{"id":108287,"date":"2017-03-01T17:21:56","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T22:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=108287"},"modified":"2017-03-07T16:27:04","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T21:27:04","slug":"quantum-wall-an-interview-with-jack-whitten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/03\/01\/quantum-wall-an-interview-with-jack-whitten\/","title":{"rendered":"Quantum Wall: An Interview with Jack Whitten"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

Jack Whitten. Photo: John Berens.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jack Whitten\u2019s art\u2014canvasses built up with what he calls \u201ctesserae\u201d of acrylic paint, at once minimalist and ornate\u2014is an excellent analog for his manner. He speaks in units: measured, often deliberately repeated phrases that build to constellations, opaque and revealing, abstract and grounded. With influences and interests ranging from astrophysics to sports\u2014missing matter and Muhammad Ali are equally compelling as eponymous subjects of recent paintings\u2014Whitten is a gregarious conversationalist. At seventy-seven, he\u2019s sprightly and regal, full of wonder and enthusiasm. In a conversation that touched on octopuses (\u201cthey are so good to eat!\u201d) and on \u201cmodern technological society,\u201d he displayed the restless curiosity and joie de vivre that have made his work\u2014painting, drawing, and sculpture, the latter now showing in New York for the first time\u2014such a marvel.<\/em><\/p>\n

Born in Bessemer, Alabama, Whitten came to New York City in 1962. \u201cI was one of the first artists in Tribeca,\u201d he said, though, after forty years in the neighborhood, he\u2019s decamped to the quiets of Woodside, Queens. He studied at Cooper Union and metabolized downtown and uptown currents to create a distinct vision that speaks to art history even as he transcends it. <\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Early in February, Whitten walked me around his first show at Hauser & Wirth\u2019s space on West Twenty-second Street<\/a>. \u201cThe space was just made for these paintings,\u201d he observed with obvious pleasure. He spoke of the lasting legacy of his time as a pre-med student at Tuskegee Institute, the importance of materials, and the joys of spending the summer \u201csculpture season\u201d on Crete.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>

Jack Whitten, Quantum Wall (A Gift for Prince)<\/i>, 2016, acrylic on canvas with tivar, 84″ x 190″. Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, \u00a9 Jack Whitten, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth<\/p><\/div>\n

On <\/em>Quantum Wall (A Gift for Prince)<\/p>\n

This is the painting that started the whole thing. The title is \u201cQuantum Wall.\u201d And when I was in the process of working on this painting, the news channel showed that Prince had passed. It was really shocking to me, because I was working in this color, and it made it obvious what the painting was about. So quantum wall is the theme I\u2019m working with, but within each quantum wall there is another title that leads to the content of the painting. What\u2019s different with this painting is, I\u2019m using a material called Tivar. I use it because nothing sticks to this stuff. They use it primarily in slaughterhouses to control bacteria. It sustains high temperatures, nothing sticks to it. It\u2019s great for me because I can use it and paint won\u2019t stick to it, so sometimes I can use it as a divider. I also use it around the perimeter of the painting, where it acts like a sort of a dam to keep the paint in at the edge.<\/p>\n

The title of the paintings comes from quantum mechanics. It\u2019s just something I am very interested in\u2014it gets my imagination going. Particle physics, astrophysics, chemistry, biology. Probably because of my background. My first years in college, I was premed.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m working with these units of paint, which I call tesserae<\/em>\u2014originally the word for ancient mosaics. I\u2019ve studied mosaics for years. I\u2019ve lived in Greece, on the island of Crete, for the past forty-six years, and I\u2019ve done a lot of travel around the Mediterranean basin and Egypt, and there I\u2019ve seen a lot of mosaics\u2014so it\u2019s the mosaic that leads to these paintings. The tesserae, in my mind, is the unit, it\u2019s the thing that makes them. I can build anything I want with the tesserae, using all acrylic paint, built layer by layer by layer until I get the thickness that I want. As a rule, I work with a thickness of a quarter of an inch to three sixteenth of an inch. I have ways that I can calculate the thickness that I want. There is a lot more, deeper material than the paint, of course\u2014all the psychological stuff.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>

Quantum Wall, III (The Geometry of Being An Octopus)<\/i>, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 48″ x 96″. \u00a9 Jack Whitten, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Timothy Doyon<\/p><\/div>\n

