, and there's some of the early sculptures with a the chair of Christie, yeah, a stuff a platypus.

Lawrence Daws And at the end, of course, the big famous boxing painting, you know.

Sandra McGrath That was the match to my cricket match. Um, this is one of the most brilliant of his shows.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, certainly is. The marriage of, I mean, it's just the two, they're two separate shows, actually, the zoo paintings and the Christie paintings, the zoo drawings and the Christie paintings.

Sandra McGrath It doesn't, again, have a date on it, can you believe that? Um, what, what do you think it is?

Lawrence Daws Oh, we know when it was. It was... Yeah. Yeah.

Sandra McGrath The zoo paintings, oh, had the monkeys, the lion...

Lawrence Daws Yeah. The bathroom in 1964 followed a year later by the Christie series, juxtaposed with the zoo paintings and drawings.

Sandra McGrath This was undoubtedly, in my opinion, the greatest show Brett ever put together.

Lawrence Daws I don't, I'd agree with that. Yeah. Yeah.

Sandra McGrath Mr Daws agrees, doesn't he, tape? Okay, where are we up to?

Lawrence Daws Now, where were we up to in the days, yeah. Arkie was one in '65, came back here, only stayed six months, did some of those strange, you know, beach things, the bush and a lot of Bex signs and all that stuff. Remember the Bex?

Sandra McGrath They had paling fences with... He had paling fences with Bex signs on it. That's when I met him.

Lawrence Daws Okay, then he went back. And then soon after that, he was awarded the the, what do you call it, Harkness Fellowship. So that doesn't come into that. It'll be in this, that catalogue, it'll be in there.

Sandra McGrath That was the Harkness...

Lawrence Daws In the meantime, he's obviously been exhibiting around the place. He exhibited one international in Germany, awarded an international prize there, awarded the Perth Festival art prize in Australia, all this in 1964. 1965, exhibited Commonwealth Festival Exhibition, Burlington House, London.

Sandra McGrath Despite all that, they never gave him a... they never put him in the Venice Biennale.

Lawrence Daws No. I went to the Venice Biennale in 19... 1967, awarded the Harkness Foundation Scholarship. And that year he also exhibited in the Pittsburgh International, Carnegie Institute. So then he was off there until the end of 19, well, '69, I suppose. Then came back.

Sandra McGrath Did you ever see him in New York?

Lawrence Daws I know what he did and the work, but I never saw him. I didn't see him again until back in Sydney. He came back at the end of '69 and moved into Lavender Bay, renting it at that time, and turned one whole area into an aviary, full of birds. Beautiful. And before he's actually, long before he's drawing them, he was only renting it at that time, and he was, then he had that show, including The American Dream, at the Bonython's. When was that? Was that around about '69? We're running out of sequence here. We need his book now, then.

Sandra McGrath It'll be in that one. It'll be in that catalogue.

Lawrence Daws No, here we are. '60- 1969, lived in Fiji for one year, then returned to Australia. Some of that time this was Wendy and some wasn't.

Sandra McGrath Which time?

Lawrence Daws '69, in Fiji.

Sandra McGrath Where was Wendy in '69?

Lawrence Daws Well, I don't know, but she she joined him there because they got joined, he got kicked out of there for having a bit of grass or something in the in the thing. But he was living with an Indian girl. You know that lovely Indian girl that he did some extraordinary drawings of?

Sandra McGrath The tandooris? That those?

Lawrence Daws No, not the not that one, no. Just a head. Rudy bought it. A beautiful head with lots of writing all over it.

Sandra McGrath When you say he was living with an Indian girl, where was he living with an Indian girl? In Fiji?

Lawrence Daws In Fiji, yeah.

Sandra McGrath Really? I didn't know that.

Lawrence Daws Oh yeah, yeah. He got he got the clap from her.

Sandra McGrath He did? Hope that hadn't happened to my son. He told me his work force is syphilitic. Uh, Do you think he went to Fiji and holed up there with the Indian girl, then Wendy came and the Indian girl went away? Was that how it was? There's so many beautiful Indian women there.

Lawrence Daws That's true. He did some extraordinary drawings of it, really beautiful drawings. And that's when I first started seeing the frangipani, you know, because that was everywhere in these drawings as you'd have heard. But maybe there were some early ones I hadn't seen. Uh, now this doesn't go, and there's a jump from this to biography. He goes straight from '69 to '75, leaving out the 1970 superb portraits of Rimbaud and Baudelaire, you know? God.

Sandra McGrath Well, they were in the Bonython they were in a Bonython show, weren't they?

Lawrence Daws Yeah, but this is this should be I mean, there should be something in 1970, '71 when he had exhibitions.

Sandra McGrath Biographies are... These sort of things are notoriously tricky. Notoriously tricky.

Lawrence Daws Even in this...

Sandra McGrath So... There you go.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, he's so he's he's back he's back in Lavender Bay. I mean, not back in he's back in Australia, moved into Lavender Bay, and worked on unraveled the Baudelaire and Rimbaud portraits, which I think are two incredible portraits. That was in 1970 and maybe into '71, but I don't know. Okay, anyway.

Sandra McGrath That painting he did at Bundanon...

Lawrence Daws Yeah, this is much later, this exhibition. I'm just reading the in biography. Um, Now what else did he do in 1970?

Sandra McGrath He's back in Australia.

Lawrence Daws Yep, he started doing interiors of Lavender Bay and the view from Lavender Bay in 1970 as well. So, you know, there's this this incredible the hero, the doomed hero on the one hand with the two big portraits,

Sandra McGrath The Baudelaire and the Rimbaud.

Lawrence Daws And then these beautiful lyrical, lovely landscapes. And then, of course, he got locked into the Rembrandt thing, but that was a bit later on, then the Van Gogh thing, of course.

Sandra McGrath That was in the '80s, '83 or something.

Lawrence Daws Was that that recently?

Sandra McGrath Yeah, amazingly recent.

Lawrence Daws So what am I doing all that time then in in the in the '70s? Probably all in your book anyway.

Sandra McGrath I haven't read the book in so long. That they asked me to fill in for the for the last 10 years. I love that drawing. You have a letter here from him? Oh, there's a lovely

Lawrence Daws I have, actually. Rather nice letter. All these little notes and things.

Sandra McGrath What does it say? The letter?

Lawrence Daws Haunted? No, not haunted. It's when Wendy's pregnant with Arkie. He's telling me to get on and do the same.

Sandra McGrath Is he?

Lawrence Daws I was out here in Australia with my first wife then, and we were travelling around Australia. And in fact we did. We got busy and conceived our first child three months after this letter.

Sandra McGrath Really?

Lawrence Daws In a room at the Duttons' place on Rocky Point, in which is exactly the same room that Patrick White conceived of the story 'Dead Roses'.

Sandra McGrath Good Lord, what a room. Where what who's in that room now?

Lawrence Daws God knows. Probably a married couple.

Sandra McGrath Do read it to me. I like your voice better than mine.

Lawrence Daws Well, this is from 18A Melbury Road,

Sandra McGrath dated September 9th, '64, 1964. 'Dear Dawses, Well, here it is. Remember our parting bargain, one letter a month for 12 months? Looks like looks like someone slipped up somewhere. I must take the blame, I should have started long ago, with you rushing around Australia and all, no time to write letters and things. I hear you've been busy. Where are you? Tim says he can find... That's Tim Burstall. Says he can find you, so here's hoping. I hope'

Lawrence Daws So, here's hoping. I hope the show... the shows have split them between the eyes. God, this sounds like a telegram. The fact is there's little to mention from here. I've been plying a steady north-easterly tack in the direction of lyricism. Lovely Christie has fizzled out. A couple of nudes, a couple of portraits and a couple of drawings is as interested as I could get. What a letdown after such an enthusiastic start. I think now that it's better to think about, and it means more that way, than actually seeing it or making something that works like it, and making something that that looks like it. The subject is too turgid. Maybe not. Maybe I'll get back to it.

Sandra McGrath Now, this is before he's done them?

Lawrence Daws '64. No, he's done-- he's already done the Christie Christie stuff, hadn't he, by then? Yeah. '64. Well, he didn't start until 1965. This is September '64, yeah. So, er, maybe I'll get back to it. In the meantime, I'm working on a cricket match, 8 feet by 11, a man tackling a rugby winger, 6 foot by 6 foot 9, two giraffes, 5 feet by 4 feet painting, 5 foot by 7 foot drawing, and a titter in the back garden in Rillington Place called Africa W11, 6 foot by 6 foot 9. I love the-- oh, he gives sizes to everything. And I'm also designing a postage stamp to commemorate Christie's birthday. It's a send-up of them, it's a tea stamp really. I have a man in the House of Commons working on it for me. There's a good chance it might be-- it might go through. You know they tried to get him-- this is not from the letter, but you know they tried to get him to do the Sydney Harbour Bridge commemorative stamp?

Sandra McGrath No.

Lawrence Daws And he did one, they wouldn't have it. It was a beautiful stamp. Because when I was down there in 1980, they were thinking about-- I'm not sure when it came out, maybe '82, or when when was the 50th year? Anyway, it was well ahead. And they approached him and he said, I said, well, there's already a Sydney Harbour Bridge stamp. So he went off and he bought one. There was a red one, and green one, a blue one, an old-fashioned Sydney Harbour Bridge, 1936 I think or '34. '36. So he was-- and he showed me the designs, oh, that was terrific. And he sent up a couple of other stamps, little ones, on letters that he'd done, the originals, you know. Just his mucking around. Anyway, they turned it down, which is a-- oh great, darling, God. Anyway, there we go, we go. There's a good chance, it's talking about this stamp--

Sandra McGrath Back to the letter now.

Lawrence Daws Yes, talking about the-- the Christie stamp. Good chance it might go through. What else have I been doing? Oh, yeah. I went to Pentonville Prison with Niall MacDermot, QC, MP. Do you know him? Terrific bloke. Absolute extraordinary experience. Nearly all the prisoners are short, painter-sized, young, and nearly everyone has a lazy eye. He's got a drawing of lazy eyes, you know that? Very disconcerting. It's disconcerting. I had very long hair, and one group of men, waiting to see the governor, gave me a wolf whistle. For this piece of trivia, their names were taken, which means they lose seven days of their remission, which means that they have to stay in jail seven more days. As there were about 30 of them, and as it costs £11 a week to keep a prisoner at Her Majesty's expense, that whistle cost the taxpayer £310 sterling. That's the sort of values prison, you know, set up. The very same night we went to a cocktail party at Kensington Palace, Snowdon was highly amused. He remarked rather dryly, that I must be the only man in English history who's been in Pentonville and Ken Palace in the same day. Wendy's getting bigger and bigger. She is very happy, and is in great health. Sends her love madly. She recommends that you get started. 'It's so easy,' she says. Bob Hughes is in town running around like a mad dog shaking hands with everybody and anybody. I like him a lot. We got on instantly. He's a fan of yours, did you know? The shows you haven't seen wouldn't lead one to think that you're missing anything. Miró at the Tate is quite something. Makes one re-evaluate Gorky's authenticity. Dalwood at Gimpels is poppish bronze and Horace Brodzky's crated from Spain, not much else. We're off to the Documenta next week for three days. We'll keep catalogue for your return, which will be when? (Question mark). We miss you too. How's Madam facing up to the beer-swilling Babylonia? In brackets, oh, that's not really fair. I'll bet she's a winner everywhere. Well, once a month for twelve, that's all for now. Love to Kim if you're in Adelaide. Look forward to our weekly talks again. Love, Brett. Over. Ah, by the way, get some squash practice in, son. I'm now Holland Park champ. This should send Tony McGillick after 10 minutes. Love, Brett.

Sandra McGrath Oh, tell me about... I got a letter from Cézanne.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, I got a letter from Cézanne, just a big thing, but, you know, he sprawled in line, saying, um, almost surprised, 'I've discovered the dot,' you know, and that's--

Sandra McGrath What does that mean?

Lawrence Daws Well, you know, after that he had used dot a lot in certain paintings, in foliage and all that sort of thing. In the landscape, it'd be dots and so on. I guess the olive trees and things like that down there would have sparked them off.

Sandra McGrath I'm going to go down to Cézanne actually and see see what he what he put into the Cézanne trip, because I think that's one of the great things.

Lawrence Daws I think I can find that letter, because he was very excited about discovering the dot.

Sandra McGrath I would-- I'd love you to try to find that letter.

Lawrence Daws It's a big, opens out. It's not a lot on it, but it's a big bit of paper. I'll see if I can find it.

Sandra McGrath Good.

Lawrence Daws So anyway, we're we're just about there, aren't we? Are you starving or anything like that? Are you okay?

Sandra McGrath Mmm, I'm not.

Lawrence Daws Let's see. He came up to Queensland, oh, yeah, he started visiting us in 1975, up in the farm. Do we need anything in between all that?

Sandra McGrath No. No, unless you've got it.

Lawrence Daws Well, unless we can think of it along the way.

Sandra McGrath Mmm.

Lawrence Daws Because we'd go down and see him quite a bit. Because he had a show up here at one point. Oh, this was-- oh, this was '81. No. Anyway, so he started coming up in 1975. And he drew all the time, just non-stop. Wendy was with him, and Edith was in hospital having Joe-- er, Joel. And he drew and painted all-- he didn't-- he didn't paint a lot, he drew mainly. A few black and white, things like that.

Sandra McGrath Describe-- I've never seen this catalogue at all. This is a catalogue now we're talking about which has a wren on a branch.

Lawrence Daws I can get you some of these, see if Philip Bacon's got some. Well, I'll make sure I get one and send it to you rather than take that.

Sandra McGrath Okay, and it's 'The view from the Dawes' balcony', 'Reuben entering the dam.' Reuben's a dog.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, Reuben's a dog. He was Dalmatian, he had a blue eye and a brown eye, and I'd taken him down when I went down to stay at Brett's house looking after Arkie in 1980 while they went off, for Joel's dying, to Bali. I took Reuben down. He was only a pup, about, you know, six weeks old, and he grew up down there in three months in Lavender Bay. But Brett loved him, too, and he'd go swimming in the dam, and he'd chase his own splash and things like that. And he was a vegetarian, he used to eat lettuce and all that sort of stuff. And it's all here anyway, it talks about 'Reuben the vegetarian Taoist dog' or something. It's just a bit of writing here, it's rather nice.

Sandra McGrath What does the writing say? 'Every time I have stayed on the...' You read it.

Lawrence Daws Can you? Yeah, this is on the back of the catalogue of the show

Sandra McGrath at Philip Bacon Galleries,

Lawrence Daws 1981.

Sandra McGrath 1981.

Lawrence Daws And it's just a notice he's written on the back. That's to-- to do with all the images, all the images are painted up at the farm, in, you know, our place in Glass House Mountains. He says, 'Every time I have stayed on the Glass House Mountains with Lawrence and Edith Dawes, the drawings I have made always come back to Sydney and get sprinkled around. Some have even been shown in London. So this time, from our last enjoyable stay at Beerwah,' (God, it sounds like a travelogue, doesn't it?) 'this time, Philip Bacon has encouraged me to show the works at home base, as it were. The view from the Dawes' balcony onto the Glass House is one of those absolutely monumental views. I have drawn it maybe 20 times now and have never penetrated it, especially the foreground bush, known affectionately as Hitler's broccoli'-- now, we never called that, I mean God knows where he got that name. Anyway, 'The wren is one of those miracles of energy that appear on the wire up out of the mist, and Reuben, the vegetarian Taoist Taoist, needs to be seen to be believed.'

Sandra McGrath 'Dated Brett Whiteley, 24th of April, 1981.'

Lawrence Daws Philip Bacon, yeah.

Sandra McGrath We're now going to discuss the Joel Elenberg friendship and death.

Lawrence Daws He turned up at the farm must be 1977.

Sandra McGrath Joel.

Lawrence Daws Er, '78, for Joel. Um, and Joel still had hair. Mmm. Photo here somewhere of Joel.

Sandra McGrath The reference to the hair is because Joel got cancer and had a grueling series of chemotherapy, in which he became totally bald and Yul Brynner-like.

Lawrence Daws Exactly. Oh, yeah. There. Joel and I played chess a lot.

Sandra McGrath We're now looking at a photograph of Joel, who...

Lawrence Daws On the farm, on the balcony.

Sandra McGrath ...at the farm, looking... How do you think he looks?

Lawrence Daws Very, very well. Very happy, actually.

Sandra McGrath No, what I meant, what is it physical...

