Jack Whitten

For more than five decades, Jack Whitten pushed the boundaries of material, process, and technique in his pioneering studio practice.

Biography of Jack Whitten

Jack Whitten was born in 1939. With ambitions of becoming an army doctor, he pursued pre-medical studies at Tuskegee Institute from 1957 to 1959. During this time, he also traveled to nearby Montgomery, Alabama, to hear Martin Luther King Jr. speak, an experience that profoundly impacted his vision of a transformed America.

In 1960, Whitten enrolled at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to pursue studies in art. He actively participated in Civil Rights demonstrations during his time there.

He deeply believed in Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent approach. However, witnessing the violent reactions of segregationists made him realize that staying in the South might lead him to adopt violence himself. Leaving the South permanently, the artist relocated to New York, where he attended the Cooper Union School of Art in the early 1960s. In New York, Whitten was profoundly influenced by John Coltrane's jazz music and Jacob Lawrence's paintings.

Afterwards, he stayed in New York as a working artist, deeply influenced by the abstract expressionists who were prominent in the art community at that time, particularly Willem de Kooning and Romare Bearden.

Whitten's paintings trace back to as early as the 1960s. His work was showcased in the Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1972, followed by a solo exhibition at the Whitney in 1974.

In 2015, President Barack Obama honored Whitten with the National Medal of Arts Award.

Whitten passed away at the age of 78 on January 20, 2018.

Jack Whitten's Art Style

Jack Whitten is renowned for his pioneering methods of applying paint to canvas and transforming their material textures. While he initially aligned with the New York abstract expressionist circle of the 1960s, his work gradually diverged from the movement's aesthetic principles and formal considerations. Instead, Whitten increasingly focused on exploring the experimental dimensions of process and technique, which ultimately defined his artistic practice

During the 1970s, he embarked on experiments with new techniques and unconventional tools for drawing and painting. Moving beyond gestural mark-making allowed Whitten to refresh his visual language and manipulate planes and spaces. His exploration of paint's materiality peaked when he discovered that thick slabs of acrylic could be lifted from their supports, forming independent objects.

Much of Whitten's artwork drew inspiration from his personal experiences during the Civil Rights Movement. A significant aspect of his artistic process involved achieving a feathery, soft effect, which Whitten discovered by placing nylon mesh fabric over his wet acrylic paintings. Additionally, he utilized a T-shaped tool, which he dubbed the "developer," to glide across his artwork in a single motion. 

Drawing played a crucial role in Jack Whitten's artistic and technical development; he was a prolific and influential draftsman who used drawing as a vital means to express his ideas.

Over his six-decade career, Whitten's work navigated between the rhythms of gestural abstraction and process art, culminating in a nuanced painting style that balanced mechanical precision with deeply personal expression.