On <\/em>Quantum Wall (The Geometry of Being an Octopus)<\/p>\n

Something you should know about the Quantum Wall paintings: they\u2019re all using new types of pigment. This is not traditional pigment. It\u2019s a type of pigment that\u2019s known as Pyrisma, made by only one manufacturer. What\u2019s unique about these pigments is that they are built to mimic what happens in nature with phosphorescence. And that\u2019s why, if you look from any direction\u2014from any direction you look at\u2014these paintings change. They change with the type of light.<\/p>\n

That one is built on a violet Pyrisma, and the title is \u201cThe Geometry of Being an Octopus.\u201d I\u2019m an octopus hunter. I\u2019ve hunted for octopus for about forty-six years. I\u2019m a spear fisherman, I do underwater spear fishing. And unfortunately for the octopus, they are so good to eat. I always feel guilty about killing them, but that\u2019s what you get for being so good to eat. I\u2019m just reading a book someone gave me, which is called The Soul of an Octopus<\/em>. Interesting book! But coming from a different point of view. The person who wrote that book fell in love with the octopus and has been studying them, and I am coming from the view of an octopus hunter. And a lot of what the book is pointing out is true. They are very smart, they can do the most amazing things, their color can change right before you, depending on the ground they\u2019re on. If I were to bring a live octopus in here, it would change immediately to the color of the floor. It\u2019s part of their survival thing. They can do things like disappear right before your eyes. You would just \u2026 How the fuck did they do that?<\/em> But they have something in their musculature that can just collapse. I\u2019ve had them in my bag with a latch\u2014put them in a bag, live\u2014and I have had them figure out how to get the fucking latch open from the inside and how to get out. They are special creatures.<\/p>\n

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Black Monolith X, Birth of Muhammad Ali<\/i>, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 84″ x 63″<\/p><\/div>\n

On <\/em>Black Monolith X (Birth of Muhammad Ali)<\/p>\n

This one is quite different. It\u2019s called Muhammad Ali, the boxer. It is one of a series I call \u201cBlack Monoliths\u201d\u2014the first was in 1986. Those paintings are built to honor important, significant black people in the arts and sports and medicine, politicians, people who have contributed a lot, people who have had a lot to offer for me personally. And this one is called \u201cMuhammad Ali,\u201d parentheses, Birth of Muhammad Ali. I tell people Muhammad Ali had two births, a transformation that was literally a second birth. The tesserae operate very differently in this painting. Everything I do is grounded in geometry, a lot of different forms of geometry, I work with all of them. The geometry here goes more to the fractal. There are a lot of irregular tesserae, irregular shapes of paint. A lot of different processes go into this. The paint goes on in layers. Layers on top of layers on top of layers. The tesserae go back years. They have to cure before I can use them. And I have an advantage there from painters who work with a wet palette, because I work from a dry palate. And the advantage to working with a dry palette is that my eye is structuring something that is not going to change. It\u2019s been sitting and curing for a year, for two years. That piece of acrylic is not going to change anymore. It\u2019s like working with stone\u2014it becomes a primal element.<\/p>\n

I think I nailed Muhammad Ali right on the head. It has his likeness about it. I saw him live only once, years ago, in Yankee Stadium. The man had this primal force about him, but the beauty was\u2014what I call \u201cthe plasticity of boxing\u201d\u2014he could take that primal force and he knew how to structure it. In a way, that\u2019s what I want to do in painting. \u201cBlack Monolith.\u201d It\u2019s a hell of a painting. I\u2019ve found that working this way\u2014with the acrylic tesserae\u2014it can mimic anything. Sometimes you think you\u2019re looking at glass, other times you think it could be marble, or it could be granite, or it could be stone of some sort. A lot of it\u2014I think the influence has to do with years of working at my house in Greece, at my house on Crete.<\/p>\n

