ARTIST MONOGRAPHS

Jack Whitten

Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays


         

ACTIVE BACKLIST

Jack Whitten: The Greek Alphabet Series

DIA ART FOUNDATION
Edited by Donna De Salvo, Matilde Guidelli-Guidi, Deirdre O'Dwyer. Foreword by Jessica Morgan. Text by Gregg Bordowitz, Donna De Salvo, Matilde Guidelli-Guidi, Courtney J. Martin, Fred Moten.

On Whitten’s pioneering 1970s series marking his move away from gestural painting

Hbk, 9 x 10 in. / 232 pgs / 149 color. | 5/9/2023 | In stock
$65.00


Jack Whitten: Cosmic Soul

HAUSER & WIRTH PUBLISHERS
Text by Richard Shiff.

Sixty years of topographical abstractions from the late virtuoso of material experimentation

Pbk, 7.5 x 10 in. / 360 pgs / 154 color / 2 bw. | 12/13/2022 | In stock
$45.00


Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed

HAUSER & WIRTH PUBLISHERS
Edited by Katy Siegel.

Jack Whitten's writings articulate his tireless reinvention of abstraction

Pbk, 6.5 x 9.5 in. / 520 pgs. | 8/28/2018 | Out of stock
$29.95


Jack Whitten: Odyssey

GREGORY R. MILLER & CO.
Text by Katy Siegel, Kelly Baum, Jack Whitten, Richard Shiff, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Kellie Jones. Interview with Courtney Martin.

"Whitten's objects in carved wood and found materials revisit and reclaim the forms, rituals and spirituality of African sculpture." –Roberta Smith, New York Times

Hbk, 9.5 x 11.5 in. / 192 pgs / 161 color. | 6/12/2018 | In stock
$55.00


More Dimensions Than You Know: Jack Whitten, 1979–1989

HAUSER & WIRTH PUBLISHERS
Text by Richard Shiff.

Flexi, 9.5 x 12 in. / 104 pgs / illustrated throughout. | 11/21/2017 | In stock
$35.00


  

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Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, SAN DIEGO
Text by Kathryn Kanjo, Robert Storr, Quincy Troupe.

Hbk, 9 x 12 in. / 204 pgs / 150 color. | 10/27/2015 | Not available
$45.00


Jack Whitten: The Greek Alphabet SeriesJack Whitten: The Greek Alphabet Series

Published by Dia Art Foundation.
Edited by Donna De Salvo, Matilde Guidelli-Guidi, Deirdre O'Dwyer. Foreword by Jessica Morgan. Text by Gregg Bordowitz, Donna De Salvo, Matilde Guidelli-Guidi, Courtney J. Martin, Fred Moten.

The first publication to delve deeply into Jack Whitten’s Greek Alphabet paintings (1975–78), this volume examines this remarkable series, which consists of variations on abstract, black-and-white compositions and experiments in mark-making. For these works, Whitten employed handmade tools and techniques including the comb, imprint and frottage.
The series is illuminated through essays by art historian Courtney J. Martin and Dia curators Donna De Salvo and Matilde Guidelli-Guidi. Authors Fred Moten and Gregg Bordowitz provide poetic reflections on Whitten’s art, biography and cultural importance. Materials from Whitten’s archives, including his own personal writings, supplement this unprecedented publication.
In his lifetime, Whitten never had the opportunity to exhibit more than a handful of these works. In publishing a significant number of these paintings together for the first time—with 40 color plates representing the 60-some paintings in the series—Jack Whitten: The Greek Alphabet Series makes possible a fuller appreciation of the formal and material permutations of Whitten’s practice.
Jack Whitten (1939–2018) was born in Bessemer, Alabama, studied art at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and moved to New York in 1960, where he had a solo exhibition at the Whitney in 1974 and a 10-year retrospective at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1983. In 2014, a retrospective was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, traveling to the Wexner Center in 2015 and the Walker Art Center in 2015–16. Whitten lived in Queens, New York, where he died in 2018.



