Books
I Am Spirit: A Reading of ‘Jack Whitten. Notes from the Woodshed’ in Los Angeles
Photo: Noé Montes
On a warm Los Angeles afternoon in August 2018, a group of revered artists, writers, curators and thinkers, including Betye Saar, Gary Simmons, and Robin Coste Lewis, gathered at Hauser & Wirth to read selections from Jack Whitten’s ‘Notes from the Woodshed.’ The publication, released that July by Hauser & Wirth Publishers, is the first devoted to Whitten's writings, featuring transcriptions and facsimiles of his enlightening daily studio logs alongside other longer essays and published texts. The reading took place within the artist’s first exhibition in Los Angeles in nearly 30 years, ‘Jack Whitten. Self Portrait With Satellites.’
Over the course of an hour, the recitations of personal anecdotes and musings opened a window into Jack's mind, filling his language with new life and urgency. The first reading by celebrated writer, Joshua Chambers Letson, known for his recent publication ‘After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life,’ set the tone for the entire afternoon, infusing Jack's words with reverent clarity, and asking from June 1964: ‘Which one of us would dare ask ourselves ‘Am I A MAN?’ or better yet which one of us would dare ask ourselves ‘DO I WANT TO BE A MAN?’ I look at my hand and see my face I will not rest until every American can do the same.’
Photo: Noé Montes
Photo: Noé Montes
The painter Gary Simmons, a former student of Whitten’s, read a profound passage insisting to all who study the cosmos that dark matter 'is the glue that holds the universe together. Without dark matter we will go back to the big bang! I AM DARK MATTER.' Simmons’ 11-year-old daughter, Lily Blue Simmons, divulged Whitten's feelings about turning 40 in December 1979, just before holidays, emphasizing positivity and the power of sunshine even in the hardest times. ‘Anyway, I am expecting Santa Claus to come, because I still believe in Santa!'
Other readings included artists and thinkers Candida Alvarez, Harry Dodge and Alphaeus Taylor; as well as curators Jose Luis Blondet, Erin Christovale, Naima Keith, and notably, Bennett Simpson, who was mentioned by Whitten in an entry from 2011 regarding Simpson’s exhibition at MOCA ‘Blues for Smoke’: ‘Good meeting yesterday with Bennet Simpson. His show for LA MOCA seems to be on track. He offered me the opportunity to write an essay for the catalogue. This is a great opportunity to get my ideas about jazz in print. I have a lot to say!’
Legendary Los Angeles artist, Betye Saar (92-years-old at the time of the reading), known for her life’s work in assemblage, with recent major exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, began her selection with a brief personal story: ‘On an afternoon in March 2014 I was wandering around the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition was Witness. It was an exhibition about art and the civil rights movement. Also wandering about the museum was Jackie Whitten. We wandered together and we commented on the exhibition, how dark it was and how angry it was. Because it was a dark and angry time that we were making our art. My quote is from March the 10th 2014: ‘Met Jesse Jackson today at the airport in Chicago. I went to him + introduced myself...told him about the Brooklyn Museum show…...told him about Baton Rouge in 1960 + told him about meeting King in Montgomery in 1957. I am blessed!’
Former Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles, Robin Coste Lewis, quietly read Whitten’s list of 32 objectives from Oct 8 1998, featured on the back cover of ‘Notes from the Woodshed’. The reading was a beautiful closing to Whitten’s writings, and the perfect segue into Coste Lewis’s masterful poem, ‘Mother Church Number 10: Homage to Whitten,’ inspired by Jack Whitten’s ‘Pregnant Owl 1983-48.’
Mother Church Number 10: Homage to Whitten By Robin Coste Lewis Once you were a saddle made of smoothed wood— a saddle worn by a stallion— crab-stepping over the sand on the bottom of the ocean. Once you were an omen, ochre and dusted with rust. Or you were just gray matter. Sawdust. But still: everything. You were an alarm clock. You were linen. You were twine—once. You were a fragrant black tin of shoe polish my dead father left, tucked way back inside a drawer in our kitchen. Only you can read this. Black mulberry, marble, glue. Pane of glass. Copper. Wire. Wax. Wild cypress. Brass. I’ve placed all the bones you will ever need inside you. I challenged every zealous god, and nailed each one down—here—for you. Olive tree. A lock of virgin’s hair. Outside I am a bird, but inside I am a boat, a boat in which I ferry our future back and forth between the ancient and modern world. I sleep where Socrates slept: inside a burning tree, spears rushing the door. I am trying to make the wood happy. Every engine in the world depends upon me.
Watch complete documentation of the reading below: