“How can anyone justify staying in the studio when your people are dying? What is the artist supposed to do?” Whitten wrote. Confronted with the violence of the 1960s—from the suppression of the Civil Rights Movement to the Vietnam War—Whitten created NY Battle Ground in a world that seemed to be in flames. Though the forms are ambiguous, they manifest struggle, combat, even apocalypse. Disturbed by endlessly circulated images of wartime helicopters abroad and of police violence in the American South, Whitten reinvented the gestural brushstrokes of his Abstract Expressionist mentors to evoke the catastrophes of the world. He framed the composition with a black curved line, suggesting a television set.
Jack Whitten: The Messenger, March 23, 2025–August 02, 2025
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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.
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