Archives of American Art

Oral history interview with Jack Whitten

Summary

Collection ID:
AAA.whitte09
Creators:
Whitten, Jack, 1939-2018
Richards, Judith Olch
Dates:
2009 December 1-3
Languages:
English
.
Physical Description:
130 Pages
Transcript
Repository:

Scope and Contents

Scope and Contents
An interview of Jack Whitten conducted 2009 December 1 and 3, by Judith Olch Richards, for the Archives of American Art, at Whitten's studio, in Woodside, N.Y.
Scope and Contents
Whitten speaks of his childhood in Bessemer, Alabama; being an African-American in the segregated South; his time at the Tuskegee Institute and Southern University; his participation in a civil rights march; the influence of jazz; his time at Cooper Union in New York, the abstract expressionists of New York including Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Phillip Guston; his teaching at Cooper Union and School of Visual Arts; his 9/11 experience and the memorial that it led him to create; how his work varies between his summers in Greece and his studio time in New York; movement of his work from figurative expressionism to process painting and experimentation and how it fits between form and meaning; the concepts of horizontality, non-relational abstraction, and third-wave modernism; the galleries of the Horodner Romley, Daniel Weinberg, Alexander Grey, Thomas Flor, and other spaces; Whitten also recalls Leo Amino, Bob Blackburn, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, Wayne Theibaud, Bob Thompson and others.

Biographical / Historical

Biographical / Historical
Interviewee Jack Whitten (1939-2018) was an American abstract painter in Woodside, N.Y. Interviewer Judith Olch Richards (1947- ) is former Executive director of iCI in New York, N.Y.

Administration

Sponsor
Funding for this interview was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.

Digital Content


More Information

General

General
Originally recorded on 7 memory cards. Reformatted in 2010 as 7 digital wav files. Duration is 6 hr., 25 min.


Keywords

Keywords table of terms and types.
Keyword Terms Keyword Types
African American artists Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Sound recordings Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Interviews Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Painters -- New York (State) Occupation Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid

Archives of American Art
750 9th Street, NW
Victor Building, Suite 2200
Washington, D.C. 20001
Business Number: Phone: 202-633-7950
https://www.aaa.si.edu/services/questions