Jack Whitten, Lapsang

[00:00:04][music] >> We're in storage at Art Bridges looking at a fantastic Jack Whitten from 1974.

[00:00:13]This is a lapsung.

[00:00:15]>> Whitten was constantly thinking about the materiality of paint and in the 1970s, he was experimenting with the synthetic nature of acrylics. He created this platform where he would place the canvas and use thick layers of acrylic paint and a variety of tools including one he called the developer which was essentially a 12-ft rake where after the surface would dry, he would rake the developer over the surface to create these punctures revealing the deep layers of paint that we see in the painting now.

[00:00:54]>> The platform that he built in his studio was a platform where he tried to create an incredible amount of precision. And then this oversized device, the developer, is in essence a huge squeegee that he would rake across the surface.

[00:01:09]And what this allowed for was chance but also elements of control. The main motion of is horizontal but there are also these vertical elements and that's most prominent I think in this long linear form on the left that scrapes out to the right. Then there are these particles that together create a sense of vertical continuity. And you begin to wonder what's in front of what. Is something a reflection of something else? Are we looking at a kind of landscape? Are we looking at the surface of water? Are we looking at an atmosphere? Are we looking at time itself?

[00:01:48]>> And there are complications on the surface by what Jack Whitten called disruptors. In the top and bottom sections, there is sections that look like strings and Whitten would actually place these disruptors underneath the canvas so that when using the developer, these remnant materials are forever imprinted onto the canvas as well.

[00:02:14]>> And I find the color so interesting. We have this warm black, or is it on the edge of brown? And then these almost flesh-like colors, these sky blues, bright pinks, and then these dirty yellows. All of this meshes and melds as they're scraped together.

[00:02:33]>> These colors are so reminiscent of skin, of what Jack Whitten called these layers of paint. Even though it is an abstract work, it links back to current socio-political human conditions.

[00:02:45]>> This painting is part of a series which is known as the Slab Series. And Slab is referring to its horizontality as it's being produced.

[00:02:54]>> Whitten was born in Bessemer, Alabama in 1939, and he didn't intend to be an artist until he traveled to Montgomery to hear Martin Luther King Jr. speak during the bus boycotts. And in 1960, Whitten attended Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to study art. It was there where he's really thinking about how art is responsive to our environments and how we can have a degree of control. In 1960, he organized demonstrations in Baton Rouge where he was exposed to the violence of anti-black racism and the Jim Crow South.

[00:03:34]>> Well, he speaks of the violence of that moment and how terrifying it was to have people throwing bricks and bottles of urine at him, excrement at him. So many artists, when they're faced with that kind of intense racism, have turned to to easel, and Jack Whitten has decided that his avenue is abstraction. Whitten, I think, is creating paintings that are deeply political, but I think they're also looking at broader horizons. He was fascinated by the Big Bang, by science, and about humanity's place within the cosmos.

[00:04:08]>> This painting was created in the context of the Vietnam War and the space race and anti-communist sentiments. Whitten attended Cooper Union in the fall of 1960, and that is being introduced to people like Willem de Kooning and Romare Bearden and Norman Lewis and Jacob Lawrence.

[00:04:29]>> To see this painting from a distance for me is to see its incredible velocity. It feels so fast. It feels like we're seeing a fragment in a moment. But then when I stand up close to it and I start seeing the layers of paint, not only the paint that is moving horizontally so quickly, but layers below that, these skins under skins, these membranes that tear and start to expose areas beyond.

[00:04:58]And so this is a painting that seems to exist at the hyper speed of the universe, but also a kind of depth of time.

[00:05:06]>> I also want to call attention to the title. Lapsang is a type of black tea.

[00:05:11]It's known for its smoky taste. And when Whitten was hosting visitors into his studio, he would offer them tea. And this painting is almost simultaneously a gesture of hosting, a way for visitors to sit with the painting and spend time with it, almost like with a friend. Tea is obviously a very important drink in the South. And if we're thinking about the larger, again, sociopolitical conditions of the Vietnam War and anti-communism, naming this painting after a Chinese tea is an odd towards how this painting is embedded in a larger history that is on a continuum.

[00:05:56]>> And I think it also is an expression of the artist's generosity. We are invited to look. We're invited to take tea with him.

[00:06:04]>> And he often described art as the last hope. In an interview, he described how he was disappointed by the lack of social progression. But art as itself was still a hopeful medium for him. And so, Lapsang could be truly read as an invitation to think about the future and and to think about progressive things to come.