Deutscher and Hackett

Discussing the small group of 'circus paintings' such as the present Open Air Circus with Germanic Hermaphrodite and Brown Ducks, 1983-87, which Whisson executed around 1983 in Perugia, Bernice Murphy elaborates '...There are recollections here of visit to Morocco in 1969 - in particular, Marrakech. In Marrakech, Whisson experienced some of the most striking contrasts he had ever encountered to the social environment of his youth in Australia. The differences presented themselves in a vivid series of images, colours and sounds: of a maze of small streets; of the movements of clowns, jugglers, musicians and dancers performing daily in a square in the old city.

More recently, Whisson had been entranced by seeing the Imaginary Circus troupe perform during a trip to London - acts involving dazzling transformations of humans into gigantic insects, employing huge umbrellas and fans. These experiences also called to mind Max Ernst's fantastic metamorphoses - for instance, The Chinese Nightingale (a collage of 1920). Having done some drawings in crayons and pastels while in England, Whisson moved into a series of paintings involving circus motifs when he returned to Perugia.

Apart from metamorphic imagery and memories of actual performances (including a Chinese troupe of magicians and acrobats who visited Italy), the circus paintings are contemporary with Whisson's reactions to the Geneva Conference in Europe at the time - mostly towards the end of 1983.

'...I was thinking about atomic war so much, and nuclear war. Europe was very conscious of it because the Geneva Conference was so obviously a farce, so obviously a front for putting new missiles into Europe... I had the feeling there wouldn't be anything to paint anymore, but nuclear annihilation.. I took to thinking what sort of world it might be... what human relations would need to be, if people were going to relate in such a way that they didn't have to bring about wars... Now that we [would] all live together as an enormous human family across the whole globe, we might need to relate together by entertaining one another. I though of the world as a great circus - societies, or cities, or towns, or streets... And these people would relate to one another as they do in my street in Perugia, Corso Garibaldi...[which] I'm inclined to think of these days as a village. New cities and new buildings don't seem to be environments for communal and social living. I was trying to think in these terms - how will we be able to relate? Perhaps we'll have to relate to one another as clowns and acrobats and entertainers if we're going to live together as human beings.'¹

1. Murphy, B., 'Ken Whisson: The Juggler and the Labyrinth' in Ken Whisson: Paintings 1957-1985, The Broken Hill City Art Gallery, New South Wales, 1985, pp. 20-21

VERONICA ANGELATOS