Lawrence Daws Oh, well, he looks he looks a bit like Sancho Panza, or no, er... It's like a a Mexican...

Sandra McGrath A Mexican...

Lawrence Daws ...freedom fighter, maybe, you know?

Sandra McGrath A Mexican bandit.

Lawrence Daws Bandit, that's it, yes.

Sandra McGrath A Mexican bandit. A Viva Zapata type.

Lawrence Daws That's it, that's it. Exactly, now you've got it in one, yeah.

Sandra McGrath Right.

Lawrence Daws Now, here on the same trip was, er, Wendy. Oh, here, by the way, is is that painting I was telling you about, that Brett... Remember that Moroccan thing? You can just see the white line coming down diagonally.

Sandra McGrath Oh, yeah! I can, I can, I can. Even see the apple.

Lawrence Daws And that's him there, as well. He he was working up there.

Sandra McGrath Was he, uh, detoxing up there, or was he straight there?

Lawrence Daws Uh, let's see. He could well have been detoxing at that point. Yeah, I think, because he stayed for a fair a fair while. I think he could well have been detoxing at that point. I mean, that was a problem.

Sandra McGrath Let's have a look at that photograph, it's great.

Lawrence Daws No, that's just that's just stuck back together for for my own view of things. This is this is on his first trip up there. This is when he painted the mountains. And when he came back the second time,

Sandra McGrath Oh, look at that.

Lawrence Daws for a show at Robin Gibson in Gurner Lane, wherever his gallery was then. Um, but they were ages going away, and I was sort of living downstairs, sleeping in a little alcove thing, working away there, and Joel—

Sandra McGrath Where was Edith?

Lawrence Daws Ah, she was back in Brisbane with Joe, young Joe, you see, and the two other kids going to school. And she came down in the middle of it for a week with young Joe. Anyway, next door Joel was living next door with Kingo and Joel's girlfriend Diane, and he'd split up with Anna about this time. And they'd come in each, you know, in the evening, drinks time, this was terrific. Life would go on around the evening, and Brett kept drawing. We'd be drinking and things, and he'd— It's, he just did eight drawings of Joel's head, ink drawings, you know, just zip, zip, zip, zip, just while we're there in about half an hour, and laid them all out, and they were beautiful, you know. Anyway, I was sleeping in this little alcove down off the studio and working all day then, and they was still sort of not doing—even Brett wasn't painting. Uh, but one night he wanted to while I was down there, and he had this big canvas set up. And I was asleep at about 2:00, and I heard him come down about 1:00, eh, came down. He started, he was humming away. I knew he'd sort of on, you know, he started humming away and and working on this big six-foot-square canvas. He worked all night on it, you know, crack of dawn. I'd wake up and I'd see him still going at it. And in the morning he'd covered the whole thing, done a hell of a lot of work. Anyway, they eventually went off with Joel, Diane, and who else went? Tim Storrier went and a few other people. And in fact, all the women turned up there, Anna, his first wife, and girlfriends and the daughter.

Lawrence Daws Uh, testing. Is that coming through clearly?

Sandra McGrath Joel died the day of your exhibition.

Lawrence Daws That would have been August 1980. Um... And Brett, Brett has been back a couple of times since then, or three, no, a couple of times. Came back a couple of times soon after that. Once with Wendy. Um, and then he started coming back on his own.

Sandra McGrath To dry out.

Lawrence Daws Yeah. Often he'd go up to...

Sandra McGrath Is this your friend?

Lawrence Daws No, no. Often he'd go up to, uh, uh, what's that big resort called? Uh...

Sandra McGrath Camp Eden.

Lawrence Daws Camp Eden. And he'd get fed up with that, and then he'd ring up and say, "I'm coming up." And, uh, he'd just go out, he'd phone for a cab, just peel off a few of the readies and just drive up, you know. And the first thing he'd do is get them to stop and get a packet of fags, you know. He'd get a carton of cigarettes and sit back in this limo and just, "Take me up to the mountain." You know, it's a long way, like a two-hour drive.

Sandra McGrath What, from Camp Eden to your house?

Lawrence Daws Yeah, yeah. And he'd just sit back, smoking.

Sandra McGrath Wouldn't it be the relief?

Lawrence Daws Oh, the relief. Yeah, he did that several times. And then he'd get up there and he was okay, then. There was rather a sad irony about the place after he died, in that he was up there once and he obviously... They were staying at the Parkroyal, he and Wendy. And he and Wendy were up there. This was in the '80s. And they obviously were on something, and they were missing it. They only came for four hours, that's right. And they brought a couple of bottles of Scotch, and we had a couple of bottles of Scotch. And it went on for two days, you know, they stayed. And then they realised what was going on, while they were drinking all this Scotch, while we were all drinking Scotch. Um, it didn't matter, but suddenly they realised they were missing something and they needed some hit of some sort. I don't think it was the big, I think it was just something they were popping into their mouths, you know, uppers or something. And they were obviously back in the Parkroyal, you see.

Sandra McGrath It's two hours. This is an hour away from your house, you mean?

Lawrence Daws Yeah, and Brett said, "Can you get me a helicopter? I have to get back there in a hurry." I said, "Can't get a helicopter up there." He said, "Oh, well, get onto Philip Bacon. Get a get..." Anyway, we rang poor old Philip. Philip wasn't there. His mum was there. And this is Brett and said, "Oh, Mrs Bacon, I need a helicopter."

Sandra McGrath No, he didn't.

Lawrence Daws Mrs, yeah, and of course we couldn't get one. There were power lines everywhere, you know. So I finished up driving them back. Um... But the sad irony of that is that the day he died, you know, his death was announced, the TV people got on and they flew up there and landed a helicopter on the place. The one and only helicopter that ever landed here.

Sandra McGrath Where?

Lawrence Daws On my farm, our farm.

Sandra McGrath Really?

Lawrence Daws Just to interview, because they knew he'd been up there painting, you know. Uh, but it really is sad irony: Brett was the only one who ever wanted a helicopter, and the only one that ever came was to do with his death, you know. Uh... Huh.

Sandra McGrath I think it might have been the big one for them to have wanted it that much.

Lawrence Daws Could have been, yeah. But I'm surprised, you know, they tended to be pretty careful about leaving their stuff. You know, with the children. Anyway, um... No, he came back, and then he had a friend called, uh... Leclerc, Leclerc.

Sandra McGrath Daniel? I know Daniel very well.

Lawrence Daws Daniel, yeah. He came up with Daniel once. Well, Daniel was nearby with a girlfriend. And then they all came over, and we had two hazy days then. Who was Brett with? I don't think Brett was with anybody. Was he? He might have been. He used to bring girls up occasionally. We never quite knew their relationship, yeah, because sometimes they were quite young, and... I remember...

Sandra McGrath Maybe he brought Catherine Walker, or one of the Walker girls.

Lawrence Daws No, I don't think a Walker girl came up. Yeah, this girl was looking pretty young. It wouldn't be Catherine, one of the Walker girls. She was pretty young. Anyway, we'd put them in the...

Sandra McGrath Oh, I know. She was the French girl! She's the French girl.

Lawrence Daws No, no, not, not, not, not, uh, uh, uh, what's her name?

Sandra McGrath Aude.

Lawrence Daws Aude, no, no, he talked about her. He's going around, he's like a schoolboy in love. He had this photograph, photograph, "Look, isn't she beautiful?"

Sandra McGrath It's Aude. Okay.

Lawrence Daws This is not long ago. No, Aude.

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Lawrence Daws He'd been off in France, and they've gone off to, um, Venice together, he and Aude.

Sandra McGrath No, he went with Janice to Venice.

Lawrence Daws No, he went with Aude, too. He took Aude to Venice.

Sandra McGrath Really?

Lawrence Daws Oh, yeah. And that's, you know, just, just for a couple of days.

Sandra McGrath Oh, I see.

Lawrence Daws This is long before, Janice wasn't involved in the Aude encounter.

Sandra McGrath Oh, I see.

Lawrence Daws And Aude had a pretty tough mother, who was a banker or some, some such thing. And she very quickly put two and two together and said to her, "Look, Aude, forget this guy. I'll buy you an apartment." And Aude went for the apartment, you see. Poor old Brett was trying to write letters to her and things. It was rather sad to see. This sort of aging sort of, about 50, oh, over 50 then,

Sandra McGrath 18 was Aude, I think.

Lawrence Daws and this lusting after this 18-, 20-, 18-, 19-year-old. She was very beautiful. Anyway, now, it wasn't her, it was somebody else a bit like that. And he did put them in this room together. And we didn't know what their relationship was. We didn't know if they were going to have it or what. Anyway, when it came time to go to bed, you know, it was about 2:00 in the morning, old Brett sort of got that funny look on his face. It was Catherine, it might have been the Walker, Catherine Walker. Is it Catherine, Catherine Walker?

Sandra McGrath There's Catherine and Emma. They're two of the Walker...

Lawrence Daws It wasn't Emma, it might have been Catherine, because he suddenly got this sort of schoolmaster's face on him. Said, "Come on, Catherine. To the bedroom." You know. And we suddenly realised, "God, maybe, you know..." So, anyway, they went up there. That's, uh...

Sandra McGrath He was madly in love with her, according to some people.

Lawrence Daws Yes.

Sandra McGrath She's very beautiful, isn't she? I mean, really startlingly beautiful.

Lawrence Daws Yeah. There's other things, too. You know the, the letter, for example, letter, letter to Anna?

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Lawrence Daws Do you know the origins of that?

Sandra McGrath I don't know, but I think it's one of his great masterworks, the Modigliani thing.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, everyone says it's Anna, his wife, you know, Anna, Anna, uh, Elenberg's wife.

Sandra McGrath Yeah, I thought it was.

Lawrence Daws No, it's not. It's, it's, uh, Anna Patrick. You know Victor and Beth Patrick?

Sandra McGrath No. Who are they?

Lawrence Daws Oh, they're great old friends of Beryl's and, and Brett's. Maybe I shouldn't be saying all this. Maybe it's libellous.

Sandra McGrath Why, why is it libellous?

Lawrence Daws Yeah, I'll, I'll tell you. Uh... This is how, this is as Brett told, told, told to me. It was when Joel was up there, and in London, at one place, they'd gone to, gone to Patrick's, or Patrick's had come to... I think they'd gone to Patrick's. The Patricks' house in London. Victor Patrick was either the editor of the Daily Express or one of the, one of the Fleet Street, big Fleet Street rags. He died quite recently. And she was quite... Um, and so, I'm surprised you haven't heard about here. Great friends of the Whiteleys, the mum in particular, and and Beryl, and and then Wendy, and Brett. Anyway, Joel was over there. This was back before he had the leukaemia, any of those things. And Anna Patrick, they had a couple of sons and a daughter, and Anna Patrick, who was 16 or something at the time, walked into the room, and her eyes and, and, uh... Brett? Joel! No, Joel's, met across the room. And Brett said, you know, it was like lightning. It was like, you know, um... It was just unbelievable. A crackle, and it went straight across. Electricity, you know. And, in fact, they they became lovers.

Sandra McGrath Immediately?

Lawrence Daws Well, pretty soon after that.

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Lawrence Daws And her name was Anna, and it this was a letter to Anna. I might have been telling Anna about his feelings.

Sandra McGrath Oh, really? Oh.

Lawrence Daws Or saying that, you know, "I love you, Joel."

Sandra McGrath "I love you, Joel." Or...

Lawrence Daws "I love you, but I have to go," sort of thing. Uh, and that that's the real Anna. It's not, it's not...

Sandra McGrath So Anna is Anna is the daughter of the great friend of the Patricks of Victor Patrick?

Lawrence Daws Anna is the daughter of Patricks, of Anna, of Beth and Victor Patrick. Anna, Anna Patrick.

Sandra McGrath And she's also a friend of Arkie's, isn't she?

Lawrence Daws I would think very close friend, yeah.

Sandra McGrath Yeah. Mhm. I don't think Arkie's going to be able to... Tell me an anecdote...

Lawrence Daws No, I don't know. I I can't just now think, you know. I's, I'm sure there are some, but... I can't think what the hell they are.

Sandra McGrath Anecdotes are actually What do you Can you think of one episode that in a way that you had with Brett that you think would reveal some aspect of his character?

Interviewer Now, what we're looking at now on tape is the Bacon Study of a Baboon. What's the date? 1953. And a drawing of

Lawrence Daws an ape by Brett Whiteley, 1965. But this was the Bacon was actually shown in 1962.

Interviewer 2. But the Bacon The Bacon was painted in 1953 but shown in 1962, and Brett just totally holus-bolus picked it up

Lawrence Daws and put it into his drawing of an ape, including the wire. You just had to put the wire. Yeah, that's it's two different paintings.

Interviewer I mean, it's incredible. He also, um, the same sort of in brushstrokes.

Lawrence Daws There are some great Bacons here, Sphinx and all those things.

Interviewer Thomas Thrall Soby suggests that this was the Bacon was based on part of a photograph of baboons in acacia trees reproduced in Maxwell's Stalking Big Game with a Camera in Equatorial Africa. This may be so, but the photograph only shows the baboons in the distance, and the one in the question and in question does not have its mouth open.

Lawrence Daws Brett loved the way Bacon painted this was that straight, you know, it's straight virile, straight, muscular, grass. Very much so. We could go on forever doing this, but you could have seen at that time I mean, who would who would have seen it at that time, I mean? It was pretty impressive line-up of people, you saw. You're telling about Bacon and Moore. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Just bloody lucky to to have been there when all that was happening. Bacon also did dogs. His 1952 Dog is a classic Bacon painting. Yeah. Is that the one walking over here? There's that one. There's another one. It's just the dog on its own, you see. Ah, Study of a Dog, 1952. Just a great, you know, a a grate in the foreground. I think it's in there. Well, that's that's it. That's a beautiful... That's one of my great favourite paintings of all time, that one. Um,

Interviewer in your opinion, why why would he have liked, uh, Bacon, Brett liked Bacon being so appealing to him?

Lawrence Daws I think it was it's what his heroes had, is that moment of illuminated rightness, what, you know, Rimbaud and and Baudelaire had, that inspired moment of rightness, and they knew when it was there, and they went zip and did it, you know, just the word or whatever. And Bacon was exactly the same in his painting. You know, he just he didn't overwork for days and days, you know. He just went in and did it, boom. And if it didn't, he just ripped it up. He used to throw it out. People used to come and steal them out of his garbage can, and he'd destroy them. But, you know, he doesn't over work over. And I think that's what he liked particularly about him, that he could just get it right and just

Interviewer do it, just like that, you know? Here's a description in the introduction to the, uh, catalogue which says, "Certain of the earlier paintings of Francis Bacon were once likened to vapours from a magic cauldron, condensing here and there into the wavering likeness of a human form, but about to dissolve and to disintegrate again." That was very much what some of what Brett was onto at that period of

Lawrence Daws time. End of quote. We're back looking at the Diebenkorn catalogue. Diebenkorn catalogue, yeah. It's just the transition that this represented, where he identified so much with Diebenkorn at this moment, and it was a transition away from, and the link to get him out of, of the the poorhouse paintings he did and the... Are you talking about soup kitchens? Yes, soup kitchen stuff, and the and the and the landscape, a slight sort of Drysdale touch to it and a little bit of Lloyd Rees, but it was to lift him out of that into a more international format for one thing, and open, you know, a way of proceeding beyond that. And then he used it brilliantly, just like that. Just for two years of his life, probably. And then he was on and beyond, you know?

Interviewer Interesting comment. We're talking about Daws and Brett. I think you'll have to tape this because it's too...

Lawrence Daws Yeah. Brett came up, uh, we saw him in the, no. Brett came up, uh, about last September.

Interviewer What's that about?

Lawrence Daws We've got to stop, now.

Interviewer We're stopping because we can't hear a damn thing at the moment. Uh, there's We're in a car...

Lawrence Daws We'll pull over here, actually. It'll just be a stop for a... What's on your plan, by the way?

Interviewer Okay, now we're talking about the last time he came up here.

Lawrence Daws There was a couple of times, actually. It was 1991, Brett came up in about, uh, August, September. And he was really depressed about legal costs. He was quoting figures like $600,000, things like that, in the divorce and the and the settlements, just in legal fees, we're talking about. $600,000 he was talking about. And on top of that, in in the in the carve-up of his paintings, there were a group of something like 70 paintings, 70 70-plus, that he'd always referred to as the Irrevocables. They were the key paintings, they were key to him. I mean, they weren't all great paintings. Some were just small drawings and so on, but that represented an enormous movement straightforward for him at some time in his life, not something that has shuffled around the side and got there. They were all very important, directly moving forward sort of images for him. And he called them the Irrevocables. And they were like his like his armour in a way. As long as he had them, that he was the whole person.

