CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/21/2018

Hidden treasure brought to light in 'Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed'

Weighing in at 520 pages and more than an inch and a half thick at the spine, Hauser & Wirth's monumental Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed collects the artist's searching, insightful, sometimes enraged, oftentimes cosmic writings, March 24, 1962 through December 27, 2017. (He died on January 20, 2018.) Whitten began calling his studio notes "Notes from the Woodshed" in 2009, editor Katy Siegel explains, as a nod to the jazz expression. "For jazz musicians, to 'go to the woodshed' or to 'woodshed' means to practice in private, implying both the freedom to experiment in isolation and the relentless discipline of practice prior to taking ideas public." The phrase perfectly describes the tenor of the treasure trove collected here. This is a book that no serious art bookshelf should be without, and a must for teachers, students, painters and anyone interested in what it was like to be a black artist in New York City from the 1950s onward.