PUBLISHER
Dia Art Foundation

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9 x 10 in. / 232 pgs / 149 color.

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Catalog: SPRING 2023 p. 58   

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ISBN 9780944521991 TRADE
List Price: $65.00 CAD $91.00 GBP £56.00

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Jack Whitten: Cosmic SoulJack Whitten: Cosmic Soul

Published by Hauser & Wirth Publishers.
Text by Richard Shiff.

This comprehensive monograph surveys the work of Black American artist Jack Whitten, known for his swirling, mosaic-like abstractions and his innovative material experimentations, especially with acrylic paint. Resembling topographical maps, Whitten’s works rely heavily on the use of geometry and rhythmic, gestural structures to induce an artistic and spiritual process that he identifies as “mapping the soul.” Focusing on pivotal developments over his six-decade career, the publication is generously illustrated with Whitten's vast body of work. Throughout the volume, art historian Richard Shiff provides critical interpretations of Whitten’s painting, sculpture and artistic philosophy.
Jack Whitten (1939–2018) was born in Bessemer, Alabama, and was raised in the Jim Crow South. He studied art at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he was heavily involved in civil rights demonstrations. After moving to New York in 1960, he studied art at Cooper Union and quickly fell in love with, and was deeply influenced by, the Abstract Expressionist painters. Whitten had a solo exhibition at the Whitney in 1974 and a 10-year retrospective at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1983. In 2014, a retrospective exhibition was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, traveling to the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2015 and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2015 and 2016. Whitten lived in Queens, New York, where he died in 2018.



PUBLISHER
Hauser & Wirth Publishers

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 7.5 x 10 in. / 360 pgs / 154 color / 2 bw.

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Catalog: SPRING 2023 p. 8   

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ISBN 9783906915739 TRADE
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Jack Whitten: Notes from the WoodshedJack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed

Published by Hauser & Wirth Publishers.
Edited by Katy Siegel.

A black man who grew up in the Jim Crow South, Jack Whitten (1939–2018) arrived in New York in 1959 and began a wide-ranging exploration into the nature of painting and art-making that would sustain more than five decades of work. Early in his career, in 1970, Whitten experienced his breakthrough moment: when he lifted a thick slab of paint off its support, he realized he could experiment within the physical, dimensional space of the paint itself. After that, all bets were off:" I cut paint, I laminate paint, I grind paint, I freeze paint, I boil paint," he said.

Approaching abstraction as scientist and mystic, Whitten probed the expressive and material possibilities of painting. He constantly changed styles, developed new methods and took up new subject matter, but it is precisely this spirit of curious inquiry that unites his relentlessly experimental career.

Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed collects the artist's notes from his work in the studio alongside selected interviews and texts, presenting an in-depth look at his rich studio practice. This publication comes at a crucial time; after decades of neglect, the art world has just begun to take stock of what Whitten achieved in his body of work. Edited by Katy Siegel, one of Whitten's long-standing champions, this volume offers an intimate look at the artist in his element—in the studio.

Jack Whitten (1939–2018) was born in Bessemer, Alabama, and studied art at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he became involved in civil rights demonstrations. From 1960 to 1964 he studied art at Cooper Union, New York, falling in with the abstract expressionists of the day (Willem de Kooning was a particular influence and mentor). The Whitney mounted a solo exhibition of his paintings in 1974; in 1983 the Studio Museum in Harlem held a 10-year retrospective. In 2014, a retrospective exhibition was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, traveling to the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2015 and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2015 and 2016. Whitten lived in Queens, New York, where he died on January 20, 2018.



PUBLISHER
Hauser & Wirth Publishers

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 6.5 x 9.5 in. / 520 pgs.

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Catalog: FALL 2018 p. 42   

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ISBN 9783906915173 TRADE
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Jack Whitten: OdysseyJack Whitten: Odyssey

Sculpture 1963–2017

Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co..
Text by Katy Siegel, Kelly Baum, Jack Whitten, Richard Shiff, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Kellie Jones. Interview with Courtney Martin.

