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Jack Whitten

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For the Australian footballer, see Jack Whitten (footballer).
Jack Whitten
Whitten in 2017 at the Brooklyn Museum
BornDecember 5, 1939
DiedJanuary 20, 2018(2018-01-20) (aged 78)
NationalityAmerican
Known forPainting, sculpture
AwardsNational Medal of Arts

Jack Whitten (December 5, 1939 – January 20, 2018) was an American abstract painter and sculptor. In 2016, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts.

Life

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Jack Whitten was born December 5, 1939 in Bessemer, Alabama, to Mose Whitten and Annie B. Cunningham.[1] His father was a coal miner who died during Whitten's childhood and his mother was a seamstress who eventually founded a private kindergarten.[1] Planning a career as an army doctor, Whitten entered pre-medical studies at Tuskegee Institute from 1957 to 1959.[2][3] He also traveled to nearby Montgomery, Alabama to hear Martin Luther King Jr. speak during the Montgomery bus boycott and was deeply moved by his vision for a changed America.[4]

In 1960, Whitten went to Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to begin studying art[3] and became involved in Civil Rights demonstrations there. He participated in a march from downtown Baton Rouge to the state capitol. His artistic ability led him to be in charge of producing the signs and slogans to be used at that demonstration.[5]

Whitten believed strongly in Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent approach. However, witnessing the violent reactions from the segregationists made him realize that if he remained in the South, he would turn violent himself.[6] Angered by the violent resistance to change he experienced, he moved to New York City in 1960. He enrolled at Cooper Union in the fall of 1960,[5] graduating with a bachelor's degree in fine art in 1964.[2][3] Afterwards, he remained in New York as a working artist, heavily influenced by the abstract expressionists then dominating the art community, especially Willem de Kooning[4] and Romare Bearden.[5]

Art

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Shortly after graduating from Cooper Union, Whitten had the opportunity to meet other Black artists, including Jacob Lawrence and Norman Lewis, while he remained in New York to start his art career.[7][8]

Whitten's art style was abstract, and he referred to his work as having "truth" and "soul".[5] Much of Whitten's artwork was inspired by his experiences during the Civil Rights Movement. Whitten concluded that slavery obstructed the culture of people of color, and believed that it was his destiny to restore the culture through his pieces.[9]

Whitten's earliest paintings date back to the 1960s. A large portion of Whitten's artwork had a feathery, soft effect, which Whitten achieved by placing a nylon mesh fabric over his wet acrylic paintings. Whitten also used a T-shaped tool, which he called the "developer". Whitten would move the tool across the surface of his art in one single motion. This technique was used to represent one point being related to another.[7]

Black Monolith I, A Tribute to James Baldwin (1988) at Glenstone in 2023

One of Whitten's most famous bodies of work is his Black Monolith Series. Most of the work in this series was a homage or tribute to black activists, politicians, and artists.[7] The two best-known works from this series includes Whitten's Black Monolith III For Barbara Jordan, 1998[10] and Black Monolith II, Homage to Ralph Ellison The Invisible Man, 1994.[11]

Whitten's work was featured in the Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1972. The Whitney mounted a solo exhibition of his paintings in 1974. He has also had individual shows at numerous museums, galleries, and universities, including a 10-year retrospective in 1983 at the Studio Museum in Harlem and an exhibition of memorial paintings in 2008 at the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia.[12]

Whitten spent long portions of the summer in Crete, where he had a studio and made sculptures.[4]

Throughout his career, Whitten concerned himself with the techniques and materials of painting and the relationship of artworks to their inspirations. At times he pursued quickly-applied gestural techniques akin to photography or printmaking, while at others his deliberate and constructive hand is evident. The New York Times labeled him the father of a "new abstraction."

9.11.01 (2006) at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2022

When the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center occurred, Whitten was at his studio on Lispenard Street in Tribeca.[13] In the following years, he constructed a monumental painting with ashes embedded in it as a memorial of the day.[14]

President Barack Obama awarded Whitten the 2015 National Medal of Arts Award.[15][16]

Exhibitions

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In 2013, curator Katy Siegel organized the exhibition Light Years: Jack Whitten, 1971-73 at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.[17] The exhibition featured many works created by Whitten between 1971 and 1973 which had never been exhibited before.[18] In 2014, a retrospective exhibition was organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego.[19] The exhibition traveled to the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2015[20] and to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis from September 13, 2015, to January 24, 2016 [5][21] As part of his Walker engagement, Whitten wrote an Artist Op-Ed on racism and "the role of art in times of unspeakable violence."[22]

On February 3, 2018 Crystal Bridges featured two of Whitten's pieces from the 1970s, one of which was Homage to Malcolm, 1970.[23]

In 2018, the retrospective exhibition Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture 1963–2016 was organized around the time of his passing and opened at the Baltimore Museum of Art from April 22, 2018, to July 29, 2018.[4] The exhibition traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from September 6 to December 2, 2018, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston from March 3 to May 27, 2019. In 2019, Jack Whitten: Jack's Jacks was mounted at Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart Berlin,[24] Whitten's first solo exhibition in a European institution.

