0:00:06.380,0:00:08.620
[sound of tools being sharpened]

0:00:14.860,0:00:18.700
["Jack Whitten: An Artist's Life"]

0:00:22.820,0:00:29.880
Now I find myself doing a type of painting[br]where my hand doesn't touch it.

0:00:31.560,0:00:36.960
This is an adaptation of the artist's palette.

0:00:52.380,0:00:53.440
Okay.

0:00:56.320,0:00:58.000
About ready to go.

0:01:04.320,0:01:06.540
Each one of these carries information--

0:01:08.040,0:01:09.880
it's compressed into each one--

0:01:11.560,0:01:15.040
because it relates so much to[br]what's happening with modern technology.

0:01:15.040,0:01:17.840
You know, bytes of information.[br]Bits.

0:01:17.840,0:01:19.160
That kind of a thing.

0:01:22.580,0:01:24.520
I can build anything I want to build.

0:01:26.960,0:01:28.360
I'm not a narrative painter.

0:01:30.320,0:01:35.820
I don't do the idea, or the painting[br]being the illustration of an idea,

0:01:35.820,0:01:37.220
I don't do that.

0:01:38.020,0:01:41.000
It's all about the materiality of the paint.

0:01:54.920,0:01:57.140
I grew up in Bessemer, Alabama.

0:01:57.820,0:02:01.939
Everything was segregated--[br]transportation, the buses.

0:02:01.940,0:02:04.100
What I call American apartheid.

0:02:06.460,0:02:09.580
I always did art.[br]I always did painting since I was a kid.

0:02:10.200,0:02:11.760
But it was not encouraged,

0:02:13.060,0:02:19.180
the theory being that it's good for a hobby,[br]but you couldn't make a living out of it.

0:02:24.280,0:02:27.520
Lucky for me, I graduated with good grades.

0:02:28.320,0:02:29.720
I went to Tuskegee.

0:02:29.720,0:02:34.770
The idea was for me to be a doctor[br]in the U.S. Air Force and a pilot.

0:02:34.770,0:02:39.379
It was always in the back of my mind[br]that I was an artist.

0:02:39.380,0:02:41.860
That's what I wanted to do,[br]I wanted to do artwork.

0:02:46.200,0:02:49.020
Tuskegee did not have an art program,

0:02:49.020,0:02:53.020
so I left Tuskegee to study art at Southern[br]University.

0:02:54.460,0:02:57.960
And that went well, for a while,

0:02:57.970,0:03:02.459
but I got involved politically with the demonstrations.

0:03:02.459,0:03:06.450
We organized a big civil rights march[br]that went from

0:03:06.450,0:03:10.460
downtown Baton Rouge to the state office building.

0:03:11.260,0:03:16.060
It was that march, what I experienced,[br]is what drove me out of the South.

0:03:16.060,0:03:19.380
After that march,[br]which turned vicious and violent,

0:03:20.160,0:03:22.540
that politically changed me forever.

0:03:30.020,0:03:34.560
The fall of 1960,[br]I took a Greyhound bus from New Orleans

0:03:34.560,0:03:36.890
to take the test at Cooper Union.

0:03:36.890,0:03:38.220
And I was accepted.

0:03:39.040,0:03:40.580
I studied art--painting.

0:03:40.580,0:03:43.780
It was a good thing[br]and it was tuition-free.

0:03:43.780,0:03:47.640
When I came to New York,[br]some of the first people I met was

0:03:47.640,0:03:48.940
Romare Bearden,

0:03:49.840,0:03:51.140
Norman Lewis,

0:03:52.360,0:03:53.800
and Jacob Lawrence.

0:03:54.720,0:03:58.820
And in 1960 in New York City,[br]the scene was open.

0:03:58.820,0:04:00.840
Bill de Kooning would talk to you!

0:04:01.880,0:04:06.219
I had a dialogue,[br]what I call, on both sides of the divide.

0:04:06.220,0:04:10.080
I don't make a distinction between[br]there being Black, White, and whatever.

0:04:10.080,0:04:11.060
I really don't.

0:04:11.060,0:04:14.200
If they've got information[br]and my instincts tell me,

0:04:14.200,0:04:15.620
"Boy, you got to meet that person"--

0:04:15.620,0:04:18.860
"You got to find out what they're doing,"[br]"you have to understand this stuff"--

0:04:18.860,0:04:19.980
I'd reach out.

0:04:20.960,0:04:25.280
The young artist has to[br]have something to react to.

0:04:27.280,0:04:30.300
My first influence was Arshile Gorky.

0:04:31.660,0:04:34.360
Nobody springs forth from the head of Zeus!

0:04:34.800,0:04:36.380
That was my first influence.