Interviewer Do you remember some of the names of those paintings? I know the Soup Kitchen was one.

Lawrence Daws I've got the names here, actually.

Interviewer Oh, let's read them out. No, I'm not sure we can, but, uh...

Lawrence Daws Okay. Oh, okay. Why not? Well, we've got time. Turned off. I'll read them, but I can't... The Irrevocables were... Got enough tape there for all this?

Interviewer I've got another tape, two tapes.

Lawrence Daws Okay? Yeah. Right, the Irrevocables. Among the paintings, they include Self-portrait after Three Bottles of Wine, with a stain in brackets; Art, Life and the Other Thing, an oil, Archibald winner in 1978; the three Crucifixes of God, 1980, one is is an oil gold, the other oil black, and the other is a charcoal; Anna: The Letter, an oil of 1980; Patrick White as a Headless, as a Headland, an oil, 1979. These were all part of the what Brett always referred to as the Irrevocables. Whale Beach, ink drawing, 1965; The Bush, triptych, an oil, 1965; Francis Bacon portrait, oil; Van Gogh Blossom 3, an oil, 1987; The Night Café, oil, 1972; Vincent Walking Down the Street at Palm Beach, oil, 1972; To Yurrabulla, oil, and Platypus and Stone, 1979-80; Charlotte Lane, oil, 1958. Among the sculptures of his so-called Irrevocables there were the two shark sculptures, 1965, male and female; The Nude of Mangrove Wood, 1978; Totem Black Egg, 1978-88; Totem Spotted Egg, 1989; Green Heron, bronze, 1983; Giraffe, bronze, 1983-88. These works obviously took a long time to evolve, you know, and some of the dates are covering 10 years span. Small Mangrove Torso of Arkie, 1978; The Owl, brackets Fruit, 1983; and three ceramic vases, an, uh, Erotic, Rhino, and a Large Blue Leaves. Among the drawings there were this, uh, now where are we here? Lindfield Gardens, 1984, large ink drawing; Tjitji, 1961, charcoal; Self-portrait with Board, 1975, brush, or With Beard, 1975, brush; Buddhism, ink with lead; Mallorca Sketch, charcoal, 1962; Deià, is what it was. This will all be recorded. Small Christie painting, mixed media, 1964, unfinished; Christie Sculpture of Chair; orange velvet large notebook; all sketchbooks and preliminary notes; pile of unfinished and unsigned drawings. They're all part of what

Interviewer he called his Irrevocables. What's he being fucked out of then? What about Alchemy? He's done on that. That was what he forgot to put in.

Lawrence Daws No, he didn't forget to put it in. That's the list We're talking about his will, you see. That's that's the list that is is the residual after all the fucking out's gone. Anyway, we're talking about Brett. Is that on now? Yeah. We're talking about Brett and his The last time I saw The last two times I saw him, he was so bogged down. He was so bogged down with the court the court costs and the the splitting up of the Irrevocables. Uh, he's really in an incredibly depressed state. He keep kept referring back to that. That that that was in Sept- Oct- September, October. And then in November when we saw him, the bad news was that he was losing Alchemy. He tried desperately to hang onto it in the court by saying claiming that the that it was unfinished. And in fact, although, you know, he's exhibited and all the rest of it, but lots of sort of a workhorse where he was still unravelling things. And technically, a painting like that, probably is unfinished until until the painter's dead, and it goes on being unfinished. However, the judge, who was flown up from Melbourne, who Brett thought was quite unsympathetic, handed it over, and Wendy got Alchemy. And that was the the final thing for Brett. I think he was so depressed by that. The whole time we were down in Sydney, he kept talking about Alchemy and the loss of Alchemy. But before that, harking back to second to last time I saw him, when he came up to the farm in the Glass House Mountains, he, uh, he was grieved. Well, not grieved, he was he was inwardly hurting over the article by Joanna Mendelssohn in The Bulletin about the time of his exhibition following the the big exhibition in the New South Wales Art Gallery, the French paintings and drawings, the Paris works, and then the commercial show at the Australian Galleries, which was, in fact, a hodgepodge of material drawn from from, uh, down the coast and so on, and and a couple of the French things. But it wasn't so much that that was rubbish. It was that his whole sort of modus operandi was was questioned and threatened. And it seemed to somehow get under his skin, get deep into him, and he couldn't shake it. He kept coming back to it. And when he was up at the farm, he got quite ill. And I think this had a lot to do with it, plus the the loss of the Irrevocables and the the real pain and loss of the, so, of the split-up after the divorce. But he kept coming back, and I'd go and see him. He was over in He was sleeping over in the studio, and I'd go and see him and he had a copy of this article there, which obviously was like a thorn in his side. He kept burrowing away at it and fidgeting about it and so on. And I think in the end that the loss of the Irrevocables, the ones that were so meaningful to him, and the thought, because, you know, he was going to leave the Raper Street place to the to the state, virtually, containing all the Irrevocables. And the thought that in the end it's just a filtered-down version of the Irrevocables, and that his whole way of proceeding had been questioned in such a, well, to him it seemed quite a brutal way. Uh, he certainly felt that somebody had got got in there at a level that was not what normal criticism was about and got to work on him. Now, he's been around long enough to have been, you know, to have developed pretty thick skin for that sort of thing, so perhaps he was vulnerable at that moment. But whatever it was, it was deeply in place and deeply under his skin, and it was gnawing away at him. And I would think that and the fact that he'd lost the Irrevocables, in terms of his grand concept of the state owning the gallery and all the Irrevocables, would have dispirited him to a point where he wouldn't have wouldn't have had the same zest for anything anymore.

Interviewer Now, what do we need to know about the funeral? I don't know that I need to report anything. I tell you that's why it's amazing I have any tape, because it was all emotional.

Lawrence Daws It's near personal, just, you know, feeling emotional.

Interviewer No, okay. Yeah, righto, yeah.

Lawrence Daws Oh, shit. Can't you understand, yeah. Now, the funeral, the funeral was a private, a private one at at the crematorium, at the the North Ryde Crematorium in in Delhi, Delhi Road, um at at at noon on Monday. Now I don't know what day it would be, the fifth, 14th, about the 20th, I guess it No, 14th, 21st maybe, 21st of June. Anyway, a Monday. Um we arrived there. I uh Edith and I were staying with the Lanceleys, and and we went with uh went to Beryl's house and we were taken to the crematorium by Chris, Chris Francis, a friend of Beryl's, and we arrived there and there were about 30, 40 people standing around, various relatives and certainly friends of Brett's and so on. Um Janice was there, Wendy and Arkie were there. Um the undertakers arrived and there were uh six, six people including Tim Storrier and Mick Johnson carried, helped carry the the coffin and placed it in in its place in the crematorium.

Sandra McGrath Have you ever been a pallbearer before?

Lawrence Daws No, no I haven't. No. I wasn't a pallbearer. I I saw them happening. I was standing over the back with Edith and with Chrissie Francis. Um and then we all trooped in. There were enough to fill over the seats and probably 15, 20 people standing at the back. And there was music being played. There was Bob Dylan, um Van Morrison, and Dire Straits.

Sandra McGrath 1, 2, 3, testing 1, 2, 3, talking to Laurie Daws at the Performance Centre, Brisbane, August 1992. We're now looking at the first catalogues that, for the shows in London.

Lawrence Daws What happened was that there was the Whitechapel exhibition, of course, and then immediately after the Whitechapel exhibition, Bryan Robertson organised three of us: Blackman, Whiteley, and I, to be in the in the Paris Biennale for young painters under 35. And Brett, I think, used one work from that show, and then other works for the Paris Biennale. And I used one work that was in the Whitechapel and a couple of other new ones. And from that, at the time of the Paris Biennale, the Matthiesen Gallery came over to the, to Paris, and saw our work in it. And we all scored a show each then: Blackman, Brett, and myself, to be held the following year. Charlie was first off the rank, and that was Charlie's at Matthiesen Gallery. Matthiesen Gallery is the gallery that Sidney Nolan showed his Leda and Swan paintings in, a couple of years before. Let's see. Well, the old man Matthiesen was the was the owner and director of it, but in fact the two active directors were John Synge and Stephanie Maison. of them, both of them had come. So this was Charlie Charlie was shown there in November '61.

Sandra McGrath That's his show was from the 3rd of November to the 25th of November 1961 at 142 New Bond Street.

Lawrence Daws And that gallery is no longer a gallery. It was taken over, directly opposite Sotheby's in New Bond Street, and when the old man Matthiesen died, the gallery closed down, and Sotheby's actually bought the gallery. And it's now an annex of Sotheby's.

Sandra McGrath Today the Matthiesen Gallery is an annex of Sotheby's at the same address?

Lawrence Daws The same address, yes. And that Charlie's show was followed by Brett's show, which is, let's see, in March '61.

Sandra McGrath Brett Whiteley's show at the Matthiesen Gallery at 142 New Bond Street was paintings and gouaches from the 9th to the 31st of March 1962. Now we want to just stop for a minute, make sure we... So, in this exhibition were paintings called Somewhere in Summer, The Black of Anxiety, Untitled Red Painting 1, Untitled Painting 2, Untitled Red Painting 4, Untitled White and Pink Painting, Untitled White Painting 1, Untitled Painting 3, Untitled Warm Painting—oh God, it goes on forever. There were in all 29 temperas and collages and two serigraphs.

Lawrence Daws Fantastic. All right. Now, and that was followed—my show was later that year, in October.

Sandra McGrath 1962, 4th to 27th of October, Lawrence Daws had an exhibition at the Matthiesen Gallery and showed 36 oils and gouaches and quite a number of—well, that was all, wasn't it?

Lawrence Daws Earlier in '62, actually, before Brett's show, I think it was, there was a house show, which showed the painters of the gallery. This this is the house show here, in in um February, 8th of February to 3rd of March '62. And the the gallery painters at that time were Michael Ayrton, Charles Blackman, Prunella Clough, Lawrence Daws, Hoskin—John Hoskin, I think—Rainer Küchenmeister—he was also in the Paris Biennale and seen by the Matthiesen people there—Leonelli, Fontana, Jack Smith, Keith Vaughan, Arnold Mesches— no, no, Arnold's not his name, and Brett Whiteley. So that was the house show, which is interesting. One of Brett's is here somewhere, you know? Which one was it? I'll see. It's several, but there's one reproduced here.

Sandra McGrath Tell me the name of the two Matthiesen directors again.

Lawrence Daws John Synge, S-Y-N-G-E, and Stephanie Maison, Stephanie, S-T-E-P-H-A-N-I-E, Maison, M-A-I-S-O-N.

Sandra McGrath And they were the ones who came to the Paris Biennale. Did you and Brett go to Paris for the show?

Lawrence Daws Yes, we all did, and Charlie, and and Bryan Robertson, because Bryan Robertson and Moira Dyring—

Sandra McGrath Moira Dyring? Vaguely.

Lawrence Daws had the studio in Paris. Yeah. Well, she was a painter and she had the studio there, which she subsequently left to the nation, as it were, for young artists to go and live and work in, in Moira Dyring's studio.

Sandra McGrath How do you spell Dyring?

Lawrence Daws D-Y-R-I-N-G.

Sandra McGrath D-Y?

Lawrence Daws Moira, M-O-I-R-A.

Sandra McGrath A.

Lawrence Daws Dyring. She was she was married to or lived with Sam Atyeo for many years prior to this, but she wasn't at that time. She was on her own. And she and Bryan Robertson were the commissionaires of the Aus—for the Australian government of the representatives for the young painters' Paris Biennale. And Bryan chose three of us. So she was looking after our interests over in Paris when we were there, taking us around to embassies and all that sort of stuff, you know what they do. And then Bryan was there of course, Charlie and Barbara.

Sandra McGrath Was Wendy there?

Lawrence Daws Wendy was not there, no.

Sandra McGrath Did you go from Paris—from London to Paris? How did you sort of get to Paris?

Lawrence Daws I mean, were you living— We went across, we went across on the boat, on the ferry. And did Brett leave Wendy in London? I'm not sure if Wendy was there at that time. She certainly didn't come across. She may have come later, but she wasn't there initially, because Brett and I stayed with a friend of mine in in Paris at that time. Who did you stay with? Somebody called Heather Lowery.

Sandra McGrath Is she still around?

Lawrence Daws No, no, she worked for United, for NATO—well no, United Nations. And she's later returned to Rome and worked for the World, World, what is it, World Health Organization, WHO.

Sandra McGrath And she doesn't live in Europe anymore?

Lawrence Daws Yes, she's in Europe somewhere, probably in Italy. I don't know, I've lost contact with her.

Sandra McGrath And she, you think she still works for the World Health Organization?

Lawrence Daws Yes, she might be well, might have retired by now.

Sandra McGrath And you stayed in her apartment in Paris? Where, where was the apartment?

Lawrence Daws Oh, God knows. It's a—

Sandra McGrath It's a long way back, isn't it?

Lawrence Daws In the 16th arrondissement, is it?

Sandra McGrath Yes.

Lawrence Daws That sounds likely. I've forgotten the address.

Sandra McGrath And how many—were you—did you stay in Paris long for that show?

Lawrence Daws We were, I guess we were there for about five days. We had a good time. We used to meet up at little cafes and things. The three of us and Barbara, and Bryan. Bryan was with us on and off all the time. And he actually introduced us to Giacometti, because Bryan took Giacometti around the exhibition, with a particular emphasis on on getting his opinion of the Australian things and so on, which were good, and then he eventually introduced us to Giacometti, and we had a reasonably long chat with him. He's short, big build, you know, big build, big, enormous head. He's quite short. I was surprised. You know, you usually think of those long, elongated figures,

Sandra McGrath You think of his little stick figures.

Lawrence Daws being tall, but he was this stocky person, you know. Um, anyway, the the Matthiesen people came over for a couple of days, and put the finger on the three of us then, and Rainer from Germany, Küchenmeister. And that's when the shows actually were firmed up at that moment.

Sandra McGrath Now the date of this, the Paris Biennale, was when?

Lawrence Daws Oh, God. Well, you'll have that in in your book, won't you?

Sandra McGrath No, I don't think it is in anything. I think it was left out, even though Brett never mentioned this to me in all my little—

Lawrence Daws The Paris Biennale?

Sandra McGrath Never.

Lawrence Daws Well, he was awarded the International Prize for the Paris Biennale. Or one of them, I think they awarded two. And that was quite a, quite a significant prize at that time. Hang on, I'll find a later catalogue of Brett's, it might be in that. Do you want to turn that off while we're...

Sandra McGrath In 1961...

Lawrence Daws Just after that, and as a result of getting the International Prize for Paris Biennale, he represented Australia at the Young Painters Convention by UNESCO in Paris. It was just after that.

Sandra McGrath Ah. All right, also in 1961 he represented Australia in the Young Painters Convention, UNESCO, Paris. He was in an Australian group exhibition at Paris Biennale des Jeunes and awarded the International Prize. He also exhibited that same year, in 1961, at the Burr Gallery in California, wherever that is.

Lawrence Daws That was an exhibition put together by Kym Bonython. Raymond Burr was, you know, is is the Perry Mason character, and he got really interested in painting and had a gallery going. You know Raymond Burr?

Sandra McGrath Yeah, you mean the man on TV who played the the cripple?

Lawrence Daws Well, the Burr Gallery is something that he set up and and got involved with. He met Kym, and Kym put that show together that went to the Raymond Burr Gallery.

Sandra McGrath And what what what would he have shown there?

Lawrence Daws I don't know, Kym will know. I think you're going to have to tell me what you need to find out, and I can find— A lot of it's on this thing.

Sandra McGrath Okay, all right. Here's another exhibition I'm curious about. It was, says 1963.

Lawrence Daws Oh, you're getting too far ahead now. Because in 1962 he exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum, because one of his works was in the Stuyvesant Collection. And this is the catalogue of that show. Good lord, you've got all the gear here. And this is the Peter Stuyvesant Collection. Now Brett and I went over for that, although I wasn't in the thing. He said, 'Come on, we'll go and have a good time in Amsterdam,' which we did. And it was a very interesting time. I haven't been there before, and I don't know, I don't think Brett had either. And we liked it enormously, had a great time there. We met a couple of, a museum painter and—

Sandra McGrath Mike Brown?

