Book Release: ‘Jack Whitten: Cosmic Soul’
Press Release
Hauser & Wirth Publishers’ latest monograph presents a comprehensive look at Jack Whitten’s six decades of making and thinking about art.
This comprehensive monograph, authored by art historian Richard Shiff, offers a multifaceted and critical interpretation of Jack Whitten’s art-making and philosophy of life. Informed both by Whitten’s extensive writings and his personal conversations with the author, ‘Cosmic Soul’ offers a close reading of the artist’s outlook. Vividly illustrated and ranging freely through the course of the artist’s remarkable six-decade career, Shiff’s text illuminates the distinctive character of Whitten’s thought and the art it generated.
Richard Shiff sheds new light on the artist’s approach to different materials, ranging from paint on canvas and sculpted wood to his groundbreaking use of the ‘digital’ acrylic ‘tesserae’ he began working with in the 1990s. Illustrating more than 125 artworks by Whitten, ‘Cosmic Soul’ develops over four chapters, three of which (now expanded) were originally commissioned as essays for exhibitions, providing a thorough survey of Whitten’s artistic voice as it manifested itself across mediums.
Born in Bessemer, Alabama in 1939, Jack Whitten is celebrated for his innovative processes of applying paint to the surface of his canvases and transfiguring their material terrains. Although Whitten initially aligned with the New York circle of abstract expressionists active in the 1960s, his work gradually distanced itself from the movement’s aesthetic philosophy and formal concerns, focusing more intensely on the experimental aspects of process and technique that came to define his practice. His new methods derived initially from his meditations on photographic and digital technologies, and later from his investigations into quantum theory.
This publication is released on the occasion of Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair (13 – 16 October 2022) and coincides with the exhibition ‘Jack Whitten’ at Dia Beacon, New York (18 November 2022 – 10 July 2023).
About Hauser & Wirth Publishers
Artists’ voices, exceptional art, scholarship, design and bookmaking are at the heart of Hauser & Wirth Publishers’ program, which has been helmed by Michaela Unterdörfer since 2005. Books are critical gateways to new ways of thinking and seeing; they provide vital, lasting records of artists’ works and ideas and the discourse they inspire. This is why publishing has been a cornerstone of the gallery’s activity since its founding and why Hauser & Wirth Publishers has grown to become a leading imprint for unique, object-like books that encourage an understanding and appreciation of modern and contemporary art. With the special access granted by artists to their writings and archives, Hauser & Wirth Publishers often brings new and overlooked aspects of an artist’s creative practice into focus. Our backlist offers a robust program that comprises artists’ books, artists’ writings, biographies, monographs, surveys, exhibition catalogs and collectors’ perspectives.
Hauser & Wirth’s publishing activity extends back to 1992, from where it steadily flourished through partnerships with reputable imprints such as Hatje Cantz, JRP|Ringier, Snoeck, Steidl, Thames & Hudson and Yale University Press, before publishing independently under its own imprint. Based in Zurich and New York City, Hauser & Wirth Publishers commissions titles that we believe are keystone resources and references related to the artists represented by the gallery and beyond. Our titles are distributed worldwide via Distributed Art Publishers and Buchhandlung Walther König.
‘Jack Whitten: Cosmic Soul’
Release date: 13 October 2022
Edited by Richard Shiff
Book design by Rita Jules, Miko McGinty Inc.
English, Swiss-bound softcover
360 pages, 192 x 255 mm
978-3-906915-73-9
£42 / $45 / €42 / CHF 44 / HKD 375
Press Contact:
Anna-Maria Pfab, Hauser & Wirth Zurich annamariapfab@hauserwirth.com
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