Deutscher and Hackett

Ken Whisson holds a unique place in Australian modernism from the second half of the 20th century. He was quite unlike many now famous self-promoters he met in his late teens. He listened to Albert Tucker and met Nolan, but he really admired the work of Joy Hester. Whisson welcomed recognition, however his determination to be an artist, uncompromisingly honest within himself, meant that any deftly arranged public persona eluded him.
 
He never rated highly a couple of years at art school. But Whisson’s time with Danilla Vassilieff in 1945 – 46 was a crucial introduction to figurative expressionism in Melbourne. Vassilieff’s Koornong School was in Warrandyte, east of Melbourne and a stone’s throw from Lilydale, where Whisson was born.
 
He would make do with part time employment, often menial jobs. The seeming awkwardness of his distorted figuration and compositions that veer towards abstraction were unplaceable in Australia’s contemporary context. Any suggestion of technical proficiency and good taste held no appeal.
 
Despite exhibiting sporadically with modest critical reaction and commercial interest, a fuller appreciation of his art took hold in the mid-1970s and James Mollison, Director, National Gallery of Australia, played an influential role – his acquisitions and advocacy were generous.
 
Whisson had travelled widely but in 1977 he left Australia for Perugia, Italy, lived unpretentiously and used his kitchen table as his studio. His resoluteness to being an artist transcended being ‘professional’ in his outlook. But what we now see is a career that holds perennial interest.
 
He does not fit into a common art historical pattern where early work develops into fully-fledged maturity, where stages of repetitive familiarity might be expected, and moments of brilliance mark individual distinctiveness. It is Whisson’s art as a whole career which holds our interest. His work has always been in plain sight but was seldom given its due until later in life.
 
From Here and From There, 2001 includes life-long traits which combine in a single work. Intuition, as de Kooning put it, ‘an unsure atmosphere of reflection… a poetic frame where something could be possible, where an artist could practice his intuition’. And memory, ‘…has to come from a whole process of intuitive processes, from the intuitive focusing of memories, ideas, emotions including the seeds of new beginnings left somewhere in the past work…’¹
 
Whisson offered his idea of technique in a 1994 lecture. He had listened to the Italian theatre director, Dario Fo speak, and found a parallel with his own work as a painter, ‘There are times when the actor has to make use of all the techniques at his disposal. However, he must make every effort not to use any of them unless it is unavoidable – he will gain every time… his and the audience’s imagination are given room to move.’²
 
1. De Kooning, cited in Sprague, Q., Ken Whisson: Painting & Drawing, Drill Hall Gallery Publishing, Canberra & The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2023, p. 2
2. Whisson, cited op. cit., p. 6
 
DOUG HALL AM