Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed
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Product details
- ISBN 9783907493113
- Weight: 1200g
- Dimensions: 165 x 241mm
- Publication Date: 18 Mar 2025
- Publisher: Hauser & Wirth
- Publication City/Country: CH
- Product Form: Paperback
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A new, fully transcribed edition of the celebrated collection of Jack Whitten’s wide-ranging, perceptive writings
When it was originally published in 2018, Notes from the Woodshed marked the first time that a book had been devoted to the writings of pioneering American artist Jack Whitten. Edited by art historian Katy Siegel, this new edition of the celebrated publication now presents a fully transcribed collection of Whitten’s insightful, searching writings, alongside a new afterword in the form of a conversation between curators Matilde Guidelli-Guidi and Zoé Whitley and artist Glenn Ligon. Widely renowned for his experimental approach to painting, Whitten often turned to writing as away to investigate, understand, and grapple with his practice and his milieu. Taking its title from the heading that Whitten scrawled across many of his texts—a term borrowed from the world of jazz that means “to practice in private”—Notes from the Woodshed is a fascinating, intimate insight into an artist at work.
When it was originally published in 2018, Notes from the Woodshed marked the first time that a book had been devoted to the writings of pioneering American artist Jack Whitten. Edited by art historian Katy Siegel, this new edition of the celebrated publication now presents a fully transcribed collection of Whitten’s insightful, searching writings, alongside a new afterword in the form of a conversation between curators Matilde Guidelli-Guidi and Zoé Whitley and artist Glenn Ligon. Widely renowned for his experimental approach to painting, Whitten often turned to writing as away to investigate, understand, and grapple with his practice and his milieu. Taking its title from the heading that Whitten scrawled across many of his texts—a term borrowed from the world of jazz that means “to practice in private”—Notes from the Woodshed is a fascinating, intimate insight into an artist at work.
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.
