For the past 50 years, Jack Whitten has explored the possibilities of paint, the role of the artist, and the allure of material essence in his innovative studio process. With compositions that are abstract and elegiac, Whitten foregrounds the material properties of paint—pigmentation, viscosity, and mark—to capture the momentary and suggest the enduring. Featuring some 60 pieces, the traveling retrospective charts the artist’s work across the decades, bringing together his best-known canvases alongside significant but under-recognized bodies of work. This includes Whitten’s rarely-seen black-and-white “ghost” paintings of the 1960s, his smeared test “slabs” and dragged canvases of the 1970s, his collaged acrylic “skins” of the 1980s, and his more recent tessellated constructions of paint tiles. The Walker’s installation of the exhibition will also include Whitten’s 9-11-01 (2006), his iconic memorial to the victims of 9/11; a new painting made specifically for the Minneapolis presentation; and an array of works on paper from the 1960s to the present on loan from the artist and local private collections.

Opening-Day Artist Talk
Sunday, September 13, 2 pm
Walker Cinema, Free

Join artist Jack Whitten and art historian Richard Shiff for a wide-ranging discussion about the artist’s decades-long commitment to the medium of painting. Shiff, a renowned scholar and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who has published widely on Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, Ellsworth Kelly, and others, will engage Whitten in a dialogue about his survey exhibition, Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting, as well as the past, present, and future of the medium.

Walker Art Center

1750 Hennepin Ave

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403

Walker Art Center
Press Contact: Meredith Kessler, Meredith.Kessler@walkerart.org, 612.375.7651