0:04:36.980,0:04:38.740
Early surrealism.

0:04:39.460,0:04:41.340
Figurative expressionism.

0:04:41.840,0:04:46.760
It wasn't until the end of the '60s, though,[br]that I made a drastic change

0:04:46.760,0:04:52.400
toward more conceptual ideas[br]that dealt with the materiality of paint.

0:04:53.700,0:04:56.620
I removed all the spectrum color.

0:04:57.340,0:04:59.580
Made a big move to acrylic.

0:04:59.580,0:05:01.020
Restructured the studio.

0:05:01.020,0:05:04.300
Restructured my thinking about painting.

0:05:05.460,0:05:06.840
I built a tool.

0:05:06.840,0:05:08.700
I called it "the developer."

0:05:10.360,0:05:12.140
With that tool,

0:05:12.140,0:05:18.720
I could move large bodies of acrylic paint[br]across the surface of the canvas.

0:05:19.400,0:05:22.700
I call them "slab" paintings.[br]S-L-A-B.

0:05:23.340,0:05:24.980
It became a slab.

0:05:26.280,0:05:30.250
I wanted a painting to exist as a single line--

0:05:30.250,0:05:33.389
one gesture, three seconds.

0:05:33.389,0:05:35.460
That's why I built that big tool.

0:05:37.460,0:05:41.360
I spent ten years working on that drawing[br]board.

0:05:43.380,0:05:46.220
Ten years bent over, stooped down.

0:05:46.220,0:05:47.760
I can't do that no more.

0:05:48.660,0:05:53.580
There comes a time when the body[br]will not accept that type of abuse--

0:05:53.580,0:05:54.860
and it was abuse.

0:05:55.340,0:05:58.800
The slab is what led me into the tesserae.

0:06:01.480,0:06:06.080
It's a chunk of acrylic that has been cut[br]from a large slab of acrylic.

0:06:06.880,0:06:12.340
My interest, of course, is always about[br]how I can use it to direct the light.

0:06:13.420,0:06:18.110
So with these surfaces,[br]depending on how I place them,

0:06:18.110,0:06:19.780
I can direct the light.

0:06:19.780,0:06:21.320
You see how it changes?

0:06:32.600,0:06:34.880
That painting came out of a lot of pain.

0:06:35.700,0:06:40.080
I started that painting[br]and then I developed a serious illness.

0:06:42.940,0:06:45.140
I spent a month in the hospital.

0:06:47.420,0:06:49.300
So that knocked me on my ass.

0:06:50.160,0:06:53.620
And that painting was a way of hitting back.

0:06:53.620,0:06:54.840
[LAUGHS]

0:06:55.520,0:06:58.600
I'm not going to let this shit defeat me,[br]you know?

0:07:02.100,0:07:03.860
It's one of the "Black Monoliths."

0:07:05.200,0:07:10.960
It's called,[br]"Six Kinky Strings: For Chuck Berry."

0:07:12.320,0:07:14.990
And that title comes from the fact that,

0:07:14.990,0:07:18.640
anybody who knows about the personality[br]of Chuck Berry, he did some weird shit.

0:07:24.600,0:07:28.940
The "Black Monolith" is a series of paintings that[br]I've been doing for a number of years, though.

0:07:30.160,0:07:33.000
It started back in the early '80s.

0:07:34.840,0:07:38.980
It's a Black person who has[br]contributed a lot to society.

0:07:41.040,0:07:45.280
So I make it my business[br]to memorialize those people.

0:07:47.689,0:07:52.580
And I find that each one,[br]I have to locate the essence of that person.

0:07:52.580,0:07:54.500
That person becomes a symbol

0:07:56.500,0:07:58.860
and I build that into the paint.

0:08:16.420,0:08:19.699
I want to be remembered[br]as a very average guy

0:08:19.700,0:08:23.180
who pretty much stays to himself.

0:08:23.180,0:08:24.400
[LAUGHS]

0:08:30.100,0:08:32.940
Dedicated worker.[br]But on top of that...

0:08:32.940,0:08:37.600
The question was asked to Count Basie once,

0:08:37.600,0:08:41.040
he says, "I just want to go down as[br]one of the boys."

0:08:41.620,0:08:45.420
There was a kind of a modesty in that[br]that I've always admired.

0:08:45.420,0:08:48.500
Nothing big,[br]just one of the boys.

0:08:49.380,0:08:50.760
I like that.

0:08:52.880,0:08:58.060
["Quantum Wall, VIII (For Arshile Gorky, My[br]First Love In Painting)"]

0:08:58.780,0:09:05.000
[Jack Whitten (1939–2018), In Memoriam]