The longest part is the building of the tesserae. That could take months, a year, even longer. The actual putting it together takes about a month. It\u2019s like Chinese cooking\u2014when you have all the elements, it\u2019s like a nonstop operation. I\u2019m working with something so complex that I divide the process into three distinct processes. The first is construction, the actual building of the acrylic slab. The second is deconstruction, meaning that the slab of acrylic painting is either cut [as in the \u201cQuantum Wall\u201d paintings] or broken [as in the \u201cBlack Monoliths\u201d]. The paint can be frozen. When it\u2019s frozen\u2014I keep deep freezers in the studio\u2014I can hit the paint with a hammer and shatter it, like glass. The third process is reconstruction, and that\u2019s when I paint with tesserae, when I build with tesserae, and laminate it. These paintings are pure acrylic paint, laminated. It doesn\u2019t jump out of the conceptual realm until I\u2019m in the process of putting it together. Then, at that point, I try to eliminate the conceptual. I don\u2019t want it to interfere. I deal with the conceptual at its simplest level\u2014meaning the ability to design, the ability to lay something out.<\/p>\n

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Quantum Man (The Sixth Portal)<\/i>, 2016, marble, Cretan walnut, Serbian oak, lead acrylic, mixed media, 62″ x 12″ x 16 1\/2″. \u00a9 Jack Whitten, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Timothy Doyon<\/p><\/div>\n

On <\/em>Quantum Man (The Sixth Portal)<\/p>\n

In the summer months, I don\u2019t paint. I sculpt, I carve wood. This one has a combination, a large amount of mixed media. It\u2019s built on a block of Cretan walnut and on top of that is Serbian oak. The marble, from Greece, it\u2019s known as Dionysian marble. And of course a lot of the technological stuff, the computer stuff, it\u2019s actually the guts of a computer, cell phones. So it\u2019s a big mixture of preindustrial, primal preindustrial material, seasoned with modern technological stuff.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a wild piece. The mixture of material is what gives it its ferocity. See that metal? Those pieces of metal came from an old guy in my village [on Crete], and he was a blacksmith. I used to go visit him\u2014he died a few years back\u2014and he would give me a lot of his cuttings that he had piled up. So all of this is original, hand-cut stuff, this is original hand-cut metal from his shop. Of course it\u2019s built on African nkisi<\/em>\u2014that\u2019s the traditional name. Nkisi<\/em> were power figures, and I maintain that we have the equivalent of that in the modern technological society. Ancient people, they believed in animism, animist thought. These people actually believed that everything was alive, organic, inorganic, that the stone had a life force. It\u2019s a funny thing that has happened since then\u2014we have confirmed that there is a life force, and that interests me very much, it interests me very much.<\/p>\n

Crazy piece, \u201cQuantum Man.\u201d Someone said to me, \u201cIt looks like it came from another world.\u201d Very good, I like that. And if you think about where it was built, my studio in Greece is so different from New York. My house is out in the countryside, it\u2019s out in a village, I have the mountains wrapped around the back, all in the back, the greatest mountain on Crete, and to the front we have the sea. The studio there is in the shade of a humongous fig tree. So bringing it from Crete to New York and just sort of plopping it here, it is in a different world.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>

The Third Entity #10<\/i>, 2016, black graphite and renaissance wax on evolon, 30″ x 22″.<\/p><\/div>\n

On \u201cThe Third Entity\u201d drawing series<\/em><\/p>\n

I tend to do a bunch of drawings before the painting season starts. And I call the drawings\u2014I call them scouts. As a kid\u2014I grew up in Alabama\u2014as a kid I grew up with cowboy and Indian movies, where you would send a scout to see what was going on. I think of the drawings that way. When I do the drawings, I have the material, and I\u2019m just sending the material out, looking for stuff. But the stuff that comes back from the drawings, I can deal with in the paintings. So there is no specific drawing for a specific painting. I\u2019ve been working with a new material. It\u2019s this synthetic paper called Evolon, and I use this Renaissance wax, it\u2019s a British wax, they use it for conservation purposes. And I\u2019ve been experimenting with it for years in sculpture: I use it on wood, I use it on marble, I use it on lead. And it occurred to me when I came back to New York, why don\u2019t you try it on paper, see if you can use it on paper. So this is Renaissance wax and graphite on Evolon. They have the look of photography. But we must understand that this is not the photographic process. It comes out of the material itself, but I\u2019m very aware of the photographic appeal. And sometimes people want to think of them as photographs. They are not. I come out of the background in painting we call \u201cmateriality.\u201d So what you\u2019re looking at comes directly out of the material.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time that I start another set of paintings. Time to go back to the drawing board, send the scouts out. Drawing season is coming up, usually about April. That goes till May, end of May, then I take off for Greece.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yevgeniya Traps lives in Brooklyn. She works at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, NYU.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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