Lawrence Daws Yes. Oh, this is—yeah, this is Mike, yeah. And we met up with some, with some other people and we did a lot of drinking and going out to see the the Van Gogh Museum and all that sort of, having a good look at at all—

Sandra McGrath Would this have been the first time he would have seen a the bigger collection of Van Gogh? Oh, certainly. That would have been certainly certainly the first time of all those Van Goghs.

Lawrence Daws And all the Rembrandts, of course, too. You know, you saw The Night Watch and things like that, we've never seen that.

Sandra McGrath There is, but this Stuyvesant show was in '61. Yeah, wait a minute. It just says summer. No, it isn't '61, it's... It says 19... What does that mean?

Lawrence Daws 18th of the 1st to the 12th of the 2nd, '62. So that's right, '62's here.

Sandra McGrath Oh, okay.

Lawrence Daws Yeah.

Sandra McGrath 18th to the 12th. 18th of January, isn't that January? Why has it got summer catalogue then? January's winter.

Lawrence Daws Ah. God knows, you know. That that that's not—18th of January, surely. No, it's funny though, isn't it? This is some other—date on it somewhere? Uh, we'll look for another date. There are four seen on this anyway. Or maybe they were all this— You've got more than one page?

Sandra McGrath D- Describe, Laurie, describe the way Brett looks in this Amsterdam catalogue in 1962.

Lawrence Daws Oh, he looks very very young, gullible, uh and everything that he isn't in a way. Uh, but he had that sort of uh he had a curiosity and a fairly shrewd curiosity. He could s- I mean, size a situation up even then, you know. Look at his eyes there. He's he's just all looking out and just sniffing it out, assessing it all.

Sandra McGrath He looks entirely different with that, with the sort of normal—

Lawrence Daws With the with the hair like that, yes.

Sandra McGrath Yes, just sort of not quite a crew cut, it's just a normal hair, isn't it?

Lawrence Daws It was pretty unmanageable. It looked looked like wire actually and he used to drag it across. There'd be a part actually in some of the photos.

Sandra McGrath Oh, there's one. Here, look.

Lawrence Daws That's it, yeah. And sometimes it'd just go straight across like that, in in a very unmanageable way, but he'd try.

Sandra McGrath To look...

Lawrence Daws try to look sort of, you know, with the hair parted down and stuff. I don't know if there's a photograph of this one, you know? Yeah, we're we're getting a sequence going here, aren't we?

Sandra McGrath Trying.

Lawrence Daws Let's see, the one man... Then he had, he sent a one-man show out to Rudy in Sydney, you know? Do you need all this sort of stuff?

Sandra McGrath Yes, that's the one I saw. That's the one where I first made my contact with him.

Lawrence Daws And where, in fact, not, most of the paintings of the show were bought by other painters, which is interesting.

Sandra McGrath And an American guy called Jeremy Chisholm. He was out here from New York.

Lawrence Daws Oh yeah, yeah, good. Well, talking of an American guy buying paintings, when Brett had a show at the Matthiesen Gallery, I remember one day, two American students, that'd be like last-year university students, I would think, that age, came in and were looking at a couple of Brett's paintings. And they wanted to come back, so they called for chairs, and they were sitting in front with these chairs. And they were there for about four hours. Then they went away and came back, and John Singh got the chairs out again. And they'd singled down to these two paintings, and they couldn't make up their mind, so they bought the two of them. These two young American girls.

Sandra McGrath Really?

Lawrence Daws Bought the two paintings from the Matthiesen show.

Sandra McGrath Do you think those, they would still exist, those two paintings?

Lawrence Daws Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Sandra McGrath I wonder if anyone, how would one find out who those two girls were? It's probably Lily Auchincloss from the Museum of Modern Art or somebody.

Lawrence Daws Possibly, or I don't know what happened to the archive material from the Matthiesen Gallery. Um, I would have thought Brett tended to keep, tended to keep track of where his paintings were, and I would have thought even then he would have worked out who they were and had a note of it somewhere. Anyway, that's just, uh, but, but in that Sydney show, most of the paintings were bought by Rapotec and various other painters, you know. I mean there were obviously some, you know, bought by non-painters, but they were the ones who were fascinated by Brett then, to the point, yeah, to the point of putting money on him. Now where are we then? And then there was the Tate show. That was, you know the Tate show that was put together?

Sandra McGrath No. Well, I probably do.

Lawrence Daws And then there, this catalogue, at least I think... A lot of words by various people. This is the, sort of three sections: colonial, impressionist and contemporary. Commentaries by Clive Turnbull, little young Daniel Thomas. And this is the, um, what does it say? Catalogue for the Tate show? 66 or something, isn't it? That's what it is. This has been prepared for the purpose of serving as a catalogue for the exhibition 'Recent Australian Painting' for showing at the Tate Gallery in London and the National Gallery in Ottawa. There are two big previews in Australia. Now, in that, where's Brett's?

Sandra McGrath What did he show actually in the, in the Paris Biennale one? Was it one of those sort of female landscape ones, sort of?

Lawrence Daws No, it was a great big white shape. Nobody's ever actually recognized the, what he owes to Diebenkorn. He was so influenced by Diebenkorn. Now I've been looking through old Diebenkorn catalogues, and the stuff that he was doing in '53, Brett, would have been, would have been filtering through into catalogues that Brett would have seen, probably '55, '56, before he went off. And I think he must have seen some Diebenkorn somewhere in Europe because by the time he got to London he was very excited by Diebenkorn, really excited by him. Now, can I show you what I mean?

Sandra McGrath Sure, I'd love to see it.

Lawrence Daws The, the influence. I mean, there's nothing wrong, I'm not saying there's anything wrong, I'm just pointing out that there was a real influence there.

Sandra McGrath Well, it's never been mentioned, which I think is interesting too, because I didn't realize that.

Lawrence Daws Look, okay, well, look.

Sandra McGrath Well, I didn't know he was influenced by...

Lawrence Daws Just take, take any of these, any of these, you know.

Sandra McGrath Yeah. Right.

Lawrence Daws Definitely, you know.

Sandra McGrath Yes.

Lawrence Daws Now with Diebenkorn...

Sandra McGrath We're looking at, uh, the picture we're looking at now is, uh, in the, um, the...

Lawrence Daws You've got that other one, the little one.

Sandra McGrath We're looking at, we're comparing a painting that was at the Matthiesen Gallery on the, between the, on March 1962 of Brett's...

Lawrence Daws ...with Diebenkorn canvases of 1953.

Sandra McGrath ...with Diebenkorn.

Lawrence Daws Um, well you can see, I mean, he talked about Deeb all the time, you know, and the colour, you know, the colour of Deeb, and the general shape-making, a certain sort of...

Sandra McGrath Oh, yeah.

Lawrence Daws ...shape-making going on there...

Sandra McGrath Oh, amazing.

Lawrence Daws ...that was enormously similar to Diebenkorn at that time. And I mean he really loved Deeb and he would he would just make hand gestures, you know, as though he was painting in the way Deeb, he said, "Deeb would do this and Deeb would do that," and so on.

Sandra McGrath Diebenkorn is spelled for those transcribers: D-I-E-B-E-N-K-O-R-N. Richard.

Lawrence Daws Canadian originally, and he moved to America.

Sandra McGrath Actually I always thought he was an American painter.

Lawrence Daws I don't know, is he Canadian? Maybe not. Maybe he was from somewhere else.

Sandra McGrath Paintings we were comparing were shown at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.

Lawrence Daws And in fact not just the paintings, later on...

Sandra McGrath Where, where would he have seen Diebenkorn?

Lawrence Daws Well, that's what I'm wondering. I would think he would have seen them in, in art magazines. See, these are, yeah, they were done in '53, you see.

Sandra McGrath Look at that. And look at this! The Berkeley one is unbelievable. I mean, Berkeley and Berkeley...

Lawrence Daws That's '55. Now, they would have started filtering into art magazines, you see, uh, '57, '56, '57, '58. Now Brett could easily have seen them there and got very excited by them. Because he was very excited by Nicolas de Staël, and you can see the similarity.

Sandra McGrath I'm just going to explain on the tape: there's only a small period of this Diebenkorn, though, that that he was interested in. It was the 19... Well, really 1951, 1953...

Lawrence Daws Up to '55.

Sandra McGrath ...up to '55.

Lawrence Daws Yeah.

Sandra McGrath And then Diebenkorn changed and went to another way that didn't particularly interest Brett.

Lawrence Daws He got the figurative thing going, and that's it. Brett liked that a bit in terms of the Nicolas de Staël quality. See that the light, that that sharp blackness against the white behind it? But he loved Nicolas de Staël. When we were in Paris at the Biennale he spent a lot of time in front of living Nicolas de Staël paintings, particularly the big rooftop one, 'The Roofs of Paris'. And he was always going back to do a bigger and better version of 'The Roofs of Paris', you know, the big rooftops, than the Nicolas de Staël one. He did some. He did a couple very recently. The last time I saw him, he said, um, I said, "What are you going to do?" He said, "Oh, I wouldn't mind going back to Paris and really getting on to that, the big rooftop painting. Remember that Nicolas de Staël one?" he said, you know. He was carrying it around with him in '61 or whenever.

Sandra McGrath I don't know the big rooftop painting.

Lawrence Daws Oh, it's a marvellous thing. It's just almost two halves,

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Lawrence Daws and it's all this, you know, the slab thing he does, with the light squeezing around the edges. And there's incredible greys,

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Lawrence Daws you know, in the sky, in the late sky. It's a very beautiful painting. Big one. Six feet square, seven feet square.

Sandra McGrath It's interesting, this cane chair was very similar to the one that he painted in.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, but even leaving these drawings, but I was thinking of the earlier thing actually. Some of these marks, you know, the way you get seven, this sort of line and everything, you know.

Sandra McGrath That sort of line.

Lawrence Daws I can see...

Sandra McGrath It is extraordinary, yes.

Lawrence Daws ...Brett enjoying doing so much, you know. But I think Diebenkorn's terrific. You know. Brett really struck a chord in him, because Brett has that natural, Brett had that unbelievably natural line quality, you know, the draughtsmanship. It's just a sheer linear thing. So he would have identified immediately with that.

Sandra McGrath Fascinating catalogue. I'm going to have to get one of those.

Lawrence Daws That's by the by, but...

Sandra McGrath No, that's a very, that's a very important...

Lawrence Daws Nobody's ever ever recognised the link between it, and I'm not, and I'm not sure when and how he first encountered Diebenkorn, but he must have seen him again in Europe on his way through on that scholarship, the Italian Government scholarship, because when he arrived, when I met him for the first time, his full appeal and all that was MD, you know, Diebenkorn.

Sandra McGrath Interesting combination, isn't it? Piero and Diebenkorn.

Lawrence Daws And he pretty, they met Morandi, too. Pretty keen on him. They went on the sweep through that time.

Sandra McGrath Yes, well you weren't with him, were you? No, Michael Johnson...

Lawrence Daws No, no, Mick Johnson. Mick Johnson, Michael Johnson was with him, yeah.

Sandra McGrath He's very tall. He didn't tell the Morandi story. That's right. He was going to tell...

Lawrence Daws He was going to tell it.

Sandra McGrath I never did find out what the Morandi story was.

Lawrence Daws So hang on, now where are we? We're going to lose this as a chronology, eh? Uh, let's see. The Tate Gallery, exhibited in the British... Hang on, we're missing something here. Oh, no, here we are. 'British Painting of the '60s' at the Whitechapel Gallery. Now I'm not sure it was called that, perhaps it was. I've got the catalogue here, so I'll soon see. You've got the Whitechapel catalogue, haven't you? You know all about that. The Whitechapel show catalogue.

Sandra McGrath I don't have it, but I know about it.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, you know all about it. So we don't really need to drag it out.

Sandra McGrath Oh, to drag it out drags my, my mind out. I haven't been over this for 15 years.

Lawrence Daws Now the next thing was this thing again...

Sandra McGrath The 'Recent Whitechapel' one we're looking at now is 'Whitechapel Art Gallery London 1961'.

Lawrence Daws Best to, uh, can, I'd better turn that off soon.

Sandra McGrath The picture we're looking at now comes from the catalogue of...

Lawrence Daws Uh, 'The New Gener-', 'The New Generation',

Sandra McGrath 'The New Generation',

Lawrence Daws '1964', put together by Bryan Robertson.

Sandra McGrath The Peter Stuyvesant Foundation supported it. Whitechapel Gallery, March through May 1964. And in the back is a photograph of Brett. Which, can you read that out loud?

Lawrence Daws This is, he goes on to quote, he makes a statement: 'All the paintings I have made in the last four years have been concerned one way and another with sex and with a desire to record sensual behaviour. The earlier abstract pictures were deliberately cut, were deliberately out of focus and ambiguous, as I thought that a feeling of reality could best be expressed metaphysically. The newer bathroom pictures are an effort to get closer to actuality and to emphasize the separateness (in inverted commas) of things. Ideally, I would like my pictures, pictures as precise as photographs, without the inevitability of association or the spatial restriction of photography. I am trying to cocoon myself in a personal style that makes whole the fragments of feeling I have about life and art.' Now that's his statement for the exhibition we've just described, 'The New Generation 1964' at the Whitechapel.

Sandra McGrath And what did he show there, Lawrence?

Lawrence Daws Uh, let's see. 'Bather and Mirror', 1964, 'Figure at the Basin', 1963, and 'Sketch for Large Mirror Painting', 1964, I think. That was all. Let me just have a look at the back here. Ah, and 'Woman in a Bath'. I'm not sure if that's not the one that the Tate bought. They bought one very similar to that. I mean, they bought one of Brett's from the Whitechapel show earlier, the Australian, the 'Recent Australian Painting', a red, red untitled painting. And then they bought one of the bathroom ones very similar to that. Well, that could have been from his Bathroom show at the Marlborough Gallery about that time. But the photograph at the back of that book shows Brett in the studio at 129 Ladbroke Grove, which after he married and I, and left for Pembroke Crescent, I moved into that room there.

Sandra McGrath Oh, did you?

Lawrence Daws And had that as my studio. I was living over at Hampstead, but Mick Johnson was above me and Tony McGillick was over the road. But he had this lovely handmade lectern, you know, that he used to put his sketchbook on and he'd draw and things like that. And he'd just rip a page off and give it to you. I've got a lovely gouache he did on on there, you know, in his big open sketchbook. It had little perforations down the side. You could just tear the pages off. But he made that out of an old bit of wood. I mean, he's already, that's the first sculpture

Sandra McGrath Sculpture, yes.

Lawrence Daws Oh yes, very much so, yeah, yeah. Bryan's Bryan's not running it anymore, but it's going. Uh, who is the director now? I don't know. It's changed a couple of times. I'm not sure who the director is now. It's easy to find out. So where did we get to? I'm just trying to think where I've got this. You're up to this 19-, to this show you've got here, eh? Sort of people, people who lived until the the the time, Brett's Brett's photograph is an earlier one by the way, yeah, because that that, I mean he's well and truly married and moved into Pembroke Crescent and and and with Wendy, so that's an old photograph of his 1962 period back in 129 Ladbroke Grove, you see. Now which of these painters would you all have mixed with at all? Well, let's see. The The paintings I'm referring to are listed in this catalogue, aren't they? We used to go to Boshier's show, less less so Patrick Caulfield. Not the Hockneys, very much so, and Hoyland. Boshier... Boshier is spelled B-O-S-H-I-E-R. Boshier, Derek Boshier. I don't know his work at all. No, he's he's still one of the sort of long long-distance runners, and the same as Hoyland. Now, the reason we associated with them a lot is that Bryan Robertson was supporting them a great deal. Which ones did Bryan... Well, I can tell you, you know, which ones. Um, well, er, among the younger ones: Boshier, uh, Hoyland, and Huxley in particular.

Sandra McGrath And and he'd invite us around to his place for drinks and things, and they'd always be there. And we'd always go to their shows and so on when they'd have a show. And then Patrick Procktor was also a very close friend of Bryan's. And he used to show at the Redfern Gallery. And did, uh, you Tell me a bit about Bryan Robertson and

Lawrence Daws his role in your all's life at that stage. Well, he came, I mean that exhibition he put together and his presence, you know, in the wings all the time, uh meetings before the exhib- before the Whitechapel show, Australian painting of the... Used to used to meet up with us and have drinks and would talk, and he was getting the feel of the Australian art scene, probably. And then during the show and after, during the show, for example, he he hustled up a lot of interest. He he organised a lunch in in a cavernous dining room at the, uh, Victoria or Charing Cross Railway Station. Kenneth Kenneth Clark... I remember meeting meeting him for the first time, but he...

