Winner: Archibald Prize 1978
Brett Whiteley Art, life and the other thing
oil, photograph and mixed media on board
3 panels: 244 x 198 cm overall
In 1978 Brett Whiteley became the first artist to win all three prizes – Archibald, Wynne and Sulman – in the same year.
Critics were divided by this brutally honest self-portrait by Whiteley, which won the artist the Archibald Prize for a second time. (His first win was in 1976.)
The elongated image in the centre references the infamous debate over William Dobell’s Archibald-winning portrait of Joshua Smith of 1943. It is flanked on one side by a baboon howling with anguish as a ghostly hand delivers it a syringe (a reference to Whiteley’s heroin addiction), and on the other by a photograph of Whiteley.
The work is now in the collection of the Art Gallery of NSW.