Brett Whiteley

(1939-1992)

Crow in a Plum Tree, 1978

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney
Private collection
Christie's, Australian Paintings, Prints and Books, Sydney, 26 October 1987, lot 767
Private collection
Christie's, Australian Paintings and Prints, Sydney, 14 November 1988, lot 237
Eva Breuer Art Dealer, Sydney
Private collection, Sydney, acquired in 1998
Deutscher and Hackett, Important Australian and International Fine Art, Sydney, 2 May 2012, lot 31
Private collection, Melbourne

EXHIBITED
Brett Whiteley: Birds and Animals, Taronga Park Zoo, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney, 10 April - 5 May 1979, cat. 23 (stamped verso)

LITERATURE
Humphrey McQueen, 'Brett Whiteley', Art and Australia, Fine Arts Press, Sydney, Vol. 17, No. 1, September 1979, p. 51 (illus. in situ)


In 1979, Robin Gibson displayed this work as part of Birds and Animals, Taronga Park Zoo. The exhibition was described by Humphrey McQueen as a 'Happening' in his review for Art and Australia. A building was purchased, turned into a white cube of sorts and then sold at the end of Brett Whiteley's show, a sign perhaps of Gibson's faith in the work and of Sydney's changing art scene.

Most certainly the result was to charm and enthral. In McQueen's review he described the experience of the upper rooms, where Crow in a Plum Tree was displayed as 'neither the orange picture nor anything downstairs could prepare the senses for the enchanted world beyond that doorway. On all four walls where paintings of birds. Blues. Greens. Orange. White. Silver. Down the middle of the slender room are six blue-and-white pots and three fantastic sculptures including a stuffed, headless emu with an extended wooden neck. On top of a tall pedestal there is an eyrie with a gigantic egg. A sound system plays Japanese Buddhist temple music and, later, the sounds of Dylan.

Circling the room induces a sense of wonder, excitement, delight, until you float, mesmerized, along winged arabesques. Comparisons come later: Monet contemplating Nirvana; Matisse's decorative luxury; Bergmann's Magic Flute; La Boutique Fantasque. How to convey intensity to those who have not been bathed in it? The room should be bought whole and re-established as a single piece of jewellery. Criticism and history will come later. In the presence of the inexplicable, only magic is appropriate.'