Jack Whitten: The Messenger
March 23, 2025 – August 02, 2025
The Museum of Modern Art, NYC
Images courtesy of the Jack Whitten Estate, Hauser & With and MoMA
American history is imbued with conflict. Currently, we are struggling with the idea of who belongs in our shared past, who our heroes should be, and who is allowed to call themselves “American.” Jack Whitten was an artist whose work is a visual history of the mid to late 20th and early 21st centuries. Spanning 6 decades, Whitten’s life was marked with some of the most significant events in recent history.
Born in Bessemer, Alabama in 1939 to a coal miner and a seamstress, Whitten began his formal studies as a pre-med student at the Tuskegee Institute before transferring to Cooper Union in New York. While a student in Alabama, Whitten organized protests against segregation, having been inspired by a meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr in 1957. When the non-violent action became threatening, Whitten transferred out, saying,
“I didn’t fight. I didn’t resist, but I realize that I couldn’t do that. That’s what drove me out of the south.”
Whitten called the 60s his “autobiographical period.” This period saw the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the height of the Vietnam War, political assassinations, and the deaths of his heroes, Martin Luther King Jr, and Malcolm X. Whitten made several pieces in honor of Dr. King, including King’s Garden #4 (1968). Completed months before his assassination, Whitten displays the heavy influence Abstract Expressionism had on his early work, especially Arshile Gorky’s (1904-1948) ability to express emotion and ideas through color and form.
NY Battleground (1967) is a big departure from the “Summer of Love” happening in San Francisco that year. Referencing the Civil Rights movement, anti-Vietnam war protests, and police brutality happening across the city, which culminated in the NYC riots, Whitten creates a clash of color and buzzing images of aircrafts, amorphous figures, and wasp-like predators. This isn’t a depiction of a specific event, but rather the expression of a feeling.
Homage to Malcolm (1965) is one of only forty sculptures that Whitten created during his lifetime and was completed a few months after Malcolm X’s assassination. Using found objects, the rough side is rough: thorny nails and prickly wires extend out of the side like a medieval weapon. On the opposite end, the horn side is smooth, almost scepter-like. The textural opposites are connected by a “middle ground,” a neutral negotiation.
In the 1970s, Whitten abandoned oils for acrylic paint, realizing that the faster dry times allowed him to finish works quickly. It was around this time that he introduced a tool he called the “developer”, a large squeegee-type apparatus on display in the exhibition. Whitten had the idea that he could create artworks in a single stroke. His lifelong love of jazz connected him with the great John Coltrane, who once expressed to him that the music is “like a wave.” Coupled with Whitten’s idea about working in “planes of light,” the sweeping horizontals in this series introduced Whitten to the idea of excavating his painting’s history.
Asa’s Place (1973) consists of layers and layers of acrylic paint; thin sheets of color are swiped onto the canvas and then carved to reveal the colors underneath. Playing with the elasticity of the material, this was the genesis of Whitten’s idea to employ acrylic paint as a sculptural medium. Pink Psyche Queen (1973) is a piece that was created using what Whitten termed “disruptors,” pieces of string, wire, or anything that could leave a mark were placed on the composition to “disrupt” the development process. While the primary color is pink, the disrupted parts unearth a sea of color. The problematic parts create places that reveal what’s beyond the surface.
Always an innovative artist, Whitten felt that being an abstract artist and being Black were at odds with each other. Feeling under-appreciated by both camps, Whitten decided then to turn his focus toward innovation, using his platform to invent new ways to make paintings. The Xerox Project (1974) began when he was invited by the Xerox Corporation to tour the facility and explore the new medium of xerography. Returning to his studio with the dry toner pigment used in the process, his experimentation with the material led to this series. Being able to manipulate the powder, which scattered itself easily across the page, it could then be set with a heat lamp, mimicking the photocopy process.
Dead Reckoning 1980, marks the first painting Whitten created in a vertical position as opposed to previous pieces created on the floor. His mastery of the material made it possible for him to create layers sustainable enough to resist gravity and maintain a level surface. Working upright, Whitten was then able ti carve into the painted surface using protractors and other sharp objects. The title is derived from his time spent at Tuskegee and his involvement in the ROTC and refers to the choice one is faced with between continuing on your course of action or retreating.
“Another version is that you throw away all your navigational tools. Get rid of all your tools. Learn to plot, to navigate, no tools. Just go by your heart, go by your feeling. It’s a rich term.”
In the 90s, Whitten switched entirely to a dry palette. He discovered that he could cut dried layers of acrylic and create tesserae, which he could then use to make mosaic paintings. The sculptural quality of the material led Whitten to expand his canvas to include shapes other than the rectangle. In creating the tesserae, Whitten would ground the scraps and reincorporate them into new pieces, adding dimensions which reflect light in a way that is different from a more traditional painting.
The Monolith paintings began in the late 80s and are each dedicated to a person in the Black community who has made a sizable impact. Black Monolith II, Homage to Ralph Ellison The Invisible Man (1994) greets the visitors entering the exhibition. Here we see an anonymous figure in portraiture against a varied blue background. The tiles that compose the figure are constructed with rust, coal, chocolate, and razor blades, among other weighted materials. While building the tesserae, the subject matter informs the additions to the paint. He is telling stories with his compositions, his layering, and his dedications. He honors Ellison not only with the inscription, but also with what he chooses to imbue the tesserae with.
As the subject matter grew in complexity, so did the construction of the work. He went from one field of painting to creating paintings from paintings, where each tesserae has its own history and meaning. With 9.11.01 (2006) was an emotional work for Whitten. Having lived in Tribeca for 40 years, he saw the World Trade Center being erected and witnessed firsthand the 9.11 attacks from the sidewalk. A “chandelier of glass” showered down from the smoky sky, bringing with it teetering uncertainty. After the experience, Whitten focused his attention on this piece, which took him 5 years to complete. This 10-foot painting shows a pyramid with its base being violently dismantled.
Quantum Wall VIII (for Arshile Gorky, My First Love in Painting), 2017 was on his studio wall when he passed in 2018 from complications from leukemia. Dedicated to his first idol, this work pays homage to the late painter in colors and the sheer joy of creating. We write our own histories, present, and future. Like the protagonist in Invisible Man, Whitten is an artist who responded to the changes in his environment with a Picaresque viewpoint. While we tackle the problems of an uncertain future, we can find comfort in the efforts of those who not only documented history but helped shape culture along the way.
“There is a sedimentary stone that I work with on Crete. Every time you take that chisel and cut that stone and opens it up, do you realize you are the first person that have seen something that took place 40, 50 million years ago, some cases 100 million years ago? You’re the first person to see it. Painting is that way. When you get to that point, and you know it’s complete, you realize, I’m the first motherfucker to have seen this. [Laughs] So there’s a fantastic joy to that.”
