Art, Life and The Other Thing was awarded the Archibald Prize in 1978. It is composed of three panels. Media used includes: oil, glass eye, hair, pen, ink, plaster, photography, cigarette butts, and a hypodermic syringe.
I relish this artwork. I could look watch it for hours and still find new aspects which I had only skimmed past previous times I had seen the painting. Art, Life is secretive and suspiciously ersatz, feigning innocence. This confuses me, because the imagery is so confronting and seemingly genuine, yet I know that it is hiding something from me. Perhaps it is the look on Whiteley’s face in the third image of the triptych that gives the artwork this quality. What is he thinking? But his ambiguous face is serous. He looks cunning and self-assured; he looks lost and helpless.
The second panel does not evoke such a personal reaction from me. This panel is not for me, anyway. It belongs to Brett. He has asserted his authority in this artwork by placing his photograph in the corner. This panel belongs to Brett, but it wants to be separate from him; I can see that. The angle of the face and the shape of the eye communicate independently. They whisper to me and he turns a blind eye. It wants to be free from him…but it is not mine to claim. This panel belongs to Brett.
The first panel of the triptych changes this. My quiet respect for Whiteley invoked by Panel 2 is replaced by anger. This panel depicts a screaming beast subject to nails and thorns beneath its feet. A tear falls from its eye and a cold human hand reaches out and offers a needle. Whiteley’s hand. Whiteley’s animal. It’s his fault, I think. Why subject himself to this pain? His beast is dangerous and unapproachable, but the tear provokes sympathy for this poor, foolish man who brings this pointless destruction upon himself. This is the Brett that Whiteley cannot control.
Art, Life and The Other Thing is a triptych (it is made up of three pieces).
The first piece is 90.4 x 77.2 cm and sits at the bottom left of the triptych. It depicts an indistinct animal form. The beast appears to be growling. A tear falls from its eye, and beneath its bleeding feet are nails. Handcuffs constrict its hands, which are surrounded by light brushstrokes and appear to be moving. A human hand holding a hypodermic syringe, which is glued onto the board, reaches out from the top left corner.
The second piece is an abstract self-portrait. The face stares in the direction of the audience, but is accompanied by a multiple of vague outlines of his profile that look across to the left. The predominant feature is a large blue eye. His body is elongated, particularly his left arm, which holds a sketch of William Dobell’s controversial Archibald portrait of Joshua Smith.
The third piece is a photograph of Whiteley’s face. He looks across to his left, and smiles slightly. This image is placed in the top right of the triptych. . Whiteley wears a white shirt, reminiscent of that which his portrait wears in Panel 2.
The prominent colour is a dirty orange that acts as the background in each panel. This highlights the connection between each piece as one artwork, as opposed to three individual works. The use of levels in the placement of each piece insists that it be read from right-to-left which is unusual.
Art, Life and The Other Thing is fundamentally a self-portrait and thus does not communicate much about the artists outlook on society, only what has affected him so deeply that it has become a part of him. It does make explicit reference to Whiteley’s affiliation with drug-use and drug culture (Panel 1). It also refers to his place in the art world by showing him draw Dobell’s Archibald Prize winner in Panel 2. This painting was the topic of great controversy, when it was entered in 1943, for its abstract manner. Whiteley’s artwork is also very abstract, and coincidently, Art, Life went on to win the Archibald in 1978.
Brett Whiteley was an artist familiar with appropriation. In Art, Life and The Other Thing he has drawn his interpretation of William Dobell’s portrait of Joshua Smith. Whiteley’s sketch is startling similar to Dobell’s painting, however is on a much smaller scale and is in black and white. It could be a preliminary sketch for the controversial artwork, and here it is suggested that it has been drawn by Whiteley himself, rather than Dobell.
This artwork has inspired a universal audience for over 30 years, and it shall undoubtedly go on to do so for many years to come.