Sandra McGrath This three. Testing 1, 2, 3. Talking to Laurie Daws at the Performance Centre in Brisbane, August 1992. Testing, is it on now? Okay.

Lawrence Daws Testing 1, 2, 3. Testing 1, 2, 3.

Sandra McGrath So, we're now looking at the first first catalogues that were the shows in London.

Lawrence Daws Well, what happened was that there was the Whitechapel exhibition, of course, and then immediately after the Whitechapel exhibition, Bryan Robertson organised three of us, Blackman, Whiteley and I, to be in the in the Paris Biennale for Young Painters under 35. And Brett, I think, used one work from that show, and then other works for Paris. And I used one work that was in the Whitechapel and a couple of other new ones. And from that, at the time of the Paris Biennale, the Matthiesen Gallery came over to the Paris Biennale to saw the work and everything. And we all scored a show each then, Blackman, Brett, and myself, to be held the following year. Charlie was first off the rank and that was Charlie's at Matthiesen Gallery. The Matthiesen Gallery is the gallery that Sid Nolan showed his Leda and Swan paintings in a couple of years before.

Sandra McGrath Who was the director of the Matthiesen Gallery?

Lawrence Daws Uh, let's see. Well, the old man, Matthiesen, was the was the owner and director of it, but in fact the two active directors were John Synge and Stephanie Maison, who had both--

Sandra McGrath And which one had come to London?

Lawrence Daws Both of them. Both of them had come. So this was Charlie Charlie was shown there in November '61.

Sandra McGrath That's his show was from the 3rd of November to the 25th of November 1961 at 142 New Bond Street.

Lawrence Daws And that gallery is no longer a gallery. It was taken over, it was directly opposite Sotheby's, in New Bond Street, and when the old man Matthiesen died, the gallery closed down, and Sotheby's actually bought the gallery, and it's now an annex of Sotheby's.

Sandra McGrath Oh, today. Today. Today the Matthiesen Gallery is an annex of Sotheby's at the same address?

Lawrence Daws At the same address, yeah. And that was Charlie's show was followed by Brett's show, which is, let's see, March '60- '61.

Sandra McGrath Brett Whiteley's show at the Matthiesen Gallery at 142 New Bond Street was

Lawrence Daws '62, rather.

Sandra McGrath paintings and gouaches from the 9th to the 31st of March 1962. Now we want to just stop for a minute, make sure we-- So, uh in this exhibition were paintings called 'Somewhere in Summer', 'The Black of Anxiety', 'Untitled Red Painting 1', 'Untitled Painting 2',

Lawrence Daws I can photocopy all that. I mean, I can photocopy all that for you.

Sandra McGrath Oh, good! Could you? 'Untitled Red Painting 4', 'Untitled White and Pink Painting', 'Untitled White Painting 1', 'Untitled Painting 3', 'Untitled Warm Painting'. Oh god, it goes on forever. There were in all 29 temperas and collages and two serigraphs.

Lawrence Daws I can photocopy all that.

Sandra McGrath Oh, that's wonderful. Fantastic. All right, now.

Lawrence Daws And that was followed in

Sandra McGrath Then your show?

Lawrence Daws My show was later that year, in October.

Sandra McGrath So, 1962, 4th to 27th of October, Lawrence Daws had an exhibition at Matthiesen Gallery and showed 36

Lawrence Daws It's oils and gouaches.

Sandra McGrath oils and gouaches, and quite a number of-- Oh, that was all, wasn't it?

Lawrence Daws Earlier in '62, actually, before Brett's show, I think it was, there was a house show which showed the painters of the gallery. And that that, this is the house show here, in February, 8th of February to the 3rd of March '62. And the the gallery painters of that time were Michael Ayrton, Charles Blackman, Prunella Clough, Lawrence Daws, Hoskin, John Hoskin, I think. Rainer Küchenmeister. He was also in the Paris Biennale and seen by the Matthiesen people there. Leonelli, Jack Smith, Keith Vaughan, Arnold Piacesi--no, no, Arnold's not his name--and Brett Whiteley. So that was the house show. We just had an interesting one of Brett's in here somewhere, didn't we? Which one was it? Let's see itself. There's one reproduced here.

Sandra McGrath Tell me the name of the two Matthiesen directors again.

Lawrence Daws Um, John Synge, S-Y-N-G-E,

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Lawrence Daws and Stephanie Maison, Stephanie, S-T-E-P-H-A-N-I-E, Maison, M-A-I-S-O-N.

Sandra McGrath And they were the ones who came to the Paris Biennale. Did you and Brett go to Paris for the show?

Lawrence Daws Yes. Oh, we did, and Charlie, and and Bryan Robertson. Because Bryan Robertson and Moira D'Arcy-- Moira D'Arcy--

Sandra McGrath Vaguely.

Lawrence Daws had a studio in Paris.

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Lawrence Daws Now she was a painter and she had a studio there which she subsequently left to the nation, as it were, for artists to go and live and work in Moira D'Arcy's studio.

Sandra McGrath How do you spell D'Arcy?

Lawrence Daws D-Y-R-I-N-G.

Sandra McGrath D-Y--

Lawrence Daws Moira, M-O-I-R-A.

Sandra McGrath A.

Lawrence Daws D'Arcy.

Sandra McGrath So you--

Lawrence Daws She was She was married to, or lived with, Sam Atyeo for many years, prior to this. She wasn't at that time, she was on her own. And she She and Bryan Robertson were the commissionaires of the Australia for the Australian government of the representatives for the young painters, Paris Biennale. And Bryan chose three of us. So, she was looking after our interests over in Paris when we were there, taking us around to embassies and all that sort of stuff. You know, they do. Um, and then Bryan was there, of course, and we were all, Charlie and Barbara, and uh, who else? No, uh--

Sandra McGrath Was Wendy there?

Lawrence Daws Wendy was not there, no. No.

Sandra McGrath Did you go from from London to Paris? How did you sort of get to Paris? I mean, were you living--

Lawrence Daws We went across We went across on the boat, on the ferry.

Sandra McGrath And what I'm trying did Brett leave Wendy in London, is it?

Lawrence Daws I'm not sure Brett Wendy was there at that time. She certainly didn't come across.

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Lawrence Daws that She may have come later, but she wasn't there initially, because Brett and I stayed with a friend of mine in in in Paris at that time.

Sandra McGrath Well, who did you stay with?

Lawrence Daws Uh, somebody called Heather Lowery.

Sandra McGrath Is she still in, around?

Lawrence Daws Uh, no. No, she she worked for United the NATO--oh no, United Nations. And she's later returned to Rome and worked for the World World What's it? World Health Organization, WHO.

Sandra McGrath And she doesn't live in Europe anymore?

Lawrence Daws Yes, she's in Europe somewhere, probably in Italy, I don't know, I've lost contact with her.

Sandra McGrath Um and she You think she still works for the World Health Organization?

Lawrence Daws Yes, she might be well, might have retired by now.

Sandra McGrath Yeah. And you stayed in her apartment in Paris? Where Where was the apartment?

Lawrence Daws Oh, god, now. Uh, let me think now.

Sandra McGrath It's a long way back, isn't it?

Lawrence Daws Was it the 16th arrondissement, is it?

Sandra McGrath Yes.

Lawrence Daws I think that that sounds likely. I don't know the address.

Sandra McGrath And how many Were you Did you stay in Paris long for that show?

Lawrence Daws We I guess we were there for about 5 days. We had a good time. We used to meet up at the little cafes and things, the 3 of us, and Barbara. And Bryan Bryan was with us on and off, for a while. And uh he actually introduced us to Giacometti, because Bryan--

Sandra McGrath Who? Bryan?

Lawrence Daws Bryan. Bryan Bryan took Giacometti around the exhibition, with particular emphasis on on getting his opinion on these young things and so on, which were very good and then he eventually introduced us to him, you know. We had a reasonably long chat with him. He was a short, big build, you know, big build, big, enormous head. He's quite short. I was surprised, you know, you'd think of these long, elongated figures,

Sandra McGrath You think you think of his little stick figures.

Lawrence Daws be tall, you know, he's a stocky person, you know. Um, anyway the Matthiesen people came over for a couple of days and uh put the finger on the three of us and and Rainer from Germany, Küchenmeister. And that's when the shows actually were firmed up. At that moment.

Sandra McGrath Now, the date of this uh the Paris Biennale was when?

Lawrence Daws Around '61. Well, um you'll have that in in your book, won't you?

Sandra McGrath It'll No, I don't think it is in here. I think it must have been left out, even in Brett never mentioned this to me in all my little--

Lawrence Daws About the Paris Biennale?

Sandra McGrath Never.

Lawrence Daws Well, he was awarded the International Prize at the Paris Biennale. Or one of them, I think they awarded two. And that was quite a quite a significant prize at that time.

Sandra McGrath Oh.

Lawrence Daws Hang on, I'll find another a later catalogue of Brett's, it might be in that. Do you want to turn that off while we're--

Sandra McGrath Yeah. In 1961--

Lawrence Daws just after that, and as a result of getting the International Prize at the Paris Biennale, he represented Australia at the Young Painters Convention of UNESCO in Paris, which was just after that.

Sandra McGrath Oh. All right, also in 1961, the he represented Australia in the Young Painters Convention, UNESCO, Paris. He was a in an Australian group exhibition Paris Biennale des Jeunes, and awarded the International Prize. He also exhibited that same year, 1961, at the Burr Gallery in California, wherever that is.

Lawrence Daws That's an exhibition put together by Kym Bonython. Um, Raymond Burr was the, you know, is is the Perry Mason character. And he got very interested in painting, and had a gallery going. You know Raymond Burr?

Sandra McGrath Yeah. You mean the man on TV who played the the cripple?

Lawrence Daws Well, the Burr Gallery is something that he set up and got involved with. He met Kym, and Kym put that show together that went to the Raymond Burr Gallery.

Sandra McGrath And what what show what would he have shown there?

Lawrence Daws I don't know, Kym will know. You can-- You have to tell me what you need to find out now, and I can find--

Sandra McGrath Okay, all right.

Lawrence Daws buy all the paintings, which is interesting.

Sandra McGrath An American guy called Jeremy Chisholm, who was out here from, uh, New York.

Lawrence Daws Oh right, yeah, good. Well, talking of an American guy buying paintings, when Brett had his show at the Matthiesen Gallery, I remember one day, uh, two American students, I thought they were like last year university students, I would think, that would be the age, came in and looking at a couple of Brett's paintings, and they wanted to come back, so they called for chairs, and they were sitting in front of these chairs, and they were there for about four hours. And then they went away and came back. John Synge got the chairs out again, and they'd singled down to these two paintings. They couldn't make up their mind, so they bought the two of them, the two young American girls.

Sandra McGrath Really?

Lawrence Daws Bought these two paintings from the Matthiesen show.

Sandra McGrath Do you think those- they would still exist, those two paintings?

Lawrence Daws Oh, absolutely, yeah.

Sandra McGrath And anyone- how would one find out who those two girls were? They're probably living in Auckland Close or Museum of Modern Art or somebody.

Lawrence Daws Possibly, or I don't know what happened to the archive material from the Matthiesen Gallery. Um, I would have thought Brett tended to keep- tended to keep track of where his paintings were, and I would have thought even then he would have worked out who they were and had a note of it somewhere. Anyway, that's just a propos. But in that Sydney show, most of the paintings were bought by Rapotec and various other painters, you know. I mean, there were obviously some bought by non-painters, but they were the ones who were fascinated by Brett then.

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Lawrence Daws To a point, yeah, because they all bought him early on. Now, where are we then? And then there was the Tate show. That was- you know the Tate show that was put together?

Sandra McGrath No. Well, I probably do.

Lawrence Daws I don't know, I've got the catalogue of the news in hand. A lot of words by various people. This is the- there's three sections: Colonial, Impressionists, and Contemporaries. Commentaries by Clive Turnbull, Russell Drysdale, and Daniel Thomas. And this is the... what does it say, the catalogue for the Tate show itself somewhere? That's what it is. This had been prepared for the front page, serving as a catalogue for the exhibition of Australian painting, for showing at the Tate Gallery in London and the National Gallery in Ottawa. So two previews in Australia. Now, in that, where's Brett's?

Sandra McGrath What did he show, actually, in the- in the Paris Biennale? Was it one of those sort of female landscape ones, sort of?

Lawrence Daws No, it was a great big white shape. Nobody's ever actually recognised what he owes to Diebenkorn. He was so influenced by Diebenkorn. Now, I've been looking through old Diebenkorn catalogues, and the stuff that he was doing in '53, Brett would have been- would have been filtering through into catalogues that Brett would have seen, probably '55, '56, just before he went off. And I think he must have seen some Diebenkorn somewhere in Europe, because by the time he got to London, he was very excited by Diebenkorn, really excited about it. You know, can I show you what I mean?

Sandra McGrath Sure, I'd love to see.

Lawrence Daws The influence. I mean, there's nothing wrong, I'm not saying anything wrong, I'm just pointing out that there was a real influence there.

Sandra McGrath Well, it's never been mentioned, which I think is interesting, too, because I didn't realise that.

Lawrence Daws Well, okay, well...

Sandra McGrath Why didn't I realise that?

Lawrence Daws Just take- take any of these, any of these.

Sandra McGrath Yeah. Right. Yes.

Lawrence Daws Now, the Diebenkorn...

Sandra McGrath We're looking at, uh, the picture we're looking at now is, uh, in the, um, the... We're looking at- we're comparing a painting that was at the Matthiesen Gallery on the between- on March 1962 of Brett's

Lawrence Daws with Diebenkorn canvases of 1953.

Sandra McGrath with Diebenkorn... There you go.

Lawrence Daws Uh, well, you can see, I mean, he talked about Deeb all the time, you know, and the colour, you know, the colour of Deeb, and the general shape-making, the certain sort of shape-making on the colour,

Sandra McGrath Oh, yes. Oh, amazing.

Lawrence Daws that, uh, was enormously similar to Diebenkorn at that time. I mean, he really loved Deeb, and he would just make hand gestures, you know, as though he was painting in the way Deeb- He said Deeb would do this, and Deeb would do that, and so on.

Sandra McGrath Diebenkorn is spelled for the transcribers: D-I-E-B-E-N-K-O-R-N, Richard.

Lawrence Daws Canadian originally, then moved to America.

Sandra McGrath Actually, I always thought he was an American painter.

Lawrence Daws No, he is Canadian, or maybe not.

Sandra McGrath Painting we're comparing was shown at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.

Lawrence Daws And, in fact, not just the paintings, later on-

Sandra McGrath Where- where would he have seen these before?

Lawrence Daws Well, that's what I'm wondering. I'd- I would think he would have seen them in in art magazines. See, these were done- Yeah, they were done in '53, you see.

Sandra McGrath Look at that! Look at this, the Berkeley one is unbelievable. I mean, Berkeley and Berkeley...

Lawrence Daws '55. Now, they would have started filtering into art magazines, you see, um, '57, '56, '57, '58. Now, Brett could easily have seen them there and got very excited by them, because he was very excited by Nicolas de Staël, and you can see the similarity.

Sandra McGrath I'm just going to explain on tape: there's only a small period of this Diebenkorn, though, that he was interested in. It was the 19- oh, really, 1951, 1953,

Lawrence Daws Up to about '55.

Sandra McGrath up to '55, and then Diebenkorn changed and went to another way that didn't particularly interest Brett.

Lawrence Daws He got the figurative thing going, and that's it. Brett liked that a bit in terms of the Nicolas de Staël quality. You see that the light, that sharp, blackness against the white behind it. But he loved Nicolas de Staël. When we were in Paris at the Biennale, he spent a lot of time in front of the Nicolas de Staël paintings, particularly the big rooftop ones of Paris. And he was always going back to do a bigger and better version than Nicolas de Staël. He did some. He did a couple, fairly recently, but the last time I saw him he said, 'I- I said, 'What are you going to do?' and he said, 'Oh, I wouldn't mind going back to Paris and getting onto that big rooftop thing. Remember Nicolas de Staël,' he said. He carried it around with him in '61 or whenever.

Sandra McGrath I don't know the big rooftop thing.

Lawrence Daws Oh, it's marvellous. It's almost two halves, and it's all just, you know, the slab thing he does, with the light squeezing around the edges. It was in purple greys in the sky, heavy sky. Very beautiful painting. Big one: six feet square, seven feet square.

