Jack Whitten revolutionized what art can look like. Through his exploration of paint and pigment, and his ingenious application of tools and technologies—from Afro combs to electrostatic printing—Whitten created novel artistic processes. Through his unflinching confrontation with racial prejudice and technological change, he made art matter in a world in turmoil. Spanning nearly six decades, this exhibition is the first full retrospective of Whitten’s innovative practice, featuring more than 175 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper that illuminate his singular vision.
Raised in the segregated US South, Whitten made his way to New York in 1960, where he began to introduce art-making techniques that were the first of their kind. In the 1970s, he experimented with pulling layers of acrylic paint across a floor-bound canvas in a sweeping movement, producing a luminous, quasi-photographic blur. In the 1990s, he cut hardened sheets of acrylic paint into thousands of mosaic tiles to create richly textured, kaleidoscopic paintings that suggest pixels or galaxies. For decades, Whitten spent his summers in Greece, constructing sculptures that fuse the arts of Africa and the ancient Mediterranean with contemporary technologies. He often dedicated his works to figures in Black history, as if he were a messenger—and his art a way of sending meaning out into the world. “I am a conduit for the spirit,” he said. “It flows through me and manifests in the materiality of paint.”
Featuring numerous works that have never before been shown, Jack Whitten: The Messenger presents the artist’s revelatory exploration of culture, race, technology, jazz, love, and war. From the upheaval of the ’60s to the end of his life in 2018, Whitten faced great pressure to pursue representational art as a form of activism. Yet he dared to invent new forms of abstraction and, in the process, transformed the relationship between art, memory, and society.
Organized by Michelle Kuo, Chief Curator at Large and Publisher, with Helena Klevorn, Curatorial Assistant to the Chief Curator at Large and Publisher, Dana Liljegren, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, and David Sledge, Mellon-Marron Research Consortium Fellow, Department of Painting and Sculpture. Thanks to Eana Kim and Kiko Aebi, former Curatorial Assistants, Department of Painting and Sculpture.