Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula

AAMI artist

c. 1918 – 2001

Portrait of Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula

Region: Western Desert
Community: Papunya
Language: Pintupi; Luritja

Region: Western Desert · Community: Papunya · Language: Pintupi; Luritja

Born at Mintjilpirri, northwest of the Kangaroo Dreaming site of Ilpili soakage Johnny Warangkula recalled his first contact with ‘white fellas’ at just 12 years of age as a frightening experience. Within three years, his family moved into Hermannsburg mission where Johnny went through initiation. After working on roads and airstrips at Hermannsburg and Haasts Bluff, and time spent at Mount Leibig, Yuendumu and Mount Wedge during the 1950s, he moved into Papunya with his first wife, shortly after its establishment. At the time of Geoff Bardon’s arrival in 1971, he was serving on the Papunya Council alongside Mick Namarari. Johnny Warangkula was quick to express interest in painting and rapidly developed a distinctive style characterized by layering and over-dotting, which Geoff Bardon often referred to as ‘tremulous illusion’ (Isaacs 2001: 71). From the outset of his career as a painter, he intuitively transformed traditional desert ceremonial ground designs into inventive paintings on board and canvas conveying the myths and journeys associated with the sacred waterhole at Ilpilli, the surrounding limestone soaks, its inhabitants and the metaphysics of this country’s creation. Bardon described their friendship, at this time, as ‘close’ and Warangkula as a happy, expressive man who was pleased to discuss his work and explain its meanings and symbols. Bardon was just the first of many to note that Tjupurrula expressed a personal visual style that radiated power from the tightly composed and intensely vibrant surfaces of his paintings. While dots were traditionally used as decoration and outline in desert art, by the mid-1970s, they were becoming the unmistakable trademark of contemporary desert painting. By 1978 large canvases were being produced by Clifford Possum, Tim Leura, Johnny Warangkula and a number of other Papunya men and Johnny’s Tingari men at Tjikarri was purchased for the Araluen Art Collection after being a finalist in the Alice Art Prize. Warangkula’s success with this, and other works of the period, was in large part due to the energetic effects he achieved in his design motifs while portraying the land as a living force. Dotting was also importantly used to disguise secret images and teachings that were only to be deciphered by the initiated. They became a thin veil, beguiling viewers toward the surface while alluding, even alluring them, to hidden depths. Warangkula was amongst the most inventive of the early Papunya artists. His 'calligraphic line and smearing brushwork' (Bardon in Isaacs 2001: 71) gave a relative solidity to the features of the land or traced the movements of a journey, picking up on the rhythmic recall of a mythic narrative. Bands of hatching or parallel lines provided visual texture, often interspersed with animal tracks or symbolic figures woven into tightly synchronized compositions that still resound with freshness and surprising spontaneity. Choosing to keep within the hues of traditional earth-based ochres, he achieved in his early paintings a startlingly powerful statement of the earth, his country and the life within it. During his first 15 years as a painter Warangkula had been foremost among those who had fundamentally shaped the Papunya art movement. However by the mid-1980s, his eyesight began to fail, and his painting became infrequent. By the end of the 1990s, Warangkula was old and infirm. For a time he produced art boards for just $50 each, selling them on the streets of Alice Springs or occasionally painting for Warumpi Arts established by the Papunya Community Council in competition with Papunya Tula. Yet, in what may come as a surprise to those who didn’t know him, after the sale of his 1972 at auction for $206,000 in 1997 and its resale for double the world record price for Aboriginal art in 2000, Warangkula was utterly unperturbed by the publicity and inferences in the media that he should recoup at least some of the financial benefit. At the time he lived mostly in Papunya with his second wife Gladys Napanangka with whom he had two sons and four daughters. After this astounding record sale, he began the first of hundreds of raw expressionistic paintings for local and overseas dealers keen to have anything at all by ‘name’ artists. All but a handful of these late paintings have been shunned by the secondary market which has considered them crude and unworthy of his earlier works. Apart from the patchy work post-2000, the finest of Johnny Waralgkula’s works continue to inspire. Over his thirty-year career, he was a distinctive figure, always wearing his stockman’s hat and charming his visitors with his enigmatic but sincere personality. He was oblivious to the attractions of life beyond the power and responsibilities of his Dreamings. Yet his best paintings not only reverberate with the power of ancient knowledge and forms, but they continue to captivate Western audiences through their uncanny access to our modern sensibility. © Adrian Newstead

