Lot 14

Private collection, Sydney
Private collection, Melbourne
Menzies, Sydney, 19 November 2020, lot 160
Private collection, Melbourne

Brett Whiteley: The Graphics 1961-1992, Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne, 1995, cat. no. 111, p.115, (illus., p. 99, another impression)
Sutherland, K., Brett Whiteley Catalogue Raisonné, Schwartz Publishing, Melbourne 2020, Vol. 7, p. 203 (illus., another impression)

"Australian rock band INXS was the starting point for Brett Whiteley's last completed work, an etching of his friend, jeweller Tony White. Whiteley, who was found dead in a motel room on the NSW south coast on Tuesday, was fascinated by the band, particularly singer Michael Hutchence. Keeping in touch with the star living all over the world led Whiteley to infrequently call on White, a friend of both men, to get the singer's latest phone number. "Brett was very fond of the INXS pop star - he was a groupie - and after the third or fourth time (of supplying the latest phone number) I decided to ask him for a favour", White told Daphne Guinness yesterday. Whiteley agreed to create an etching to be given to guests at White's 50th birthday party in late April, at first producing a work of a willow tree. "Symbolic, I believe, of death but I didn't want to read too much into that" White said. Whiteley scrapped it and did a second, a Buddha head, right, inscribed "Tony at 50". "He gave it long ears which indicate long life, but I don't want to read too much into that either." White said when he viewed the work, the only copies of which are now in the possession of the 35 guests at the Sydney dinner party, as "priceless".
(To White, from Whiteley. Newspaper clipping verso 1992)

© Brett Whiteley/Copyright Agency, 2023