Jack Whitten
Untitled
Untitled
Jack Whitten
Untitled
1976
Acrylic on canvas
181 x 179.1 cm / 71 1/4 x 70 1/2 inches
‘Untitled’ (1976) represents a high point in Jack Whitten’s development of his unique visual language. Created during a pivotal moment in the artist’s career, the extraordinary painting belongs to an important, small series of paintings, which were created alongside his renowned ‘Greek Alphabet’ paintings (1975 – 1978).
In the early 1970s, the artist redefined his practice, moving away from the fervour of Abstract Expressionism towards a visual rhetoric that was uniquely his own. Fascinated by the materiality of paint, Whitten sought an alternative approach to art making and began to improvise with new tools that removed the gesture of the artist’s hand and the brush from the canvas. He called these new tools ‘developers’, a reference to photo-processing and photographic technology, as a way to re-conceive the conceptual basis of his painting.
Made from rakes, rubber squeegees, saws, and Afro combs, the floor-based tool allowed him to spread and manipulate the liquid surface, as he pulled the ‘developer’ through wet paint. A second decisive technique came when Whitten began to place a variety of flat found objects — metal sheets, pebbles or wire — beneath the surface of the canvas in order to generate ‘disruptions’ in a form of frottage. In the second half of the 1970s, Whitten combined the two techniques to great effect, as seen in ‘Untitled’.
‘Untitled’ is a testament to Whitten’s command of process and technique that decisively illustrates the artist discovering his own voice. Through the manipulation of acrylic paint, Whitten transformed the canvas into a richly textured and nuanced surface whose visceral qualities compel the viewer to engage with his work on an intimate, direct level. Created in 1976, ‘Untitled’ reverberates with a monochromatic buzz and subtle luminosity and reflects Whitten’s experimental rigor and the chance-based immediacies of his studio process.
