In 1960, Whitten went to Southern UniversityinBaton Rouge, Louisiana to begin studying art[6] and became involved in Civil Rights demonstrations there. Whitten participated in a march from downtown Baton Rouge to the state capitol. Whitten's artist ability led him to be in charge of producing the signs and slogans to be used at that demonstration.[7]
Whitten believed strongly about Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent approach. However, witnessing the violent reactions from the segregationist made him realize that if he remained in the South he would turn violent himself.[8] Angered by the violent resistance to change he experienced he moved to New York City in 1960. He enrolled immediately at the Cooper Union in the fall of 1960,[7] graduating with a bachelor's degree in fine art in 1964.[4][6] Afterwards he remained in New York as a working artist, heavily influenced by the abstract expressionists then dominating the art community, especially Willem de Kooning[9] and Romare Bearden.[7]
Whitten's art style was known to be abstract but he liked to refer to his art as art with truth and soul.[7] A large number of Whitten's artwork was inspired by his own experiences during the Civil Rights Movement. Whitten concluded that slavery obstructed the culture of people of color. Therefore, Whitten believed that it was his destiny to restore the culture through his pieces.[12]
Whitten's paintings dated back to as early as the 1960s. A large portion of Whitten's artwork had a feathery, soft effect which Whitten discovered was desirable by placing a nylonmeshfabric over his wet acrylic paintings. Whitten also used a T-shaped tool, which he would call the "developer". Whitten would move the T-shaped tool across the surface of his art in one single motion. This technique was used to represent one point being related to another.[10]
Black Monolith I, A Tribute to James Baldwin (1988) at Glenstone in 2023
One of Whitten's most famous pieces of work are his Black Monolith Series. Most of the work in this series was a homage or tribute to black activist, politicians and artists.[10] The two known works from this series includes Whitten's, Black Monolith III for Barbara Jordan, 1998[13] and the author of Invisible Man, Black Monolith II for Ralph Ellison, 1994.[14]
Whitten's work was featured in the Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1972. The Whitney mounted a solo exhibition of his paintings in 1974. He has also had individual shows at numerous private galleries and universities, including a 10-year retrospective in 1983 at the Studio Museum in Harlem and an exhibition of memorial paintings in 2008 at the Atlanta Contemporary Arts CenterinAtlanta, Georgia.[15]
Whitten spent long portions of the summer in Crete, where he had a studio and made sculptures.[9]
Throughout his career, Whitten concerned himself with the techniques and materials of painting and the relationship of artworks to their inspirations. At times he has pursued quickly-applied gestural techniques akin to photography or printmaking. At other times the deliberative and constructive hand is evident. The New York Times labeled him the father of a "new abstraction."
When the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center occurred, Whitten was at his studio on Lispenard Street in Tribeca.[16] In the following years, he constructed a monumental painting, with ashes embedded into it, as a memorial of the day.[17]
In 2013, curator Katy Siegel organized the exhibition Light Years: Jack Whitten, 1971-73 at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.[19] The exhibition featured many works created by Whitten between 1971 and 1973, which had never been exhibited before.[20] In 2014, a retrospective exhibition was organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego.[21] The exhibition traveled to the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2015[22] and to the Walker Art CenterinMinneapolis from September 13, 2015, to January 24, 2016 [7][23] As part of his Walker engagement, Whitten wrote an Artist Op-Ed on racism and "the role of art in times of unspeakable violence."[24]
On February 3, 2018 Crystal Bridges featured two of Whitten's pieces from the 1970s; one of which was the Homage to Malcolm, 1970.[25]
In 2018, a retrospective『Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture 1963–2016』was organized around the time of his passing and opened at the Baltimore Museum of Art from April 22, 2018, to July 29, 2018.[9] The exhibition traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from September 6 to December 2, 2018, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston from March 3 to May 27, 2019. In 2019, the first solo exhibition in a European institution was shown at Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart Berlin.[26]
Fox, Catherine (April 26, 2008), "Close to history: Alabama-born artist who boarded a bus to New York in 1960 makes a triumphant return to the South", Atlanta Journal-Constitution
