In 1974, Whitten participated in an artist’s residency at the Xerox Corporation in Rochester, New York. He also received new equipment to work with in his studio, experimenting with the company’s innovative printers, cameras, and photocopier and telecopier technologies, which used dry electrostatic and flat plate printing. Dry pigment—or toner powder—needs no binder or emulsion but is set with heat. In some instances, Whitten applied toner directly to paper with a flat scraper blade and used heat lamps to fix the images. His Xerox experiments inspired his Broken Spaces series, abstractions that appear powdery, blurred, and stuttered, resembling photographs of folds, static, or jammed paper feeds. For these, Whitten suspended powdered pigments, charcoal, and inks in acrylic, which he used to “metaphorically suspend time in space.”
Jack Whitten: The Messenger, March 23, 2025–August 02, 2025
Explore more
Jack Whitten
American, 1939–2018 9 works onlineThe artist Jack Whitten offered the world a new way to see. He worked throughout his prolific career to reimagine art and its relation to society. Their final objective is political in nature.
Learn more →
From MoMA Design Store
Licensing
Artwork or archival images
If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA's collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).
Audio and film clips
MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit Circulating Film and Video Library.
Text from a publication or the archives
If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA's archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].
Feedback
This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please fill out this feedback form.