If anyone had doubts about the continuing ability of painting to convey arresting images of our social and psychic relations to an ever-changing world, then Ken Whisson’s major retrospective might well dispense them. I had the opportunity to see it over two days in Sydney at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), where it was promoted as the first solo exhibition by an Australian artist in the new MCA galleries. Some observers might have felt that the show (which took over an entire floor) was too much of a feast for the eyes and mind; I would argue that for such a significant artist it hardly mattered that there were two hundred exhibits, one just became immersed in the world that is distinctively ‘Whisson’. Besides, it was about time that this artist was recognised so comprehensively in this country and furthermore by a fine publication for future reference.1
In a non-stop career spanning over sixty years, this Australian expatriate artist has consistently made thoughtful and uncompromising paintings and drawings that hold their own, with piercing relevancy, into these early years of the 21st century. Just as the tragicomic plays of Samuel Beckett on human nature can never be outmoded, or the dialectical underpinnings of art writers Herbert Marcuse and John Berger be completely up-ended, Whisson explores dichotomies, exposing and oft times synthesising them. From his long-time base in Perugia, his work ‘splits’ the zones of Australia/Italy, often relying upon memory, wrestles with old and new cultures, sensing and observing insider/outsider situations and rational/irrational conditions, as well as dealing with formal picture-making concerns of abstraction/figuration. The integrity of this painter to always show us where and how we are, as