Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed

$59.99

A new, fully transcribed edition of the celebrated collection of Jack Whitten’s wide-ranging, perceptive writings

This book is not yet published, but will be available from May 2025.

ISBN: 9783907493113 Category:

Description

A new, fully transcribed edition of the celebrated collection of Jack Whitten’s wide-ranging, perceptive writings

Writing occupied a fundamental place in Jack Whitten’s artistic practice and in his day-to-day life, weaving the two together. Notes from the Woodshed gathers the artist’s daily logs, longer essayistic entries, and selected talks and published statements. Edited by Katy Siegel, these texts intertwine Whitten’s experiments in the studio, thoughts about painting as a medium, and broad investigations of politics, matter, and metaphysics.

Now in its second edition, this publication is the definitive resource on Whitten’s writings, presenting a fully transcribed collection of the artist’s handwritten logs. Selections from these writings are illustrated with facsimiles of the originals, giving us a feel for the studio and for Whitten’s hand, animating his remarkable line of thought. This edition also features a new afterword in the form of a conversation on Whitten between curators Matilde Guidelli-Guidi and ZoĆ© Whitley and artist Glenn Ligon that sketches out the different forms a deep engagement with his writings might take.

Additional information

Weight 300 g
Dimensions 16.5 x 24.1 cm
Publisher name Thames and Hudson Ltd
Publication date 18 May 2025
Number of pages 568
Format Paperback / softback
Contributors Edited by Katy Siegel, Text by Jack Whitten
Dimensions 16.5 x 24.1 cm
Weight 300 g
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.