Artist, Jack Whitten: I read a lot. A lot of my reading is in terms of science and in terms of philosophy.
Narrator: This painting is dedicated to the French mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, a leading figure in the creation of modern algebraic geometry.
Jack Whitten: Grothendieck—great mathematician working with a set of equations that I have deep interest in. I've used the circle a lot. The source of the circle came from nature—earlier people took it from the sun. They took it from the moon. But when I started reading about what this man was doing, he says, “it's just an equation. It's a set of numbers.” That released me from relying upon the circle as something that was derived from nature. And it opened up my mind to all other kinds of possibilities.
Narrator: Whitten's study of math and science led him to new ways of seeing the world.
Jack Whitten: Early on it was psychological, political stuff, clashing of the races, violence, that kind of stuff. Now I deal with structures purely in terms of geometry. It eased my head a little bit and it gave me more freedom.
Archival audio courtesy of The HistoryMakers Digital Archive