Exhibitions

Early Western Desert Paintings and ArtefactsDecember 2023

Johnny Warangkula was a powerful presence throughout the formative period of the Desert painting movement. He created his most emblematic and important works early in his career. All but one of his top 30 results are for works that were painted in the 1970s, and of those, more than two thirds were painted in the Bardon period of 1971 to 1972. On a cautionary note however, of the 352 works offered for sale at auction only 59% have sold, evidence that his paintings were uneven in quality, especially as his career advanced. There is no doubt that the large number of later works which he produced did not serve his reputation well. Late career works by Warangkula are considered a less sure investment relative to the solid blue-chip early works that carry Papunya or Stuart Art Centre provenance. The artist’s poor clearance rate at auction has been largely due to the false impression amongst collectors that works produced during the 1980s and 1990s are worth more than their actual market value. This disparity is evidenced by his results in recent sales. For instance, Untitled 1999 (91 x 61cm) sold for just $1, 473 at Lawsons, 2024, squarely in the prevailing range for late works. Similarly, another 1999 canvas, Water Dreaming 1999 (152.5 x 91.5) achieved only $3,493 in Shapiro in April 2025, despite being a large format work. By contrast his early boards remain unequivocally ‘blue chip’. Consider Water and Bush Tucker Story 1972 (65.5 x 46 cm) which sold at Sothebys for US$762,000 (A1,146,277), as recently as May 2023. It was his highest price to date and a major affirmation of the premium attached to Papunya boards from 1971- 1972. These exceptional works sit in a class of their own, continuing the trajectory set by Kalipinypa 1972 (75 x80 cm) which achieved $ 486,500 in June 2000. There have been very few late career exceptions. A monumental canvas failed to sell in March 2024, (Pangkalangku Men 2001), demonstrating the market’s continuing caution with his late output. The mid-period market (late 1970s to early 1980s) performs more reliably, though at a much lower level than the Bardon works. For example, Kalipyinpa 1978, (61 x 91.5 cm) brought in $14,114 in November 2023, was an entirely respectable outcome for a work from this transitional phase. Yet, comparable boards from 1973 offered in 2024 were unable to find buyers, showing the volatility that persists in this middle tier. The notable exception to this pattern and his highest price for a work on canvas was $342,250, paid for, Spearing of Matingpilangu 1974, (173 x 203 cm) at Sotheby’s in July 2003 (Lot 184) Warangkula’s best years occur when one or two major works are on offer. In 2019, though only 8 works sold of 14 on offer (57% clearance) he finished 6th most successful artist for the year on the back of a very good 1973 work which appeared in Sotheby's first New York Aboriginal art sale. Estimated at US$100,000-150,000, Camp at Walungurru – Dingo Camp at Tinki, (122 x 91 cm) sold for US$162,500 ($AUD235,446). When the offerings are dominated by 1990s canvasses however, his clearance rate contracts sharply. This pattern was again evident in 2024 –25, where most works on the market were late-period canvasses, many selling at the lower end or failing to meet reserve. On a cautionary note, only nine of his works have sold for more than $100,000 since they first appeared at auction in 1993. Warangkula’s early boards created under Geoffrey Bardon’s guidance during 1971 – 1972 remain the most highly sought after, culturally important and visually compelling works of his career. While he continued to produce intensely detailed, finely wrought paintings for a few more years, over time, they became less intricate, more gestural and finally, increasingly messy and muddy in color as his sight and dexterity became impaired. Because of the high prices his early work fetched on the secondary market during the mid to late 1990s, many independent traders supplied him with rolls of canvas, only to end up with less saleable works in all but a few exceptional cases. That Warangkula earned far more from these in his daily life than he ever did from his finest works is the ultimate irony. His legacy, however, rests firmly on the transcendent early works that shaped the desert painting movement and continue to command the highest regard, both artistically and financially.