On the seventh floor of the Museum of Modern Art, there is a massive collection titled “Jack Whitten: The Messenger.” It takes several large galleries to showcase Whitten’s prodigious talent and craftsmanship, to say nothing of his versatility and innovations. We have profiled Whitten (1939-2018) in our pages before, most notably when he died, just as he was completing his final work of art, “Atopolis,” composed of thousands of glittering tiles. He called the invented process “acrylic tesserae” which he created by taking slabs of dried acrylic paint, laying them out and then slicing them into various squares using a razor blade.
Whitten possessed a boundless ingenuity, and when he couldn’t find the tools he needed to express his imagination, he created them — like the huge wooden T-frame tool he used like a giant squeegee that he called a “developer,” to spread his paint across a strip of canvas or linoleum. “The immediate urban environment of New York City provides the raw material of my paintings,” he said in his reflections at the end of the 300-page book accompanying the exhibit, curated and published by Michelle Kuo.
He also noted that “jazz, more than any other medium, continues to be the major influence on my work.” Several of those influences have pieces dedicated to them — Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and most notably Art Blakey, to whom he pays tribute to in naming the exhibit “The Messenger.” Along with an array of different artistic styles in the paintings, a few of Whitten’s sculptures and totems are on display. There’s one that is sure to capture your attention adorned as it is with computer chips, digital paraphernalia, topped with a clock keeping accurate time.
Cover of Jack Whitten: The Messenger, published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2025. 
Jack Whitten. NY Battle Ground. 1967. Oil on canvas, 60 × 83 7/8″ (152.4 × 213 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase and gift of Sandra and Tony Tamer, Agnes Gund, Marlene Hess and James D. Zirin, and Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida. © 2025 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Photo by Jonathan Muzikar. 
Jack Whitten. Black Monolith VII, Du Bois Legacy: For W.E. Burghardt. 2014. Acrylic on canvas. 84 × 63 × 4″ (213.4 × 160 × 10.2 cm). Collection of Charlotte and Herbert S. Wagner III. © Jack Whitten Estate. Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth. Photographer: Genevieve Hanson. 
Jack Whitten. The Afro American Thunderbolt. 1983/1984. Black mulberry wood with copper plate and nails, 25 × 9 × 10″ (63.5 × 22.9 × 25.4 cm). Jack Whitten Estate. Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth. © Jack Whitten Estate. Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth, Photo by Genevieve Hanson. 
Portrait of Jack Whitten with Pink Psyche Queen (1973), ca. 1975 © Jack Whitten Estate. Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth.
Here and there among the objects, if you know something of Whitten’s birth in the South, his father’s work in the mines of Alabama, and long residence in Greece, the chronology of his life is revealed. His political activism and participation in the Civil Rights Movement become evident in pieces dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. His interest in physics, math, and quantum mechanics are other compelling elements of his multifaceted background, though much of that comes only after close inspection of the captions.
All in all, it’s quite an astonishing overview of Whitten’s remarkable career, an artist determined to explore the interstices between the gesture and the grid, to expand the definition of abstract expression, and forge his own concept of originality. But as he said at the close of the coffee table-sized book, “I am ultimately only interested in painting that goes beyond the notion of self. The self is a mirage designed by nature to prevent us from penetrating its secrets. This is why I like science. In the physical sciences, we must learn to circumvent the self in order to discover the root of being. There is no place for narcissism in painting except for illustrational fantasies.”
Try to find a moment in your busy schedule to take a break and witness the amazing work of a genius. It’s at MoMA until August 2.