Bull in Landscape

Details

KENNETH (KEN) RONALD WHISSON (b. 1927)
Bull in Landscape
incised 'WHISSON' (lower centre)
oil on board
87 x 110.5 cm
Painted 1970

Provenance

MOCA, Brisbane
Martin Browne Fine Art, Sydney
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1992

Literature

J Baker, From the Landscape - A review of the influence of the landscape in contemporary art, Brisbane, 1991, illus. fig. 38, p. 25 & p. 43
20th Century Australian and New Zealand Painting, Martin Browne Fine Art, 1992, cat. Illus. cat. no. 29

Exhibited

Brisbane, MOCA, From the Landscape - A review of the influence of the landscape in contemporary art, 7 September - 7 October 1991
Sydney, Martin Browne Fine Art, 20th Century Australian and New Zealand Painting, 17 June - 19 July 1992, cat. no. 29

Special notice

A 10% Goods and Services tax (G.S.T) will be charged on the Buyer's Premium on all lots in this sale.

Lot Essay

"The painting by Ken Whisson, 'Bull in Landscape', is at first glance both simple and puzzling. He plays with space as if it has no reasonable dimension and shapes are reinterpreted without limiting them as either figurative or abstract. Keith Looby, writing about Whisson for 'Art and Australia' in 1976 comments that Whisson does not think in terms of figuration breaking down to his abstractions, but simply in terms of shape relations in a non-time-dictated life experience. His work is like the breakup of the memory of a dream - pieces remain vivid and pieces depart, so that there is the passing from reason into a white-mans Dreamtime." (J Baker, op.cit., p. 25)

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