[BRETT WHITELEY] Notebook (with collage elements added by Whiteley)

[Sydney : the artist, 1973]. Folio, illustrated card covers, 8 pp, printed in black and red ink with one small illustration in colour, edges rubbed with handling creases, a very good copy. As in a number of copies (but not all), Whiteley has added collage elements to the book, a photograph of a section of wallpaper to the inside of upper wrapper, and a Chinese vase in the centre of p. [7].

The original edition of Whiteley’s notes for the monumental painting Alchemy (1972-73), with collage elements added by the artist. A facsimile edition was published by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2006.

‘When it was first exhibited at the Bonython Gallery in January 1973, ‘Alchemy’ was accompanied by a catalogue assemblage of images and words from Whiteley’s notebooks. Collectively this assemblage fails to make much sense, with quotes from Huysmans, Bacon, Dante, Dylan and many others, mingled with the artist’s own aphorisms and anecdotes. However, there are occasional shafts of insight, in his own inimitable language, into the artist’s essential process: “‘Alchemy’ is the business of seeing what doesn’t exist” he wrote; “The quest is the transmutation of Self”; “Most of this painting was first seen with the eyes closed in the pitch of night, awake”; or the often quoted “Art should astonish, transmute, transfix. Work at the tissue between truth and paranoia” [Barry Pearce, ‘Brett Whiteley: art & life’, London: Thames and Hudson, 1995, pg.34].

Copies are recorded in six Australian collections (State Library of Queensland; State Library of Victoria; Art Gallery of South Australia Research Library; Art Gallery of New South Wales Research Library and Archive; La Trobe University Library; University of New South Wales Library).