Jack Whitten

Jack Whitten offered the world a new way to see. Over nearly six decades, he dared to invent new forms of abstraction, constantly transforming both perception and our understanding of art in society. This gorgeously illustrated volume, with pathbreaking new perspectives and revelatory technical analyses of his innovative materials and processes, explores Whitten's wide-ranging and game-changing practice.
Raised in the segregated Jim Crow South in the 1940s, Whitten undertook an extraordinary journey in becoming an artist, convinced that by changing form, he could help change the world. Despite pressure from peers to create figurative art, he was a key proponent of creating abstract art that responded to social turmoil; to his own identity as a Black artist; and to sea changes in technology. He created new ways of painting through a series of artistic inventions and strategies. He defied traditional boundaries between abstraction and representation, pictures and things, culture and technology, individual identity and global history.
Published to accompany the first comprehensive retrospective of Whitten's art, this sumptuous catalog presents the full range of his career across painting, sculpture and works on paper, produced in New York and Greece, with texts by leading art historians and artists, and new technical analyses by conservators. Previously unpublished writings by the artist and an expansive chronology of Whitten's life, featuring newly discovered photographs and archival materials, bring into focus an artist who was as committed to human perception as to human rights, becoming one of the most important artists of our time.
Jack Whitten (1939–2018) was born in Bessemer, Alabama, and began his studies in medicine at the Tuskegee Institute. After moving to New York in 1960 to attend the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, he became a leading artist in the wake of Abstract Expressionism, and of a generation of Black artists committed to abstraction. Whitten lived in New York until his death.

A Black man who grew up in the Jim Crow South, Jack Whitten arrived in New York in 1959 and began a wide-ranging exploration into the nature of painting and artmaking that would sustain more than five decades of work. Early in his career, in 1970, Whitten experienced his breakthrough moment: when he lifted a thick slab of paint off its support, he realized he could experiment within the physical, dimensional space of the paint itself. Approaching abstraction as scientist and mystic, Whitten probed the expressive and material possibilities of painting. He constantly changed styles, developed new methods and took up new subject matter, but it is precisely this spirit of curious inquiry that unites his relentlessly experimental career.
Notes from the Woodshed collects the artist's notes from his work in the studio alongside selected interviews and texts. Edited by Katy Siegel, one of Whitten's long-standing champions, this volume offers an intimate look at the artist in his element: the studio. Now in its second edition, this publication is the definitive resource on Whitten’s writings, presenting a fully transcribed collection of the artist’s handwritten logs. Selections from these writings are illustrated with facsimiles of the originals, giving us a feel for the studio and for Whitten’s hand, animating his remarkable line of thought. This edition also features a new afterword in the form of a conversation on Whitten between curators Matilde Guidelli-Guidi and Zoé Whitley and artist Glenn Ligon that sketches out the different forms a deep engagement with his writings might take.
Jack Whitten (1939–2018) was born in Bessemer, Alabama, and studied at the Cooper Union in New York. The Whitney mounted a solo exhibition of his paintings in 1974; in 1983 the Studio Museum in Harlem held a 10-year retrospective. In 2014, a retrospective exhibition was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, traveling to the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2015 and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2015 and 2016. Whitten lived in Queens, New York, until his death.

Born in Bessemer, Alabama, Jack Whitten (1939–2018) developed a revolutionary approach to painting as a medium that arguably reconfigured the discipline as a whole. His practice was defined by an intense, ceaseless experimentation with process and technique, drawing in unconventional tools and materials to create a profoundly original body of work. Though Whitten initially aligned with the New York circle of Abstract Expressionists active in the 1960s, he gradually distanced his work from the movement’s aesthetic philosophy and formal concerns, focusing more intensely on the experimental aspects of process and technique that came to define his practice, arriving at a nuanced language of painting that hovers between mechanical automation and deeply personal expression. Throughout his career, Whitten concerned himself with the materials of painting and the relationship of artworks to their inspirations. This richly illustrated guide to the artist’s studio practice reveals the development of Whitten’s pioneering work and the behind-the-scenes of his process.

The first publication to delve deeply into Jack Whitten’s Greek Alphabet paintings (1975–78), this volume examines this remarkable series, which consists of variations on abstract, black-and-white compositions and experiments in mark-making. For these works, Whitten employed handmade tools and techniques including the comb, imprint and frottage.
The series is illuminated through essays by art historian Courtney J. Martin and Dia curators Donna De Salvo and Matilde Guidelli-Guidi. Authors Fred Moten and Gregg Bordowitz provide poetic reflections on Whitten’s art, biography and cultural importance. Materials from Whitten’s archives, including his own personal writings, supplement this unprecedented publication.
In his lifetime, Whitten never had the opportunity to exhibit more than a handful of these works. In publishing a significant number of these paintings together for the first time—with 40 color plates representing the 60-some paintings in the series—Jack Whitten: The Greek Alphabet Series makes possible a fuller appreciation of the formal and material permutations of Whitten’s practice.
Jack Whitten (1939–2018) was born in Bessemer, Alabama, studied art at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and moved to New York in 1960, where he had a solo exhibition at the Whitney in 1974 and a 10-year retrospective at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1983. In 2014, a retrospective was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, traveling to the Wexner Center in 2015 and the Walker Art Center in 2015–16. Whitten lived in Queens, New York, where he died in 2018.

