The Art of Jack Whitten

Abstract artist Jack Whitten paints a verbal picture of his memorial art, in talking with Stuart Horodner, curator of the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. For the past 40 years, New York-based painter Jack Whitten has created elaborately constructed abstract paintings, which are conceived to memorialize various cultural figures (artists, musicians, dancers, politicians, writers), family members, and tragic events that have shaped his life. Whitten has studied the historical impulses behind the honoring of the dead (in various cultures through time) and he has developed a contribution to the notion of abstraction and representation.