Sandra McGrath It's interesting, this cane chair is very similar to the one that he painted in.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, but even these drawings, but I was thinking of the earlier thing actually. Some of these marks, you know, the way he sets these, this sort of line drawing here, you can see.

Sandra McGrath That's a line. It is extraordinary.

Lawrence Daws Brett really enjoyed doing it so much, you know. But I think Diebenkorn's terrific. Myself. But Brett really struck a chord because he has that natural- Brett had that unbelievably natural line quality, you know, the draughtsmanship is so- the sheer linear lightness. So he would identify with that immediately.

Sandra McGrath Fascinating catalogue, I'm going to have to get one of those.

Lawrence Daws That's just by the by.

Sandra McGrath No, that's a very in- that's a very important-

Lawrence Daws But nobody's ever recognised the link between it. And I'm not- and I'm not sure when and how he first encountered Diebenkorn, but he must have seen him again in New York on his way through on that scholarship, the Italian government scholarship, because when he arrived, I met him, full of Piero and all those boys, and Deeb, you know, Diebenkorn.

Sandra McGrath Interesting combination, isn't it? Piero and Diebenkorn.

Lawrence Daws And he was pretty keen- they met Morandi too. He was pretty keen on him, but I mean, on the sweep through that time.

Sandra McGrath Yes, you weren't with him. No, Michael Johnson was-

Lawrence Daws No, no, no, Mick Johnson, Michael Johnson was with him, yeah.

Sandra McGrath He's going to tell- he didn't tell the Morandi story, that's right, he was going to tell that.

Lawrence Daws He's going to tell that. (laughs)

Sandra McGrath I never did find out what the Morandi story was.

Lawrence Daws So hang on, now where are we? This is the chronology, yeah? Uh, let's see, the Tate Gallery, exhibited in the British- Hang on, we're missing something here. Oh, no, here we are. British Painting in the 60s at the Whitechapel Gallery. Now, I'm not sure it was called that. Perhaps it was. I've got the catalogue here, so I'll soon see.

Sandra McGrath You've got the Whitechapel catalogue.

Lawrence Daws Whitechapel, yeah, catalogue.

Sandra McGrath I don't have it, but I know about it. All that dragging it out drags my mind out. I haven't been over this for 15 years.

Lawrence Daws Now, the next thing was this thing again,

Sandra McGrath The Recent Whitechapel one we're looking at now is Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1961.

Lawrence Daws That's the word. Oh, I better turn that off soon.

Sandra McGrath The picture we're looking at now comes from the catalogue of...

Lawrence Daws The New Generation: 1964, put together by Bryan Robertson.

Sandra McGrath The Peter Stuyvesant Foundation supported it. Whitechapel Gallery, March through May 1964, and in the back is a photograph of Brett, which... Can you read that out loud?

Lawrence Daws He goes on to quote, doesn't he? Makes a statement: 'All the paintings I have made in the last four years have been concerned, one way and another, with sex and the desire to record sensual behaviour. The earlier abstract pictures were deliberately cut- were deliberately out of focus and ambiguous, as I thought that a feeling of reality could best be expressed metaphysically. The newer bathroom pictures are an effort to get closer to actuality, and to emphasise the separateness (in inverted commas) of things. Ideally, I would like my pictures as precise as photographs, without the inevitability of association or the spatial restriction of photography. I am trying to cocoon myself in a personal style that makes whole the fragments of feeling I have about life and art.' Now that's his statement for the exhibition you just described, the New Generation 1964 at the Whitechapel.

Sandra McGrath And what did he show there, Lance?

Lawrence Daws Uh, let's see. Bather and Mirror, 1964, Figure at the Basin, 1963, and Sketch for Large Mirror Painting, 1964. That was all. Let's have a look at the back here. Ah, and Woman in the Bath. I'm not sure if that's the one that the Tate bought. They bought one very similar to that. I mean, they bought one of Brett's from the Whitechapel show earlier, the Recent Australian Painting, a red- red, untitled painting. And then they bought one of the bathroom ones, very similar to that, but that could have been from his bathroom show at the Marlborough Gallery at about that time. The photograph at the back of that book shows Brett in the studio at 129 Ladbroke Grove, which after he married and left for Pembridge Crescent, I moved into that room there.

Sandra McGrath Oh, did you?

Lawrence Daws And had that as my studio. I was living over at Hampstead, but Mick Johnson was above me, and Tony McGillick was over the road. But he had this lovely handmade lectern, you know, that he used to put his sketchbook on, and he'd draw and things like that. And he'd just rip a page off and give it to you. I've got a lovely gouache he did on there, you know, in his big open sketchbook. It had little perforations down it so you could just tear the pages off. But he made that out of an old bit of wood. I mean, he's already- that's the first sculpture I ever'd seen, you know.

Sandra McGrath I was just thinking that. And describe his looks there, please.

Lawrence Daws Well, again, he's the earnest young Adonis in a way, you know, looking slightly cross between young Greek and Marlon Brando, probably seen him in the film. His hair's got the curl going, and the part not evident from this side. In fact, I think there may not have been a part by that time, but it's short, short and just clinging to his scalp, you know.

Sandra McGrath And what's he wearing, Lance?

Lawrence Daws Ah, well, just got a black skivvy up to the neck, dark jeans and leather boots, I think they are, the shoes leather boots.

Sandra McGrath Would that have been the sort of style of dress for that period?

Lawrence Daws Oh, yes, very much so.

Sandra McGrath Would that be the sort of- You'd been dressed like that as well?

Lawrence Daws Yeah, we all dressed with the black skivvy, that was very much par for the course then. You can see the painters who were in that show, and some of them we used to see. Let's see, there's Derek Boshier, Patrick Caulfield, Anthony Donaldson, David Hockney. That show actually showed the first real exposure of David Hockney before he got involved with his first one-man show on Bond Street, and it was his Typhoo paintings, I think, you know, Typhoo Tea paintings, showing packets of Typhoo Tea and altered images relating to it.

Sandra McGrath What was he showing in this show?

Lawrence Daws Hockney? No, I thought they were Typhoo Tea, they're not there. Well, there's some other show he did.

Sandra McGrath God, I nearly bought that painting in New York.

Lawrence Daws Did you? Oh, wow. I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing, that's what it's called. Now, this one he showed at Kasmin's, I remember seeing that in Kasmin's. Oh, it was owned by Kasmin at that time. He had his first show, well, I didn't realise, before this exhibition, and that was right in Kasmin's, you could see it as you're walking past. It was a big painting, it was seven feet square, very powerful painting, beautiful painting. But I thought he had things like Typhoo Tea packets. I'll find them, there must be another catalogue somewhere. New Generation, what's this other...

Sandra McGrath New Generation 19- We're now talking about, we're still talking about The New Generation: 1964, Whitechapel Gallery, London. Whitechapel Gallery, is it still going?

Lawrence Daws Oh, yes, very much so, yeah, yeah. Bryan's not running it anymore, but it's going.

Sandra McGrath Uh, who is the director now?

Lawrence Daws I don't know. It's changed a couple of times. I'm not sure who the director is now. It's easy to find out. So where did we get to? I'm just trying to think where I've got those...

Sandra McGrath We're up to this 19- to this show you've got here.

Lawrence Daws Yeah. Sort of people that... people who lived until the time... That photograph is an earlier one, by the way, because that... I mean, he's well and truly married and moved into Pembridge Crescent with Wendy, so that's an old photograph of his 1962 period back in 129 Ladbroke Grove, you see.

Sandra McGrath Now, which of these painters would you all have mixed with at all?

Lawrence Daws Well, let's see.

Sandra McGrath The paint- the painters I'm referring to are listed in this catalogue.

Lawrence Daws We always used to go to Boshier's show, less so Patrick Caulfield, and Patrick- Hockney, very much so, and Hoyland. These...

Sandra McGrath Boshier is spelt B-O-S-H-I-E-R.

Lawrence Daws Boshier. It's Derek Boshier.

Sandra McGrath I don't know his work at all.

Lawrence Daws Well, he's he's still one of the sort of long, long-distance runners, the same as Hoyland. Now, the reason we associated with them a lot is that Bryan Robertson was supporting them a great deal.

Sandra McGrath Which ones did Bryan...

Lawrence Daws Well, I can tell you in a minute which ones. Among the younger ones: Boshier, Hoyland, and Huxley, in particular. And and he'd invite us around to his place for drinks and things, and they'd always be there, and we'd always go to their shows and so on and so on. And then Patrick Procktor was also a very close friend of Bryan's,

Sandra McGrath and he used to show at the Redfern Gallery. And did you- tell me a bit about Bryan Robertson and his role in you all's life at that stage.

Lawrence Daws Well, he turned- I mean, that exhibition he put together, and his presence, you know, in the wings all the time, uh meetings before the exhib- before the Whitechapel show, the Australian painting, you know, used to meet up with us and have drinks, and we'd talk, and he was getting a feel of the Australian art scene, probably. And then during the show and after- during the show, for example, he he hustled up a lot of interest. He organised a lunch in a cavernous dining room at the Victoria or Charing Cross railway station. Kenneth and Lady Clark came, and we- meeting him, meeting them for the first time, but he organised it very straight.

Sandra McGrath Okay, we're talking about Bryan Robertson and the role he played among the young Australian painters in London in the early '60s.

Lawrence Daws Oh well, apart from the many sort of invitations to little meetings at the Café Royal and places like that and little dinners and things, he organised a large lunch in the in a cavernous dining room at the Charing Cross railway station, which apparently has very good food, and the roast beef and so on, and the main the guest of honour were Kenneth Clark and his wife, and all the available Australian painters who were there in town for the Whitechapel show. There were quite a number, and it was quite a memorable lunch. I wish somebody had taken photographs, I don't think they did.

Sandra McGrath And did you all meet, uh, the Clarks?

Lawrence Daws Oh yes, very much, and he talked to all of us and we talked to them.

Sandra McGrath Must have been a huge buzz for you younger—

Lawrence Daws Oh, absolutely it was. And Bryan had already got a guy called Colin Anderson, the P&O Line, very much on side through Sid Nolan, he was buddy with Nolan, and he was very supportive of the Australian painters, and we met him, for example. He was— Yeah, that was a big buzz, we were meeting all the English painters: William Scott, who was part of a hero of Brett's.

Sandra McGrath How old was William Scott when you met him?

Lawrence Daws Let's see, he would have been about 46 something. We called him old, but he was 46, something like that, yeah.

Sandra McGrath And how old were the Clarks about, Sir Kenneth Clark and—

Lawrence Daws Oh, let's see, well, he would have been much older, in their fifties. Yes, well, I think he was only Sir Kenneth at that time. Um, well, they would have been in their fifties somewhere. Old again, yeah. But the person who I've haven't mentioned is... um, God, what's his name... the alcoholic painter, the British painter. No, no, no, no, no. Uh... everybody wasn't awed by the artwork, you know. Roger Hilton, who was always at the Whitechapel openings, because partly... Yes. Well, we we met him because Bryan, another thing Bryan did was to invite us all of us, whoever was there, all the Australian painters, to to all the Whitechapel exhibitions, and Roger Hilton and and Scott, for example, were always at these exhibitions. And Brett got to know Roger Hilton, and in fact he lived in Notting Hill Gate, and Brett used to see him, and they used to go drinking together, and I think Michael Johnson did too, but Brett in particular wooed Roger a bit, because he really loved Roger's work. He didn't actually paint like him, but there was a quality about the way he painted that Brett really enjoyed, and I think Brett quite liked the idea he was the black sheep of the English art scene. He was unashamedly an alcoholic and would, you could never tell which way he was going to behave in an exhibition, you know, he'd do something quite scandalous. He'd always turn up in this slightly tatty gabardine overcoat with sort of verdigris around the collar and so on, and was always making rude comments about established figures and so on, and I think Brett liked that side of him.

Sandra McGrath The whole irreverent attitude.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, irreverence. I don't know, it appealed to Brett. Um, but anyway, I think he just liked the boozing and the drinking, the boozing and the way he'd go off and paint and so on, paint when he felt like it.

Sandra McGrath Which pubs did you all frequent on a day, or did you?

Lawrence Daws Well, there were two or three near the... There was one just over the road, I've forgotten the name of it now, but immediately over the road from 129 Ladbroke Grove, an Irish pub, which we used to drink drink at mostly.

Sandra McGrath 129 Ladbroke—

Lawrence Daws Yeah, over the road from 129 Ladbroke Grove, there's an Irish pub. Uh, if you came with if you're going to, oh, well, you see it straight over the road from 129, on the corner. The Elgin, I think it is, yes, The Elgin. Mhm. The E-L-G- E-L-G-I-N, yeah.

Sandra McGrath As in Elgin Marbles?

Lawrence Daws Um, we used to drink at that one a lot, and go to this the Friday night sort of punch-up, as it were. It wasn't punch-up, as it it often finished up like that, but down the back, they'd have this concert. It was like a forerunner of a karaoke thing, you know, where people would get up and sing to the microphone, and they'd have a band and things like that. We used to go in there and do a lot of drinking, and on extra occasions someone would get up and sing, and have a go, and then stagger back over the road. But uh they're very Oh, yeah, Scott, William Scott, was somebody who we used to see quite a bit of among the so-called older painters, but the young ones were the ones that

Sandra McGrath So just to enunciate for this tape, the younger English painters you saw occasionally and sometimes frequently were...

Lawrence Daws Well, they were the ones that were under slightly protective and being supported very much personally by Bryan Robertson, who was helping them get shows and so on: Paul Huxley was a particular one, Derek Boshier, um, John Hoyland, Paul Huxley, um, and Peter Phillips to a lesser degree. And he was obviously supporting Bridget Riley, but we didn't see much of her in those days. She was sort of behind the scenes a bit.

Sandra McGrath So if I wanted, so it would be Paul, Paul Huxley, Derek Boshier, Boshier, Boshier, Boshier, Patrick Caulfield, no, not so much? John Hoyland? Huxley quite a bit? Allen Jones? Peter— Peter Phillips a bit.

Lawrence Daws Patrick Procktor a lot. Yeah, Patrick Procktor. He was a very close friend of of Bryan's. And there was Michael Vaughan, who who was much older than them, you know, he's one of the older figures of English painting. He's dead now, but he was a good friend of Bryan's, we used to see him quite a bit, but not in the same way, you know, he wasn't part of that younger group.

Sandra McGrath Where did Bryan Robertson live?

Lawrence Daws Um, just Draycott, Draycott, Draycott, Draycott Terrace, parallel with King's Road, just one back. Draycott Place, parallel with King's Road, just one street back, on the second floor, I think.

Sandra McGrath What was his apartment like?

Lawrence Daws Oh, just a an ordinary sort of apartment, not not a lot of paintings in it. Um, he used to entertain a bit, you know, and things like that. Um...

Sandra McGrath Describe Bryan Robertson as you saw him and and who he is on the tape, though.

Lawrence Daws Well, he he's a young, well, he was youngish then, I suppose he'd be about We were we were all sort of Well, I'm not old, Brett was much younger than he was. I was about 20- No, I'd be 30, something, 33, and Bryan would have been about 37 at the time of the Whitechapel show. Um, he's sort of very English complexion, uh greying hair already at a very early age. Um, it's hard to describe him. An excellent writer on on on art, he's been—

Sandra McGrath I love his Pollock book.

Lawrence Daws Oh, the Pollock, I see, Pollock book. The Pollock, yes, that's a that's a great book. Well, he was doing that roughly about the time all this was happening, or had just done it, I think. Um, he was very very caring about young painters, in that he wanted them to proceed. I mean, he didn't have any children of his own, um and I think he treated young painters a bit like, you know, he was a parental figure, and trying to steer them into into a certain way, in a direction, and not have them veering off inside, being tempted by commercialism or whatever, you know, and he was very aware of that, and anybody who sort of slid off the way, he'd give them heaps, or he wouldn't have anything to do with them after that. But Paul Huxley, in particular, is somebody that he that's gone on evolving very much the way he always started out, and I think Bryan had a lot to do with keeping him in focus in that particular way. And Boshier and Hoyle- Hoyland had the same single way of proceeding, whereas some of the others, like Patrick Procktor, and Phillip- Peter Phillips, varied, you know. They went off into other Peter Phillips into reproduction dolls, blowing them up and doing all sorts of figurative things, uh unlike what his earlier work was like. But there was one person here that we're not that was not in the New Generation show that lived near Ladbroke Grove, and that Brett liked and liked seeing, and that was Peter Blake. He liked Peter Blake's work, and so did Mick.

