Stanley Whitney talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians and, after all, different artists—and the cultural experiences which have formed his life and work. Whitney, born in Philadelphia in 1946, makes summary work that function interlocking rectangles, squares and bands of paint whose intense colors hum with musical resonance and rhythm.
Stanley Whitney’s By the Love of These Unloved (1994)
Non-public Assortment. © Stanley Whitney. Picture: Lisson Gallery, courtesy of Stanley Whitney Studio
Rigorously structured but filled with improvisation and sudden incident, his work are each arresting and slow-burning: they seize you with their daring hues and maintain you with their advanced harmonies and dissonances, their sense of fixed motion. He’s notably identified for his square-format work of the previous twenty years however his profession has been a lifelong seek for a particular type of portray—one which, as he has mentioned, is defiantly summary but incorporates “the complexity of the world”.
Stanley Whitney’s Untitled (1978)
Non-public Assortment. © Stanley Whitney. Picture: Lisson Gallery, courtesy of Stanley Whitney Studio
He displays on his encounters with an early mentor, Philip Guston; being painted by Barkley Hendricks, a fellow pupil at Yale; and his shut friendship with David Hammons.
He discusses his love of Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paolo Veronese and Henri Matisse, in addition to the work of Gees Bend quilters. And explains how he connects this deep love of portray to musical greats together with Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Charlie Mingus. Plus he discusses intimately his life within the studio and solutions our traditional questions, together with “what’s artwork for?”
Stanley Whitney’s Untitled (1983)
Non-public Assortment. © Stanley Whitney. Picture: Robert McKeever, courtesy of Stanley Whitney Studio
• Stanley Whitney: How Excessive the Moon, Buffalo AKG Artwork Museum, Buffalo, US, 9 February-27 Might; Walker Artwork Heart, Minneapolis, US, 14 November-16 March 2025; Institute of Modern Artwork /Boston, US, 17 April 2025–1 September 2025
• Stanley Whitney: Pricey Paris, Gagosian, Paris, till 28 February.
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the humanities and tradition app.
The free app provides entry to an enormous vary of worldwide cultural organisations via a single obtain, with new guides being added often. They embody the Studio Museum in Harlem, the place Stanley Whitney had his first solo present in a public establishment in New York, in 2015. When you obtain the information to the Studio Museum, you possibly can discover the most recent within the museum’s artist-in-residence exhibitions, referred to as And ever an edge. On the information you will discover video and audio interviews with the artists within the exhibition. As a result of the Studio Museum is closed because it prepares to open its new constructing on a hundred and twenty fifth Road, the exhibition is staged at one other New York museum on Bloomberg Connects, MoMA PS1.
