Artist Spotlight: Jack Whitten
Jack Whitten: The Messenger
From Bessemer to the World
Jack Whitten (1939–2018), born and raised in Bessemer, Alabama, transformed the world of abstract art—but he never lost sight of where he came from. Before his name entered the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, before he was honored by President Barack Obama with the National Medal of Arts, Whitten was a boy walking the red clay roads of central Alabama, shaped by the realities of segregation in what he would later refer to as American apartheid.
Whitten’s early years in Alabama were marked by hardship and resolve. His father worked in the coal mines and died while Jack was still young. His mother, Annie Mae Cunningham Whitten, ran a private kindergarten and instilled in him a fierce sense of discipline and independence. These formative experiences became the foundation of a lifelong pursuit—not just of art, but of transformation.
He first studied pre-med at Tuskegee Institute before transferring to Southern University in Baton Rouge, where he became actively involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He created signs for demonstrations and marched with protestors—actions that deepened his political awareness and artistic urgency. By 1960, Whitten left the South, moved to New York City, and enrolled at The Cooper Union, earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1964. But he would later say that the South never left him.
Jack Whitten in studio.
Throughout his six-decade career, Whitten experimented boldly with materials and techniques. In the 1970s, he developed a method of dragging acrylic paint across canvas with tools of his own invention, resulting in ethereal, blurred surfaces that evoked photographic motion and metaphysical thought. By the 1990s, he was creating mosaic-like works from individually cut tiles of acrylic—compositions that shimmered with memory and complexity.
Jack Whitten: The Messenger
His acclaimed “Black Monolith” series paid tribute to Black cultural icons such as Ralph Ellison and Barbara Jordan, blending abstraction with commemoration. In all of it, the influence of Alabama—the lived experience of injustice, survival, and vision—remained, beneath the surface. Whitten often described segregation not only as a social system but as a psychic condition, one that shaped his understanding of fragmentation and repair.
In addition to his paintings, Whitten created sculptural works informed by African, Mediterranean, and Southern vernacular traditions. His summers in Crete added another layer to his international dialogue, but his artistic compass always pointed back to the South—particularly to the discipline, memory, and complexity instilled in him as a child of Bessemer.
Over the years, Whitten received some of the highest honors the art world can offer. In addition to the National Medal of Arts, his work has been featured in major retrospectives like Jack Whitten: The Messenger at the Museum of Modern Art, which showcased over 175 works spanning his career. Today, his paintings are held in collections around the globe.
Yet, for all his international acclaim, Jack Whitten remains one of Alabama’s greatest artistic exports—a visionary who carried the burden and brilliance of his roots into the future of contemporary art.
Jack Whitten.
At the Northeast Louisiana Delta African American Heritage Museum, we celebrate this lineage: artists whose journeys begin in the South but ripple far beyond it.
For a deeper insight into Whitten, you might find this interview and this lecture informative.