Sandra McGrath How would you describe Peter Blake's work at that stage?

Lawrence Daws Well, this is a show he had somewhere. Peter Blake, remember the City Art Gallery, Bristol, there's that large collection, and let's see, oh, but, you know, the the very detailed, they're quite small, detailed boxes, and and um performers at the end of the pier, and things like that, and old film stars, heroes and heroines of of the English stage and—

Sandra McGrath What would Brett have liked about them? The one we're looking at now is got a—

Lawrence Daws corner was Joe Tilson, and Brett saw a lot of Joe Tilson at that time.

Sandra McGrath He was doing what kind of work?

Lawrence Daws Well, he was starting in doing these constructions and so on, but he was just doing his typical Joe Tilson paintings, and then he's getting quite a bit of construction going. He hadn't done his Ektachrome prints of, you know, the lips and eye at that point, then that came a couple of years later, but but he was getting into the pop thing, and he and Blake were good buddies at that time, and Brett was involved with them quite a bit in the way that we weren't, because he's he was living living really near them, near his place around, and see them from time to time.

Sandra McGrath So, I mean, do you think Brett's sort of infatuation with what little he had with pop came actually more from from Peter Blake's sort of pop than his own um American pop?

Lawrence Daws It could be. I saw some other ref- connection somewhere that made me think of his interest in pop, interest in pop, or interest in mainly in the construction on the canvas, that's what I'm thinking of. Yeah. I've forgotten. Something's come down on- I'll have to try and find it now. In museum? This could be No, here it is. Marlborough Prints. That's later, obviously. Brett had some prints in that, some of his zoo things.

Sandra McGrath Right, we're talking about Brett's association or attachment to...

Lawrence Daws to to construction added onto a painting, mainly, and I think it probably could well stem from that Jasper Johns show. It's a large show put on at the Tate.

Sandra McGrath And what year? You don't remember, do you?

Lawrence Daws No, I'm just trying to think of it. It was quite early on.

Sandra McGrath I don't know.

Lawrence Daws Well, before we he went to, long before he went to America, which was about '66, so it's got to be about '64, I would think. Um, and there was large Jasper Johns, with little boxes up the top, and they have various things, and one that Brett kept going back and looking at had a penis in it, and used to and little ladies would look in and recoil and so on. But this, Brett used to keep going on flicking this thing up, so the attendant would come and put it down, things like that. But that that and there was some some other reference I saw of construction that made me think that could well have been the first. This was an exhibition that Bryan Robertson put on at the Whitechapel from February to March 1964 of Robert Rauschenberg, and we were all absolutely bowled over by it. It was one of those great exhibitions, enormous canvases, some really big, and of course, many of his greatest works. And in that, there was quite a lot of stuff added on to the canvas, and I have an idea that that was the time that Brett conceived the idea and possibly first realised the possibility of of doing that sort of thing. I'm trying to find something here. Oh, he had Crook and all that, but there's one where he just had, bit like the Jasper Johns we just described, he had wood on the top.

Sandra McGrath This is about the the matrix of influences.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, well, you know, we're all there was a matrix of influences that we were all being influenced by at that period. From 1961 to 1964, '65 maybe. And one of the big ones, of course, was the was the Rauschenberg exhibition, where the whole use of screen, the silk screen images dragged in, yeah, just like that, and and the and the way that wood was applied to painting surfaces and so on, as as a three-dimensional thing. That had already been done by people like Richard Smith, who'd turned his paintings from flat things into added three-dimensional things, but Rauschenberg bowled all of us over by the scale of his work. I think the idea of Brett's sort of American Dream probably came from the enormous Rauschenberg in this exhibition, which was 8 feet, 7 feet high, and about 35 feet long. You know, they give two works almost that scale in... And we hadn't really seen works like that before.

Sandra McGrath The one we're talking about now is called Barge, 1963, silkscreen, screen and oil paint, 80 by 389 inches. Another interesting one was called The Bed, 1955, which showed a blood-stained bed with a quilt.

Lawrence Daws It looks a bit that way, yes. Yeah.

Sandra McGrath Another one was called Odalisque, 1955-58, which showed a chicken standing on a box.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, this was in, I believe, before the Christie stuff, of course. I hadn't thought of that blood-stained thing there, yeah.

Sandra McGrath Uh... Keep going. Sorry, did... I... talking about the influences.

Lawrence Daws Uh well, I'm just trying to think what the other influences were. There'd be exhibitions that'd come come around at...

Sandra McGrath Jasper Johns.

Lawrence Daws Perhaps. Jasper Johns, and then there was some new Hockney work. Brett liked the Hockney work very much. That was shown at Kasmin's. And any time there was a new Hockney or two in there, we'd all troop in and have a good look at that. William Scott was one that Brett used to admire. In fact, he he used to come up to the farm, you you know, years later, he he actually imitated one. I've got a book here with an article on William Scott in which he's "Goodness, this is doing another one just to see how it looks." That's Brett's. This is the William Scott article in this, and he was going through it. He used to look at this a lot, actually. And then he one day he just couldn't resist, he went off and did this and came back and stuck it, I don't know what's under there. Compositions something under there, he's just stuck.

Sandra McGrath Isn't that funny? We're looking at a book uh called Motif 8, uh Scott's, uh no, Winter 196- Winter 1961. The book, it's a sort of uh hardback art book, really, with an article about various people in it. It's edited by Ruari McLean. It's Motif 8, Winter 1961, and it's got an article uh by Robert Melville on William Scott in it.

Lawrence Daws Mm, quite a lengthy article, actually, and and Brett hadn't seen some of those paintings. He'd seen a lot, I mean. Yeah, later, you know, touched it and forgotten he'd seen it.

Sandra McGrath Anyway, this book was at Laurie's house and Brett was looking at it and looking at it and looking at the Scott pictures. The funny thing was that he went out, painted one,

Lawrence Daws painted a small Scott, and put it over. Came back and stuck it over one of the other ones.

Sandra McGrath Stuck it. And he's stuck it opposite one called Brown Composition, 1959.

Lawrence Daws He was always altering, he would just, you'd find these in old art magazines, he would add a line on to Scott, or just make a bit of a white mark somewhere.

Sandra McGrath It's Brett, not... There's a lot of Brett in Scott, or there's a lot of Scott in Brett, a lot of Scott in Brett, I mean.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, earlier on, and, pity we haven't got any reproductions of uh have uh Roger Hilton, because there must be a connection there somewhere.

Sandra McGrath I've got it, Brett. I will get it, because soon you'll see these, you know, that

Lawrence Daws I'm sure you'll find them.

Sandra McGrath we're looking at these catalogues of the period that uh Brett was in London, and he took took one piece, taking out images that he's adopted from other from these sources.

Lawrence Daws Well, we all did, you know. It's just inevitable that that we did.

Sandra McGrath There's nothing wrong with that.

Lawrence Daws Um but you know, you just acquire something and then move on, you know.

Sandra McGrath Use it and discard it.

Lawrence Daws Now, where are we? What did I...

Sandra McGrath What about Nolan? I want to know about, I just see Nolan in this exhibition. What about Nolan and Whiteley in this period? Or Arthur and Whiteley?

Lawrence Daws Well, we used to see Nolan, and then we'd we'd always wait to see if Nolan would come along to our shows and things like that, you know, um which he easily did. But um you see, he had this thing in 1960, which is the year before we all started showing at the Matthiesen, he showed his quite famous then, Leda and the Swan exhibition, which was quite uh startling for, it was a big exhibition in the number of works in it. 56, 75, 75 works. Some of them are quite small, but there were some very big ones, too.

Sandra McGrath So that was June uh June 16th

Lawrence Daws Yeah, well, I saw that. I don't think Brett saw that. I saw that, I I was in town, Bonython in London, and saw that particular show, so I don't think Brett was in town at that point.

Sandra McGrath He hadn't arrived yet.

Lawrence Daws No, I don't think he'd I don't think he'd arrived. Arthur was there, Arthur Boyd was there.

Sandra McGrath And what relation did Arthur have with... I don't think he had met Brett before, actually, on my farm. He didn't meet Brett in London, I don't think.

Lawrence Daws Oh, yes, he did.

Sandra McGrath Did he?

Lawrence Daws Arthur and Brett came to my studio in 1961.

Sandra McGrath Did they?

Lawrence Daws And uh or '62, it's maybe '62.

Sandra McGrath Where, where was your studio then?

Lawrence Daws Over the bread shop, the ABC shop in Hampstead High Street.

Sandra McGrath What street number was that?

Lawrence Daws What number? I don't know what number. I don't know if it had a number.

Sandra McGrath Oh.

Lawrence Daws Oh yeah, it was, it was 61 Hampstead High Street.

Sandra McGrath Every house has a number.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, it did, 61, yeah.

Sandra McGrath Say it again, 60?

Lawrence Daws Hampstead, 61 Hampstead, H-A-M-P-S-T-E-A-D, Hampstead High Street. Hampstead.

Sandra McGrath Hampstead.

Lawrence Daws Um it was just a great big room, about 25 feet square, and then a small room at the back with a bed, and just a cupboard that had the kitchen in it, you know, a sink about 4 feet by 3 feet. And the bathroom, which was just a shower and the loo up on the halfway up the landing, up up to the first eight steps, and into this landing, loo, bathroom there. Um Arthur and Brett arrived, I'd never met Brett before, Arthur's bringing him around, but I'd been seeing Arthur quite a bit.

Sandra McGrath No, wait. Let's get this straight. You met Arthur, you met Brett for the first time when Arthur brought him

Lawrence Daws Yes, Arthur brought him around.

Sandra McGrath to your studio at Hampstead.

Lawrence Daws Yeah. I mentioned in the in the my words spoken in the in the memorial, but I can tell you again. Um they arrived in a taxicab, like, you know, you can hear cabs, you know. And I looked out and I could see there's this ginger-headed young man, you know, helping this old man out of the cab. Arthur was really offended by this and really depressed, that this, because he was only 43 at the time, Arthur. And this is a young whippersnapper. It's sort of it's a cross between veneration of the elders and that sniffing out the the opposition, sort of thing, like the young warriors, you know. Anyway, they came up in the studio and Brett was pacing around, uh full of his Italian stuff, you know, he'd just come from there, and his new heroes, and was talking about them. He already had that endearing way of calling them just by one name, you know, Piero, and first show at Marlborough, then '60... I thought that was '63. Anyway, then the the bathroom paintings, which were done, you know, within the year of of him getting married. Went off to south of France for a couple of months, came back and did all the bathroom paintings very quickly. Incredible unfolding of imagery of uh of Wendy in the bath. And the photograph somewhere there. I took that off.

Sandra McGrath Yeah. I'm looking at a catalogue of Marlborough catalogue, 1960- Sep- September 1967, which has on the cover Brett Whiteley's self-portrait with bubbles coming up at the top. Four bubbles, one has a woman with breast, another a landscape, and the third bubble is a um famine or death scene, and the fifth bubble is a paintbrush and tube, and a hand is in the foreground on a three-dimensional hand with a white carnation, which he had

Lawrence Daws got a little man to come and change every day.

Sandra McGrath How would you describe that image in the foreground, please, Mr Daws? Well, looks like he's been eating ice cream, you know, his fingers

Lawrence Daws covered in white, uh fresh carnation, which I remember he organised to be placed there each day, uh coming straight out from the flat canvas.

Sandra McGrath And what is this thing here?

Lawrence Daws That's his hand. See, this comes down from the shoulder, down to the elbow and up.

Sandra McGrath Oh, I see. You know how I was looking at that? I see, I was looking at it like a gourd.

Lawrence Daws Oh yeah, no, no, that's that's the hand. It's foreshortened.

Sandra McGrath Oh, of course that's it.

Lawrence Daws That's the shoulder coming down, the elbow's here. Comes up, there's the fingers, you see.

Sandra McGrath Just hang on to that for a minute. I want to just grab one or two. Um, also in this in this catalogue of 1967 were...

Lawrence Daws They were in New York at this time.

Sandra McGrath Okay, we're talking about Bryan Robertson and the role he played among the young Australian painters in London in the early '60s.

Lawrence Daws Oh, well, apart from the many sort of invitations to little meetings at the Café Royal and places like that, and little dinners and things, he organised a large lunch in the cavernous dining room at the Charing Cross Railway Station, which apparently has very good food, and the roast beef and so on. And the main, the guests of honour were Kenneth Clark and his wife, and all the available Australian painters who were there in town for the Whitechapel show. And they're quite a number, and it was quite a memorable lunch. I wish somebody had taken photographs, but I don't think they did.

Sandra McGrath And did you all meet the Clarks?

Lawrence Daws Oh yes, very much, and he talked to all of us and we talked to him.

Sandra McGrath Must have been a huge buzz for you young guys.

Lawrence Daws Oh, absolutely it was. And Bryan had already got a guy called Colin Anderson, the P&O Line, very much on side through Sid Nolan. He was pally with Nolan and he was very supportive of the Australian painters, and we met him, for example, and he was Yeah, that was a big buzz, we were meeting all the English painters: William Scott, who was quite a hero of Brett's.

Sandra McGrath He was a hero of Brett's. How old was William Scott when you met him?

Lawrence Daws Let's see, he would have been about 46, so we called him old, but he would have been 46, something like that, yeah.

Sandra McGrath And how old were the Clarks, Sir Kenneth Clark?

Lawrence Daws Oh, let's see, well, he would have been, they would have been much older, of course.

Sandra McGrath He was Lord Clark, actually, wasn't he?

Lawrence Daws Yes, I think he was only Sir Kenneth at that time. They would have been in their fifties somewhere.

Sandra McGrath Old again.

Lawrence Daws Old again, yeah. Real old. The person that I haven't mentioned is, uh, Mmh, god, what's his name? An alcoholic painter, British painter.

Sandra McGrath Bacon.

Lawrence Daws No, no, no, no, no, uh. Oh, hang on, just pause that for a minute. Certainly wasn't all admired, you know.

Sandra McGrath We're talking about Roger, Roger...

Lawrence Daws Roger Hilton, who was always at the Whitechapel openings because he had

Sandra McGrath Okay, please go on. We're talking about Roger Hilton, who became, who's an English painter.

Lawrence Daws Yes, well we met him because another thing Bryan did was to invite us, all of us who were there, all the Australian painters, to all the Whitechapel exhibitions. And Roger Hilton and Scott, for example, were always at these exhibitions, and Brett got to know Roger Hilton. And in fact, he lived in Notting Hill Gate, and Brett used to see him and they used to go drinking together, and I think Mick Johnson did too, but Brett in particular wooed Roger a bit, because he really loved his work. He didn't actually paint like him, but there was a quality about the way he painted that Brett really enjoyed, and I think Brett quite liked the idea that he was the black sheep of the English art scene. He was unashamedly an alcoholic and would, you could never tell which way he was going to behave in an exhibition, you know, do something quite scandalous. He'd always turn up in this slightly tatty gabardine overcoat with sort of verdigris around the collar and so on. And was always making rude comments about established figures and so on. I think Brett liked that side of him.

Sandra McGrath The whole irreverent attitude.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, the irreverence rather appealed to Brett. And, but anyway, I think he just liked the boozing and the drinking and the boozing, and the way he would go off and paint and so on. Painted when he felt like it.

Sandra McGrath Which pubs did you all frequent, do you say, or did you?

Lawrence Daws Well, there were two or three near the, there was one just over the road, I've forgotten the name of it now, but immediately over the road from 129 Ladbroke Grove, uh, an Irish pub, which we used to drink drink at mostly.

Sandra McGrath 129 Ladbroke...

Lawrence Daws Yeah, over the road from 129 Ladbroke Grove, there's an Irish pub. Uh, if you go in if you're going to oh well, you see it straight over the road from 129, on the corner. The Elgin, I think it is, yes, The Elgin.

Sandra McGrath The Elgin, mm, as in Elgin Marbles?

Lawrence Daws E-L-G-I-A E-L-G-I-N, yeah.

Sandra McGrath As in Elgin Marbles?

Lawrence Daws Yeah, but it's an Irish it must be Irish.

Sandra McGrath How's an Irish pub the Elgin Marbles?

