Ken Whisson: Painting & Drawing

This is an exemplary scholarly tome, written and researched by Quentin Sprague and complemented by an informative foreword by Terence Maloon. The majority of this important book consists of a very comprehensive collection of full-page images of Ken Whisson’s paintings and drawings. Regarded as a unique figure in Australian art, Sprague extensively surveys the life, themes, times, and influence of the enigmatic Ken Whisson.

Whisson was born in Lilydale, Victoria in 1927 and died in 2022 in Sydney. Finding formal training uninspiring he enrolled in an experimental school at Koornong, Victoria in 1945. He came under the formative influence of the untrained Russian immigrant artist, Danila Vassilieff. Concurrently, Whisson met the older first generation of Melbourne modernists: Albert Tucker and then wife Joy Hester, Sidney Nolan, John Perceval, and Arthur Boyd. Whisson also developed an unwavering interest in politics, literature, and philosophy from this time.

The raw immediacy of Vassilieff’s technique and application led to Whisson placing intuition as the primary means of converting the real world to an abstract one through memory. He sustained this methodology throughout his career. This emphasis is the thread that weaves through Whisson’s output and Sprague’s text.

The Melbourne based 1959 Antipodean Manifesto that championed figuration as opposed to the Sydney based move towards abstraction had little influence on Whisson. Through his working life he straddled both and was not interested in what he saw as irrelevant distractions. In many ways he was a lone and quietly achieving artist who was slow to be recognised due to his refusal to be aligned with any particular style or group.

Most of Whisson’s art making life was near hermetic. Uncomplainingly he took many menial jobs to support himself. A kitchen table to paint on in often spartan minimal circumstances was sufficient for his needs. He understood that a life of an artist was not necessarily to be of glamour and fame.

In a lecture at the Ballarat College of Advanced Education in 1994 Whisson explained that he remained true to both his working methodology and the avoidance of creating a repetitive personal style. These became obsessive principles throughout his career. He painted quickly and most paintings were completed in one session before reversing them in stacks, not to be seen for long periods of time. In preparing a selection for exhibition, hundreds of paintings were rejected for maybe only a handful to be shown.

Sprague divides the extensive reproductions of both paintings and drawings into three distinct periods. They are the Melbourne years from the 1940 to 1977, his 1978 to 2014 years in Perugia, Italy, and his last years from 2015 to 2022 in Sydney. Sprague delves into these three periods discussing how Whisson did not divert from his beliefs, and how his imagery was sourced and formed despite his varied locations. Interestingly while living outside Australia he wasn’t overly inspired by the art in museums and galleries.

To Whisson, painting and drawing were interchangeable. Sprague gives equal prominence to both. A comprehensive 167 pages of drawings are an essential insight to the immediacy of his thinking and emphasis again on intuitive mark making. It is interesting to read that the liberating simplicity of Hester’s drawings were fascinating to Whisson. Her linear world echoed his inner world. The inclusion of images of his notebooks with their crowded word only depiction is a fascinating insight to the artist’s worldly interests.

Sprague eloquently deciphers the range of images that populate and reoccur in Whisson’s drawings and paintings from his early St Kilda days through to the Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, output. The kitchen table with objects, windows, flags, elements of landscapes, animals, and the wispy near transparent figures, among many others, repeatedly appear in an amazing variety of configurations.

Despite the decades spent in a semi-isolated existence in Perugia, he regularly exhibited back in Australia and gained a steady reputation amongst curators, institutional galleries, and a growing list of patrons.

Sprague importantly mentions that from its inception the Australian National Gallery in Canberra supported him through major acquisitions. This was despite Whisson not prioritising his growing reputation. Many artists were drawn to and understood his singularity of vision, especially when figuration re-emerged in the 80s and 90s. Fascinatingly, Sprague relates this to the later paintings of the American, Philip Guston, and the assemblages of his friend and supporter, Australian artist Rosalie Gascoigne, amongst others.

This singularity and unwavering commitment to Whisson’s importance was evident in the 2012 retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. The survey was titled Ken Whisson: As If. This alludes to all of the possibilities that this unassuming artist presents to the viewer as his elementary means of communication.

This important biography comes with a very high recommendation. Hopefully another retrospective will follow this weighty publication.

This review was published in Artist Profile, issue 66 

BOOK
Ken Whisson: Painting & Drawing
Quentin Sprague
Melbourne University Publishing
PUBLISHED 14 November 2023
ISBN 9780522880090
Hardback RRP $150.00