Jack Whitten was one of the most important artists of his generation. His paintings range from figurative work addressing civil rights in the 1960s to groundbreaking experimentation with abstraction in the '70s, '80s and '90s to recent work memorializing black historical figures such as James Baldwin and W.E.B. Du Bois.

Whitten began carving wood in the 1960s in order to understand African sculpture, both aesthetically and in terms of his own identity as an African American, and continued developing this practice throughout his life. For the first time ever, these revelatory works are collected in Odyssey, accompanying a landmark exhibition coorganized by the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Odyssey features the sculptures made by Whitten over the past 50 years, as well as the Black Monolith series of paintings, and Whitten's own archival photographs documenting his life and process. The catalog includes major new texts from exhibition curators Katy Siegel and Kelly Baum, as well as contributions from philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, art historians Richard Shiff and Kellie Jones, a lengthy biographical interview with Whitten by art historian Courtney J. Martin and the essay "Why Do I Carve Wood?" by the artist himself.

Gorgeously illustrated with hundreds of illustrations and never-before-published photographs, Odyssey is a landmark exploration of one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, and a monument to a life and career that, as described by the Washington Post, "enriched the abstract tradition in Western art with fresh political and spiritual content."



PUBLISHER
Gregory R. Miller & Co.

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9.5 x 11.5 in. / 192 pgs / 161 color.

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Catalog: FALL 2018 p. 43   

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ISBN 9781941366172 TRADE
List Price: $55.00 CAD $72.50 GBP £50.00

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More Dimensions Than You Know: Jack Whitten, 1979–1989More Dimensions Than You Know: Jack Whitten, 1979–1989

Published by Hauser & Wirth Publishers.
Text by Richard Shiff.

Jack Whitten (born 1939) is an American abstractionist celebrated for his innovative processes of applying and transfiguring paint in works equally alert to materiality, politics and metaphysics. This publication focuses on more than 20 of the artist’s paintings from the 1980s and features an essay by Richard Shiff, Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art at the University of Texas at Austin.

Whitten holds a unique place in the narrative of postwar American art: over the course of a five-decade career, he has bridged gestural abstraction and process art, experimenting ceaselessly to arrive at a nuanced language of painting that hovers between mechanical automation and personal expression. Whitten has had a profound influence on many artists working today, and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in recognition of his major contribution to the cultural legacy of the United States.



PUBLISHER
Hauser & Wirth Publishers

BOOK FORMAT
Flexi, 9.5 x 12 in. / 104 pgs / illustrated throughout.

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Catalog: SPRING 2018 p. 119   

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ISBN 9783906915067 TRADE
List Price: $35.00 CAD $47.50

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Jack Whitten: Five Decades of PaintingJack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting

Published by Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego.
Text by Kathryn Kanjo, Robert Storr, Quincy Troupe.

For five decades, New York-based artist Jack Whitten (born 1939) has explored the possibilities of paint, the role of the artist and the allure of materials. As a child of the segregated South, he bears witness to expressions of evil and the resilience of the human spirit. From his first spectral canvases to his recent mosaic canvases, Whitten's compelling compositions have spanned a half-century of artistic innovation. Showcasing approximately 60 canvases, this survey--the first substantial volume on the artist--reveals Whitten as an innovator who uses abstraction in its newest idioms to achieve an enduring gravitas. Whitten's abiding engagement with scientific systems (as structure), social issues (as evidence) and commitment to the power of visual expression (materiality) show him to be an artist both of his time and for the present.

PUBLISHER

BOOK FORMAT
Hardcover, 9 x 12 in. / 204 pgs / 150 color.

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Out of print

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Catalog: FALL 2015 p. 119   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9780934418744 TRADE
List Price: $45.00 CAD $60.00 GBP £40.00

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STATUS: Out of print | 00/00/00

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