This comprehensive monograph surveys the work of Black American artist Jack Whitten, known for his swirling, mosaic-like abstractions and his innovative material experimentations, especially with acrylic paint. Resembling topographical maps, Whitten’s works rely heavily on the use of geometry and rhythmic, gestural structures to induce an artistic and spiritual process that he identifies as “mapping the soul.” Focusing on pivotal developments over his six-decade career, the publication is generously illustrated with Whitten's vast body of work. Throughout the volume, art historian Richard Shiff provides critical interpretations of Whitten’s painting, sculpture and artistic philosophy.
Jack Whitten (1939–2018) was born in Bessemer, Alabama, and was raised in the Jim Crow South. He studied art at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he was heavily involved in civil rights demonstrations. After moving to New York in 1960, he studied art at Cooper Union and quickly fell in love with, and was deeply influenced by, the Abstract Expressionist painters. Whitten had a solo exhibition at the Whitney in 1974 and a 10-year retrospective at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1983. In 2014, a retrospective exhibition was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, traveling to the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2015 and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2015 and 2016. Whitten lived in Queens, New York, where he died in 2018.

A black man who grew up in the Jim Crow South, Jack Whitten (1939–2018) arrived in New York in 1959 and began a wide-ranging exploration into the nature of painting and art-making that would sustain more than five decades of work. Early in his career, in 1970, Whitten experienced his breakthrough moment: when he lifted a thick slab of paint off its support, he realized he could experiment within the physical, dimensional space of the paint itself. After that, all bets were off:" I cut paint, I laminate paint, I grind paint, I freeze paint, I boil paint," he said.

Approaching abstraction as scientist and mystic, Whitten probed the expressive and material possibilities of painting. He constantly changed styles, developed new methods and took up new subject matter, but it is precisely this spirit of curious inquiry that unites his relentlessly experimental career.

Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed collects the artist's notes from his work in the studio alongside selected interviews and texts, presenting an in-depth look at his rich studio practice. This publication comes at a crucial time; after decades of neglect, the art world has just begun to take stock of what Whitten achieved in his body of work. Edited by Katy Siegel, one of Whitten's long-standing champions, this volume offers an intimate look at the artist in his element—in the studio.

Jack Whitten (1939–2018) was born in Bessemer, Alabama, and studied art at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he became involved in civil rights demonstrations. From 1960 to 1964 he studied art at Cooper Union, New York, falling in with the abstract expressionists of the day (Willem de Kooning was a particular influence and mentor). The Whitney mounted a solo exhibition of his paintings in 1974; in 1983 the Studio Museum in Harlem held a 10-year retrospective. In 2014, a retrospective exhibition was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, traveling to the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2015 and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2015 and 2016. Whitten lived in Queens, New York, where he died on January 20, 2018.

Jack Whitten was one of the most important artists of his generation. His paintings range from figurative work addressing civil rights in the 1960s to groundbreaking experimentation with abstraction in the '70s, '80s and '90s to recent work memorializing black historical figures such as James Baldwin and W.E.B. Du Bois.

Whitten began carving wood in the 1960s in order to understand African sculpture, both aesthetically and in terms of his own identity as an African American, and continued developing this practice throughout his life. For the first time ever, these revelatory works are collected in Odyssey, accompanying a landmark exhibition coorganized by the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Odyssey features the sculptures made by Whitten over the past 50 years, as well as the Black Monolith series of paintings, and Whitten's own archival photographs documenting his life and process. The catalog includes major new texts from exhibition curators Katy Siegel and Kelly Baum, as well as contributions from philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, art historians Richard Shiff and Kellie Jones, a lengthy biographical interview with Whitten by art historian Courtney J. Martin and the essay "Why Do I Carve Wood?" by the artist himself.

Gorgeously illustrated with hundreds of illustrations and never-before-published photographs, Odyssey is a landmark exploration of one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, and a monument to a life and career that, as described by the Washington Post, "enriched the abstract tradition in Western art with fresh political and spiritual content."

Jack Whitten (born 1939) is an American abstractionist celebrated for his innovative processes of applying and transfiguring paint in works equally alert to materiality, politics and metaphysics. This publication focuses on more than 20 of the artist’s paintings from the 1980s and features an essay by Richard Shiff, Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art at the University of Texas at Austin.

Whitten holds a unique place in the narrative of postwar American art: over the course of a five-decade career, he has bridged gestural abstraction and process art, experimenting ceaselessly to arrive at a nuanced language of painting that hovers between mechanical automation and personal expression. Whitten has had a profound influence on many artists working today, and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in recognition of his major contribution to the cultural legacy of the United States.