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| Image | Sale date | Auction house | Location | Sale name | Lot No. | Estimate | Price Sold | Condition | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dec 3, 2024 | Bonhams | Sydney | Important Australian Art | 24 | $****** - ****** | Flag for a Small Industrial Suburb (Flag of My Disposition No. 6) | |||
May 7, 2024 | Bonhams | Sydney | Important Australian Art | 27 | $****** - ****** | Flag for a Small Industrial Suburb (Flag of My Disposition No. 6) | |||
Aug 24, 2009 | Sotheby's | Melbourne | Important Australian Art | 51 | $****** - ****** | Flag For A Small Industrial Suburb (Flag Of My Disposition No. 6) |
paintings
79.5 x 118.5 cm (31.3 x 46.65 in)
oil on canvas
signed, titled and dated verso: "flag for a Small Industrial Suburb / Painted 18/2/79 / Flag of my Disposition No. / Ken Whisson"
Watters Gallery, Sydney (label attached verso)
Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 2003
Sotheby"s, Melbourne, 24 August 2009, lot 51
Private collection, Sydney
John MacDonald, Ken Whisson: Paintings 1947-1999 , Niagara Publishing, Melbourne, 2001, pl. 25, p. 41 (illus.)
Spending his formative years as an artist in Melbourne, at the periphery of the modernist circle at Heide, from early in his career Ken Whisson forged a singular artistic vision that he maintained over 60 years of practice.
Flag for a Small Industrial Suburb (Flag of My Disposition No. 6) is emblematic of Whisson"s work during this pivotal period. The series of works known as the Flag paintings, of which the present work is the sixth in the series and a key composition, ushered in a radical reinvention in the way his paintings were constructed. The painted forms are strangely ambiguous drifting between something known on one hand and a fantastic abstract amalgam on the other.
Fellow-artist Rosalie Gascoigne once wrote, "His image is of a general rather than a particular order. It says more by insisting on less. It sets you off watching the painting, considering your experience, sharpening your eye on the world, and gradually discovering, even if only in part, what Whisson saw or felt and why he chose to paint in the way he did. It is an exhilarating and continuing experience."1
In 2012 Whisson was the subject of a major survey at Heide Museum of Modern Art and The Museum of Contemporary Art , Sydney. As reviewed by John McDonald the exhibition "suggests that when we look back on Australian art of the late twentieth century we are going to have to find a prominent place for Whisson. He can no longer be dismissed as eccentric or idiosyncratic - he is nothing less than a modern master".2
1. Rosalie Gascoigne, Ken Whisson: selected paintings , Melbourne, RMIT Gallery, 1978, p.2
2. John McDonald, "Outside of the awful mainstream", Sydney Morning Herald , 6 October 2012
Ken Whisson (1927-2022)
Flag for a Small Industrial Suburb (Flag of My Disposition No. 6), 1979
signed, titled and dated verso: "flag for a Small Industrial Suburb / Painted 18/2/79 / Flag of my Disposition No. / Ken Whisson"
oil on canvas
79.5 x 118.5cm (31 5/16 x 46 5/8in).