In 2025, the Museum of Modern Art presented Jack Whitten: The Messenger, opening from March 23 to August 2. This was the first monographic exhibit to showcase various media Whitten worked in, as opposed to only his painting or his sculpture. [25]

Art market

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Whitten was represented by Hauser & Wirth (2016–2018), Alexander Gray Associates (2007–2016), and Zeno X Gallery.[26]

Personal life

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Whitten died on January 20, 2018, at age 78.[4][27] Whitten and his wife Mary resided in Queens, New York.[1]

Publications

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  • Whitten, Jack (Fall 2016). "The Refactoring of Painting: A Talk by Jack Whitten". Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire. Vol. 16, no. 2. pp. 62–69, 142. OCLC 34971120. ProQuest 1855776880.
  • Whitten, Jack (2018). Siegel, Katy (ed.). Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed. Zurich: Hauser & Wirth. ISBN 9783906915173. OCLC 1041227878.

References

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  1. ^ a b c Genzlinger, Neil (23 January 2018). "Jack Whitten, Artist of Wide-Ranging Curiosity, Dies at 78". The New York Times. Retrieved 24 February 2025.
  2. ^ a b Otfinoski, Steven (14 May 2014). African Americans in the Visual Arts. Infobase Publishing. pp. 222–. ISBN 978-1-4381-0777-6.
  3. ^ a b c Richelson, Paul William (1 March 1995). Alabama impact: contemporary artists with Alabama ties. Mobile Museum of Art. ISBN 9781885820013.
  4. ^ a b c d e Smee, Sebastian (22 January 2018). "Jack Whitten: once neglected artist lately the toast of the art world". The Washington Post. Retrieved 24 February 2025.
  5. ^ a b c d e Sung, Victoria. "Stories of the Soul: A Farewell to Jack Whitten". Walker Art. Retrieved May 7, 2019.
  6. ^ DeBerry, Linda (23 January 2018). "An Interview with artist Jack Whitten". Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Retrieved May 7, 2019.
  7. ^ a b c Sung, Victoria. "Stories of the Soul: A farewell to Jack Whitten". Walker Art. Retrieved May 7, 2019.
  8. ^ "Frank Bowling and 5+1". MFA Boston. Retrieved November 11, 2023.
  9. ^ DeBerry, Linda (23 January 2018). "An interview with artist Jack Whitten". Crystal Bridge Museum of American Art. Retrieved November 11, 2023.
  10. ^ "Black Monolith III for Barbara Jordan". The MET. Retrieved May 7, 2019.
  11. ^ "Black Monolith II (For Ralph Ellison)". Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved May 7, 2019.
  12. ^ Cochran, Rebecca Dimling (8 May 2008). "Jack Whitten at The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center". Artforum. Retrieved March 24, 2021.
  13. ^ Elisabeth Kley, "Jack Whitten | FROM GARBAGE TO GEMS" ArtNet, 2011.
  14. ^ Mary Abbe, "Unmasked: All-American art of Jack Whitten opens at Walker Art Center", StarTribune, September 14, 2015.
  15. ^ DeBerry, Linda (23 January 2018). "An interview with artist Jack Whitten". Crystal Bridge Museum of American Art. Retrieved May 7, 2019.
  16. ^ "President Obama to Award National Medals of Arts | NEA". www.arts.gov. Archived from the original on 2017-08-23. Retrieved 2016-09-22.
  17. ^ "Light Years: Jack Whitten, 1971-73".
  18. ^ "Gregory Williams on Jack Whitten". www.artforum.com. December 2013. Retrieved 2020-12-10.
  19. ^ "JACK WHITTEN: FIVE DECADES OF PAINTING: Saturday, Sep 20, 2014-Sunday, Jan 04, 2015 at MCASD La Jolla", Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
  20. ^ "Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting, May 16, 2015–Aug 2, 2015", Wexner Center for the Arts.
  21. ^ "Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting", Walker.
  22. ^ Jack Whitten, "A Circle of Blood", Sightlines, Walker, December 3, 2015.
  23. ^ DeBerry, Linda (23 January 2018). "An interview with artist Jack Whitten". Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Retrieved May 7, 2019.
  24. ^ "Jack Whitten: Jack's Jacks".
  25. ^ "Jack Whitten: The Messenger". press.moma.org. Retrieved 2025-01-17.
  26. ^ Alex Greenberger (April 15, 2016), Hauser & Wirth Adds Jack Whitten to Its Roster, Plans Show for Spring 2017 ARTnews.
  27. ^ Greenberger, Alex (21 January 2018). "Jack Whitten, Beloved Painter of Abstract Cosmologies, Dies at 78". ARTnews. Retrieved 24 February 2025.

Further reading

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Articles

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Books

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Interviews

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