Lawrence Daws I don't think it's named after the Elgin Marbles. Um, we used to drink at that one a lot, and go to the the Friday night sort of punch-ups, as it were. It wasn't punch-ups, it was a it often finished up like that, but down the back they'd have this concert. It was like a forerunner of the karaoke thing, you know, where people would get up and sing into the microphones, they'd have a band and this sort of thing. We used to go over there and do a lot of drinking, and occasionally somebody'd get up and sing, and have a go, and then stagger back over the road. That's uh Now who were the Uh, yeah, Scott, William Scott was somebody that we used to see quite a bit of, among the so-called older painters. But the young ones were the ones that

Sandra McGrath So just to enunciate for this tape, the younger English painters you saw occasionally and sometimes frequently were?

Lawrence Daws Well, they were the ones that were under slightly protective and being supported very much personally by Bryan Robertson, who was helping them get shows and so on. Paul Huxley was a particular one, Derek Boshier, um, John Hoyland, Paul Huxley, um, and Peter Phillips to a lesser degree. And he was obviously supporting Bridget Riley, but we didn't see much of her in those days. She was sort of behind the scenes a bit.

Sandra McGrath So if I wanted, so it'd be Paul Paul Huxley, Derek Boshier,

Lawrence Daws Boshier, Boshier, yeah.

Sandra McGrath Boshier. Patrick Caulfield? No, not so much.

Lawrence Daws Not so much, no.

Sandra McGrath John Hoyland?

Lawrence Daws Yeah, Hoyland.

Sandra McGrath Quite a bit? Huxley quite a bit?

Lawrence Daws Yeah. Yeah.

Sandra McGrath Allen Jones, not at all. Peter

Lawrence Daws Peter Phillips a bit. Peter Phillips a bit. And Patrick Procktor a lot, yes, Patrick Procktor.

Sandra McGrath Patrick Procktor a lot.

Lawrence Daws He was a very close friend of of Bryan's. And there was Michael Vaughan, who's who's much older than them and he's one of the older figures uh of English painting. He's dead now, but uh he was a good friend of uh Bryan's. We used to see him quite a bit, but not in the same way, you know, he wasn't part of that younger group.

Sandra McGrath Where did Bryan Robertson live?

Lawrence Daws Um, just Draycott Draycott Draycott Draycott Terrace, parallel with King's Road, just one back. Draycott Place. parallel with King's Road, just one street back. On the second floor, I think.

Sandra McGrath What was his apartment like?

Lawrence Daws Oh, just an ordinary sort of apartment, not not a lot of paintings in it. Um, he used to entertain a bit, you know, and things like that.

Sandra McGrath Describe Bryan Robertson as you saw him and who he is on the tape, so...

Lawrence Daws Well, he he's a young Well, he was youngish then. I suppose he would be about We were all sort of Well, I'm not all Brett was much younger than any of us. I was about 20 No, I'd be 30-something, 33, and Bryan would have been about 37 at the time of the Whitechapel show. Um, he's sort of very English complexion, uh greying hair already at a very early age. Um, I don't know, how else to describe him. An excellent writer on on on art, who

Sandra McGrath I love his Pollock book.

Lawrence Daws Which one's that?

Sandra McGrath He's written a book on Pollock.

Lawrence Daws Oh, the Pollock, I said a poet book. The Pollock, yes, that was a great book. Well, he was doing that roughly about the time all this was happening, or had just done it, I think. Um, he was very very caring about young painters in that he wanted them to proceed. I mean, he didn't have any children of his own um and I think he treated young painters a bit like, you know, that he was the parental figure, um trying to steer them in into a certain way in a direction and not have them veering off on the side, being tempted by commercialism, or whatever, you know. And he's he's you know, he's was very aware of that, and anybody who sort of slid off the way, he'd give them heaps, or either that or not have anything to do with them after that. But Paul Huxley, in particular, is somebody that he has gone on evolving very much the way he always started out. And I think Bryan had a lot to do with keeping him in focus in that particular way. And Boshier and Hoyland had the same single way of proceeding, where some of the others, like uh Patrick Procktor and uh Phillips, Peter Phillips, varied, you know, they went off into other things, Peter Phillips into enormous Rauschenberg in this exhibition, which was 8 ft, 7 ft high and about 35 ft long, and we hadn't really seen works like that before.

Sandra McGrath The one we're talking about now is called Barge, 1963, silkscreen, screen and oil paint, 80 by 389 inches.

Lawrence Daws Inches, yeah.

Sandra McGrath Another interesting one was called The Bed, 1955. It showed a bloodstained bed with a quilt.

Lawrence Daws It looks a bit that way, yes.

Sandra McGrath Another one was called Odalisk, 1955-58, which showed a chicken standing on a box.

Lawrence Daws No, this presumably is before the Christie stuff, of course. I hadn't thought of that bloodstained thing there, yeah.

Sandra McGrath Er, keep going. Sorry, er, talking about the influences.

Lawrence Daws Oh, I'm just trying to think what the other influences were. There'd be exhibitions that'd come, come round that

Sandra McGrath Did Jasper Johns?

Lawrence Daws Jasper Johns, and then there was a new Hockney work. Brett liked the Hockney work very much. It was shown at Kasmin's, and any time there was a new Hockney or two in there, we'd all troop in and have a good look at that. William Scott was one that Brett used to admire. In fact, he, when he used to come up to the farm, you know, years later, he actually imitated one. And I've got a book here with an article on William Scott in which he couldn't resist doing another one just to see how it looks.

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Lawrence Daws That's Brett's, but this is the William Scott article he was going through. He used to look at this a lot, actually. And then one day he just couldn't resist. He went off and did this, and then came back and stuck it on. I don't know what's under there, Composition something, but under there he's just stuck it.

Sandra McGrath Isn't that funny? We're looking at a book, er, called Motif 8, of Scott's, er, no, Winter 196- Winter 1961, the book, it's a sort of, er, hardback art book, really, with articles about various people in it, and it's edited by Ruari McLean. It's Motif 8, Winter 1961, and it's got an article by Robert Melville on William Scott in it.

Lawrence Daws Mmm, quite a lengthy article, actually, and Brett hadn't seen some of those paintings. He'd seen a lot, you know, years later, you know, perhaps he'd forgotten he'd seen them.

Sandra McGrath Anyway, this book was at Laurie's house and Brett was looking at it and looking at it and looking at the Scott pictures, and finally couldn't resist it. He went out, painted one, painted

Lawrence Daws Painted a small one.

Sandra McGrath a small Scott and put it over.

Lawrence Daws Came back and stuck it over one of the other ones.

Sandra McGrath Stuck it. Stuck it opposite one called Brown Composition, 1959.

Lawrence Daws I was always altering images he'd find these in all art magazines. He'd add a line on a Scott or just make a bit of a white mark somewhere.

Sandra McGrath It's weird that there's a lot of Brett in Scott or there's a lot of Scott in Brett. I mean, a lot of Scott in Brett, I mean.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, earlier on. A pity we haven't got any reproductions of Roger Hilton because there must be a connection there somewhere.

Sandra McGrath There's going to be. There will be, because as soon as you see these, you know that

Lawrence Daws Sure, you'll find it.

Sandra McGrath we're looking at these catalogues of the period that Brett was in London and he keep picking, one keeps picking up images that he's, um, adopted from other, from these sources.

Lawrence Daws Well, we all did, you know, it's just inevitable that, that we did.

Sandra McGrath There's nothing wrong with that.

Lawrence Daws Um, but, you know, you just, er, acquire something and then move on, you know?

Sandra McGrath Use it and discard it.

Lawrence Daws Now, where are we? What are we looking at next?

Sandra McGrath What about Nolan? I want to know, I've just seen Nolan in this exhibition. What about Nolan and Whiteley in this period? Or Arthur and Whiteley?

Lawrence Daws Well, we used to see Nolan and we'd always wait to see if Nolan would come along to our shows and things like that, you know, which he usually did. But, er, he, you see, he had this thing in 1960, which is the year before we all started showing at the Matthiesen. He showed his quite famous then, Leda and the Swan exhibition, which was quite, er, startling for, it was a big exhibition. Look at the number of works in it: 56, 75, 75 works. Some of them were quite small, but there were some very big ones too.

Sandra McGrath So that was June, June 16th to July 16th, 1960.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, I saw that. I don't think Brett saw that. I saw that, I was in town. Very anxious to know Nolan, and saw that particular show, but, er, I don't think Brett was in town at that point.

Sandra McGrath He hadn't arrived, Brett?

Lawrence Daws No, I don't think he'd arrived. Arthur was there, Arthur Boyd was there.

Sandra McGrath And what relation did Arthur have with, see, I don't think he'd met Brett before, actually, my farm. He didn't meet Brett in London, I don't think.

Lawrence Daws Yes, he did.

Sandra McGrath Did he?

Lawrence Daws Arthur and Brett came to my studio in 1961.

Sandra McGrath Did they?

Lawrence Daws And, er, or was it '62? I think maybe '62.

Sandra McGrath Where, where was your studio then?

Lawrence Daws Er, over the bread shop, ABC shop in Hampstead High Street.

Sandra McGrath What number was that?

Lawrence Daws What number? I don't know what number. I don't think it had a number.

Sandra McGrath Oh, yes, it did.

Lawrence Daws Oh, yeah, it was. It was 61 Hampstead High Street.

Sandra McGrath Every house has a number.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, it was 61. Yeah.

Sandra McGrath Hamp-, say it again: 60?

Lawrence Daws 61 Hampstead, H-A-M-P-S-T-E-A-D, Hampstead High Street. Hampstead.

Sandra McGrath Hampstead.

Lawrence Daws Er, it was just a great big room, about 25 ft square, and then a small room at the back with a bed in it, and just a cupboard that had the kitchen in it, well, you know, a thing about 4 ft by 3 ft, and then a bathroom, it wasn't, just a shower and a loo up on a, halfway up the landing, up the stairs. Eight steps or something to this landing with a loo, bathroom, and thing. Um, so Arthur, Arthur and Brett arrived. So, I'd never met Brett before, Arthur's bringing him around, but I'd been seeing Arthur quite a bit.

Sandra McGrath Now, wait, let's get this straight. You met Arthur, but you met Brett for the first time when Arthur brought him to your,

Lawrence Daws Yes, yeah, Arthur brought him around.

Sandra McGrath to your studio at Hampstead?

Lawrence Daws Mmm, yeah. I mentioned in the, in the, my, the words spoken at his memorial, but I can tell you again. Um, they arrived in a taxicab, and I, you know, you can hear cabs pull up, and I looked out and I could see there's this ginger-headed young man, you know, helping this old man out of the cab. And Arthur was really offended by this, and really depressed at this, because he was only 43 at the time, Arthur, you know. And there's this young whippersnapper who's sort of, it's a cross between venera-, veneration of the elders and sniffing out the, the opposition sort of thing, like a young warrior, isn't it? Anyway, they came up into the studio, and Brett was pacing around, full of his Italian stuff, you know, he'd just come from there, and his new heroes, and he was talking about them. He already had that endearing way of calling them just by one name, you know, Piero and all that sort of thing. And Dieb-, Diebenkorn, he was talking about then, because he called him, er, what did he call him? Diebs, that's right.

Sandra McGrath Diebs.

Lawrence Daws Diebs. And René,

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Lawrence Daws and, and, er, er, Giacometti, obviously, pretty keen on at that time, but he, he was just "Giacs". And we were soon to hear a lot about Francis and Vincent, but, er, it was like he was talking about a club that he knew he was going to belong to, you know? That familiar, easy intimacy of the first name, it was very interesting. I was, er, mesmerized by it, I can tell you. You know, for meeting him for the first time.

Sandra McGrath Because he exuded confidence and cockiness and

Lawrence Daws Well, there was just this, the energy, the energy for one thing, and a slight lateral way of seeing things, you know? It wasn't, wasn't straight up the middle line sort of thing, you know. He'd fire off things all the time, peripheral to what was being discussed, and, er, I hadn't encountered that, not, not at that speed.

Sandra McGrath No one ever has, I don't think.

Lawrence Daws Well, I, I certainly, I was mesmerized. But then I, once everything got underway and I saw a lot of him, we became very good friends over the years. Well, at that time we were good friends. Um,

Sandra McGrath How would you describe Brett's mind?

Lawrence Daws Um, God, how do you describe a mind like that?

Sandra McGrath With difficulty.

Lawrence Daws Yeah. It never stopped, I know that, and it never slowed down. Er, he'd had to be absolutely dead tired and deeply asleep to slow down, because even when he was appeared to be not being, you know, full of energy, the mind was going. He'd just say something, you know, if he sitting down, appear, appearing to be asleep, and he'd overhear a conversation, and he'd fire something out that was quite, you know, incredibly sharp and, and pertinent to what was being said. But, you know, when he was firing, it was just unbelievable. Nobody could keep up with him, you know, not, I mean, the intake was even hard to digest, you know, it was, it was such a rapid fire of images and and concepts and words and, and motions and things. No, he had, Scott-

Sandra McGrath Do you think for this reason he has found it, he found it difficult to really have close friends? Because he really was is faster than everybody else, sort of he was the sprinter and everybody else sort of the stayer?

Lawrence Daws I think so, probably, yes. The one he did come closest to and, and, and who enjoyed the company of most was Joel Elenberg.

Sandra McGrath Mmm.

Lawrence Daws He was clearly, I would think, his closest friend, and, and they had a nice rapport. It wasn't the speedy word all the time. In fact, Joel used to tell him to stop showing off and all this sort of stuff, you know. Er, but it was an easy rapport. They knew exactly, you know, what was going, what, what, they were almost thinking alike, you know, when they're operating well together. I've seen them doing it.

Sandra McGrath They came down to the country, er, and they were, several times came down to Bundanon, and I was, er, we made a, the two of them made a sculpture in the middle of the river one day, and it was wonderful to watch them.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, it would be, that would be, mmm.

Sandra McGrath I mean, Brett of course interfered terribly with, er, Joel's sculpture, because Joel started it,

Lawrence Daws Yes.

Sandra McGrath because Joel was a sculptor, and Brett was supposed to be sketching on the bank,

Lawrence Daws That's right, that's right.

Sandra McGrath but Joel, Brett couldn't resist wading into the water and, er,

Lawrence Daws Having a go.

Sandra McGrath taking his clothes off and all fit and having a go at Joel's sculpture.

Lawrence Daws Yeah, sounds like Brett.

Sandra McGrath It does, doesn't it?

Lawrence Daws Yeah. He did the same up, up at my place too, because, um, I had a big painting. I'd been to, um, Morocco, and I'd come back and I got some Moroccan images going. And they're big one, well, not big, 4 ft at the uh at the New London Gallery in Marlborough. That was his very first exhibition there, wasn't it? This is the catalogue of it, this is the one here. No, isn't it? Here's the zoo ones and then they and the Christie ones. And when is this one? Oh, that's later. That's later. Yeah, I haven't got the first one. Oh, I have, but I haven't got it here. There was the first one, the bathroom ones, you know. Which was his first show with Marlborough. That was in '60, I thought that was '63. Anyway, then then the bathroom paintings, which were done, you know, within the year of him getting married. Went off to South of France for a couple of months, came back and did all the bathroom paintings very quickly. Incredible unfolding of imagery, you know, of er of Wendy in the bath. And photographs somewhere over here. Just cut that off, eh?

Sandra McGrath Okay, I'm looking at a catalogue of Marlborough catalogue, 1960, September 1967, which has on the cover Brett Whiteley self-portrait with bubbles coming up at the top. It's four bubbles, one has a woman with breast, another a landscape, and the third bubble is a famine or death scene, and the fifth bubble is a paintbrush and tube. And a hand is in the foreground on a

Lawrence Daws Three-dimensional hand. Three-dimensional hand, with a fresh carnation which he had got a little man to come and change every day.

Sandra McGrath How would you describe that image in the foreground, please, Mr Daws?

Lawrence Daws Oh, it looks like he's been eating ice cream, you know, his fingers covered in white, fresh carnation which, I remember, he organized to be placed there each day, coming straight out from the flat canvas.

Sandra McGrath And what is this thing here?

Lawrence Daws That's his hand. See, this comes over the shoulder, down to the elbow and up.

Sandra McGrath Oh, I see! You know, I was looking at that—

Lawrence Daws There's the fingers.

Sandra McGrath I see. I was looking at it like a gourd.

Lawrence Daws Oh, yeah, no, no. That's that's the hand.

Sandra McGrath That's how it is. Oh, of course that's it.

Lawrence Daws You see, that's the shoulder coming down. The elbow's here. Comes up near the fingers, you see.

Sandra McGrath Just hang on to that for a minute. I want to describe what I'm seeing. Um, also in this in this catalogue of 1967 were

Lawrence Daws Did they have the New York ones there?