Few artists have captured the Australian imagination as powerfully as Brett Whiteley and George Baldessin. Creating works contemporaneously, both artists used their art to explore psychological and emotional states. Their works moved beyond representation, and into the realm of introspection - exploring existential themes of identity, voyeurism, and vulnerability with striking immediacy.
Brett Whitely 'Chimp: Taronga Park Zoo, Sydney'
For Brett Whiteley, this complex psychological inquiry found potent expression in his ‘Zoo’ series. The zoo became, for Whiteley, a kind of sanctuary - set apart from the intensity of the city. Observing the caged animals as an anonymous viewer, Whiteley used the animals' confinement as a way of understanding the conditions of existence.
Brett Whitely 'Swinging Monkey 2'
Brett Whitely 'Swinging Monkey 3' - collected by Vaughan
In Whiteley’s practice, the experience of studying animals was often emotional - as he describes, "it is sometimes painful to feel what one guesses the animal "feels" from the inside." In his screenprint ‘Hyena’, this sense of empathetic connection is palpable. With its body obscured by thick bars, the animal’s defining visual quality, one of confinement, is filtered through Whiteley’s lens . Psychologically intriguing, this work is layered in complex perspectives, with Whiteley acting as voyeur, artist, and surrogate for the ‘hyena’.
For George Baldessin, his pre-occupation with the human condition materialises in the ‘performer’. Performance acts as a metaphor for existence - individuals acting habitually, physically detached from their psyches. In ‘Performers with Bicycles’, this sense of detachment is embodied by the central figure - with a striped costume and mask-like face, the ‘performer’ is both familiar and uncanny, existing to entertain those watching.
George Baldessin 'Performers with bicycles'
Ideas of confinement and voyeurism sit at the core of both Baldessin and Whiteley’s practices. Where for Whiteley, the caged animals become potent symbols of restriction and instinct, for Baldessin, it is the human figure which appears confined, constrained by social expectation, living to be looked at.
Brett Whitely 'Hullo (Cockatoo)'
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