The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of April 25, 2024
Two Heads #1
1968
(American, 1939–2018)
Sheet: 29.2 x 50.2 cm (11 1/2 x 19 3/4 in.); Framed: 37.4 x 58.3 x 3.8 cm (14 3/4 x 22 15/16 x 1 1/2 in.)
© Jack Whitten
Location: not on view
Did You Know?
Drawing was central to Jack Whitten’s artistic practice and he described it once as “an act of brave exploration into unknown territories.”Description
For over five decades, Jack Whitten experimented with materials and process to create his own distinctive style of abstract drawing. This work dates to a period shortly after the artist relocated to New York from rural Alabama and was involved with the Civil Rights Movement. Depicting two anonymous African American women, it belongs to a series of portraits, created by the artist as a means of commentary on the lack of visibility of such figures throughout Western art. Depicted in gestural marks of bright color, the subjects command the viewer’s attention and convey a sense of power and dignity.- Two faces emerge from a riot of pastel colors laid down with brusque gestural marks. In passages where the medium more solidly coats the paper support, a fine ribbed texture is amplified and reads as part of the design. This textural feature identifies the paper as "laid and chain."
With close inspection it is possible to confirm that two varieties of pastel were used to make this drawing; certain colors are dry and matte, conforming to the more common pastel variety characterized by a highly powdery material, and others form a more compact slick coating consistent with oil pastel.
Four daylight fluorescent (Day-Glo) colors including pink, orange, green, and yellow can be identified in this colorful palette by their luminescence: they even glow slightly in visible light. Juxtaposing and layering the “regular” relatively opaque colors, whether bright pink or dull gray, with the more brilliant and more translucent Day-Glo colors, produces three-dimensional effects. The illusion that the colors occupy different planes—certain colors recede, and others push forward—is amplified when looking at the drawing with a full-spectrum light source.
Working in the late 1960s in New York during the heyday of Day-Glo and at the center of the Pop Art scene, Whitten was perfectly placed to incorporate these brash hyper-bright colors into his artwork and was no doubt aware of their physiological effects on vision. With their enhanced perceptibility by the human eye, he would have understood the effects of viewing this drawing with a full spectrum light source or with long-wave ultraviolet radiation ("black light") exclusively. - 1968-2018Studio of the artist [1939-2018]2018-2020Estate of the artist2020(Hauser & Wirth, New York, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)2020-Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
- Jack Whitten: Transitional Space, A Drawing Survey. Hauser & Wirth, New York (January 28 - April 4, 2020).
- {{cite web|title=Two Heads #1|url=false|author=Jack Whitten|year=1968|access-date=25 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2020.227