The first authorised and definitive biography of one of Australia's most famous and infamous artists, this is a gloriously bright, readable, and revelatory work of literature.
Ashleigh Wilson has been a journalist for almost two decades. He began his career at the Australian in Sydney before spending several years in Brisbane, covering everything from state politics to the Hollingworth crisis to indigenous affairs. He then moved north to become the paper's Darwin correspondent, a posting bookended by the Falconio murder trial and the Howard government's intervention in remote Aboriginal communities. During that time he won a Walkley Award for reports on unethical behaviour in the Aboriginal art industry, a series that led to a Senate inquiry. He returned to Sydney in 2008 and has been the paper's Arts Editor since 2011. He lives in Sydney.
'Ashleigh Wilson has produced an intriguing, absorbing and assured account of Brett Whiteley's life and work'. -- Mark Knopfler 'With relentless precision, Ashleigh Wilson has provided a peerless grasp of the life and genius of Brett Whiteley. This storied journey of one of Australia's most mercurial twentieth-century artists will be impossible for the reader to put aside until it is finished. It is the dispassionate biography Whiteley has long needed: a career clarified from the brilliant clouds of myth.' -- Barry Pearce, Emeritus Curator of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of NSW 'A full-dress life of Whiteley that speeds and soars and never ceases to do homage to the colossal confrontation and contradiction the artist represents...Wilson has written that rarest of things, a 400-page biography that is hard to put down...[It] will make you weep for this exasperation of a man and hunger for his art.' Australian 'An essential and invaluable resource for any Whiteley scholar...Wilson's achievement is considerable...Ashleigh Wilson's Brett Whiteley: Art, Life and the Other Thing is a benchmark publication in Whiteley studies.' Sydney Review of Books '[Wilson brings] his subject to life in a fast-paced, thrilling way...Clever selection of detail...An excellent biography.' Books+Publishing 'Ashleigh Wilson's new telling of Whiteley is a remarkable exercise in sustained authorial discipline...Wilson has given Whiteley the biography he deserves. Accommodating, even forgiving on occasion, but never indulgent. Engaged and attentive, unaffectedly interested in the artist, but not uncritical.' Sydney Morning Herald 'For those readers who delight in much of Whiteley's best work, this book is essential reading...Neither hagiography nor hatchet job, Brett Whiteley: Art, Life and the Other Thing is a clear-eyed account of an artist whose output was vast, if uneven, and whose legacy looms large in the history of modern art. Ashleigh Wilson provides an object lesson in writing the life of an artist.' Australian Book Review 'A vivid portrait...Sturdy and diligently researched.' Herald Sun 'A fast-paced, well-researched biography...Wilson traces the development of Whiteley's practice with extraordinary detail, revealing how travel, social issues, music and drugs (particularly heroin) influenced his art...An absorbing and intimate biography of a passionate yet volatile artist.' Big Issue 'The pages fly by in a way that's more reminiscent of a thriller than a comprehensive biography. You'll be left breathless and exasperated by the life of this amazing artist.' Look Magazine 'Wilson's masterly biog captures an Aussie Icarus in full flight...It's all there, and yet dealt with in a judicious manner rather than through a desire to sensationalise.' Limelight 'This new book is an engrossing look at the life, artistic development and person behind the enfant terrible of the spotlight.' Readings, Best Art & Design Books of 2016 'A dense and absorbing chronology of the artist's life.' Listener NZ 'Ashleigh Wilson's biography of Brett Whiteley is hard to put down. The narrative hums along beautifully, allowing readers a rare insight into Whiteley's complex genius. A colossal undertaking, helped by extraordinary access. Wilson has delivered readers-and history-an absorbing, detailed and fascinating read.' Walkley Magazine 'Unlikely to be surpassed for its richness of detail, cast of characters and sheer narrative drive-all achieved without a trace of novelistic flourish.' West Australian 'Ashleigh Wilson methodically tracks this mercurial artist from early family days to his final years-a motley of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, and importantly, art.' Art Almanac
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