Antagonism as an Art Form: Brian Penton and the Politics of Provocation

Abstract

Penton was, I believe, an important catalyst for some of the modest but significant advances in Australia's social attitudes during the late thirties and early forties, and when change hit the country like a tidal wave in 1942, Penton was one of those who helped to manage and interpret it for ordinary, intelligent people, to give the inexorable rush of history some semblance of direction and coherence. These are not the sorts of achievements that lend themselves easily to memorialisation long after the fact; but they are an essential part of that only-just-recoverable past that needs to be retrieved before the traces disappear forever.