Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed

Widely celebrated for his experimental approach to painting, Jack Whitten often turned to writing as a way to investigate, understand, and grapple with his practice and his milieu. ‘Notes from the Woodshed’ is the first publication devoted to Whitten’s writings and takes its name from the heading Whitten scrawled across many of his texts. As curator and writer Legacy Russell explains in a January 2021 conversation on Whitten with cultural theorist, poet, and scholar Fred Moten, ‘The definition of ‘woodshed’ comes from the world of jazz. To go to the woodshed or to woodshed means to practice in private, which gives room for different types of experimentation, but also suggests a space where real and rigorous work can be possible, where rehearsal and radical vision away from a particular type of gaze has been vetted before it enters into a public realm.’