The Brooklyn Rail

“We live in a quantum world … everything is interelated…There is no beginning + there is no end. . . . Everything is fluid + mobile [and] can be centered + dispersed at the same time: this is weird!”¹

—Jack Whitten

Criss-crossing between application and method, personal practice and established canons, Jack Whitten’s pieces, from the 1960s to the 2000s, represent a lattice of experiences that manifest in multiple crossings: through time, through self, through place. These crossings—deeply resonant in monumental paintings that seem to sweep you from one place to another, or in between a kaleidoscope of passages from a mosaic—are an intimate and manifold journey that is particular to the beholder, negotiating between time and self. Through these series of defiances, Whitten’s practice draws distinct lines of connection through his approach to abstraction and generates a sense of collective familiarity.

Tradition-based works from particular regions on the African continent often occupy an inside/outside position relational to modern abstraction. A triangulation of Whitten’s approaches—brilliantly investigated in Jack Whitten: The Messenger, organized by the Museum of Modern Art—mirrors the ongoing discourse that encourages radical curatorial practice by shattering disciplinary lines. His ever-changing artistry does this undoubtedly. To begin, his “Developer”-made paintings reveal other worlds on the canvas, as crater-like pops of hidden color from older layers of acrylic are opened up by the swift movement of the tool. These older worlds intersect with newer worlds, the overlaid acrylic, presenting themselves as cityscapes like in Atlantis Rising (1966), the crashing waves of Mirsinaki Blue (1974) or steep mountainous terrains protruding from Opos Dipote (1973). Evermore telling are the networks present in the geography of Whitten’s worlds. Readied with his Afro pick, he raked through the thick layers of acrylic as we would rake through the roots of our hair. On the canvas a mirror of monumental volume reflects the size of an Afro likewise rendered voluminous with a pick. This comb-raking again draws distinct lines—this time through networks. So visible in King’s Way II (1971), the “rake-light” technique leaves behind and reveals multicolored layers concentrated in disparate areas of the canvas, extracting what has been covered over and over again. What does the revelation mean and what does it show? The material significance of the Afro pick and the magnitude of Whitten’s action with the tool contribute to unpacking those layers, ultimately following those routes or roots, leading us back and forth through distant/close time and expressing the fluidity of liminal “place.” In this piece seen from afar: an atlas, while up close: a maze of interconnected networks.

Whitten’s mosaics capture a similar type of geography. In Flying High for Betty Carter (1998), I am reminded of El Anatsui’s Straying Continents (2010). Both focus on singular concentrations of space that may represent “place” that wander from each other. Again, in Whitten’s piece, hues of red, yellow, and blue lines of networks connect these concentrations throughout the canvas below and through the B-52 Stratofortress bomber “piloted by General Betty Carter flying at 50,000 feet.”² This worldbuilding challenges the stillness of the present, rather initiating parallel universes that exist in tandem ready to be encountered through a new awareness.

To end, Memory container (1972–73) is a strong reinterpretation of a nkisi nkondi, the latter made in collaboration between a nganga spiritual healer and Kongo artist. Despite western modernist adoptions of tradition-based sculpture from African regions, Whitten powerfully understands himself within the context of the work, amplifying his own words, “I am an anti-Cubist painter. African art had nothing to do with Cubism, but Cubism had a lot to do with African art.” One of the receptacles on the belly of his sculpture sits in the same place it would on a nkisi nkondi and in the latter would hold the necessary ingredients to carry out the ritual that activates the figure sealed by a mirror. Whitten’s activation is through memory; the receptacle on his sculpture holds personal items of significance and photographs of his close ones. Like on a nkisi nkondi, his receptacle is a mirror, another type of route/root leading to his memories and his otherworld. Comparatively, it posits another type of tradition while honoring one of the most canonized tradition-based works in African art, in proper yet novel context.

This trilateral analysis of Whitten’s paintings, mosaics, and sculptural pieces speaks directly to a material and conceptual disruption that parallel de-disciplining discourse today. They permit us to cross through different worlds while still experiencing the hesitations of our own world. Not so dissimilar to the world in which Whitten lived. In the same action of his shattering pieces of acrylic for his mosaics and through his various techniques, he also shatters geographical boundaries and disciplinary practice. Perhaps one of the most appropriate pieces to the discussion of worldbuilding, networks, connectivity, and de-disciplining is Atopolis: For Édouard Glissant (2014)—which, combining the concepts from Édouard Glissant’s The Poetics of Relation (1990), Greek terminology and artistic practice, and the diasporic experience, it emphasizes “no place” and rather interweaving geographies, identities, and ways of being—a powerful crossing to see, think, and feel anew.