Jazz In Color
My Review of the Stanley Whitney Retrospective at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum
The “Albright Knox” Is Now The “AKG Buffalo Art Museum”
My visits to the AKG Buffalo Art Museum following its June 2023 reopening include wandering, confused but content, as I view familiar artworks in new surroundings. At the opening of the Stanley Whitney retrospective, I parked next to the Delaware Park Rose Garden, walked around the Auditorium, and entered at the West Entrance adjacent to the oval drive.
The unfailingly pleasant staff at the Admissions Desk gave me clear, unambiguous instructions to the “How High The Moon” exhibit on the Third Floor of the (new) Gundlach Building which I immediately forgot.
I found myself wandering in the North Gallery (original building) and stumbled upon two works by artists who inspired Stanley Watkins and provide insight into his style.
In this interview, Whitney talks about seeing a Piet Mondrian exhibit at the Guggenheim at age 18 (1945?), whose work he describes as “emotional,” “painterly,” and “direct.” We may speculate that Mondrian’s De Stijl movement formed a conceptual framework in the young artist, one which avoided excess and sought a purity of artistic expression.
Here, Whitney talks about creating “drama” in a painting as illustrated by Joan Mitchell’s “Bracket” (below). He explained “you don’t read the color just as a color. You read the color as a mark, as a gesture.”
“I Was Always A Colorist”
I follow the paintings wherever they take me. If the painting goes out the door, I follow it out the door; if it goes out the window, I follow it out the window. . . It’s like call and response — the paintings tell me what to do.
—Stanley Whitney
Whitney describes himself as a “colorist,” an abstract style which focuses on color as the dominant feature of the particular work. Whitney told the New York Times that for the last three decades he “has cranked Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew” each time he paints. “It gets me in the zone,” he said. “You kind of become the music.”
In his mature period, Whitney’s process is always the same. He paints a horizontal band along the top edge of the canvas and “lays down” blocks of intense, saturated color in a wobbly, improvisational grid.
Whitney manipulates space and color the way Miles Davis manipulates and harmony and rhythm, using improvisation as a methodology. He describes his process the way a jazz musician describes improvisation, saying he will “put green down, put yellow down, and see if it works.”
In this way, it is hard not to see paintings like “Elephant Memory” and “James Brown Sacrifices to Apollo” (above) as colorist sheet music, a sort of synesthesia, or merging of color and music. In this way, each painting is highly personal with no objective meaning but that which the viewer attaches to it.
There is Nothing to “Get”
In my discussions about abstract art I often hear people say, “I don’t get it,” a sentiment which some may feel about Whitney’s color grids. This is completely understandable and, I believe, the legacy of a style of art writing which intellectualized artistic expression, portraying it as a complex puzzle with a correct, hidden answer available only to self-important hipsters and college professors.
To illustrate how misguided this is, allow me to describe discussions about a recent Buffalo Bills game with two different people. The first is a young woman with no knowledge or interest in football; the second is a retired football coach.
The young woman described how she met a “cute guy” and was hoping he would ask her out. She feigned interest in the Bills and he duly invited her to a home game. She described the experience as “thrilling,” although she neither knew nor cared about the complexities of the game on the field.
She recalled, “this guy caught a long pass and he ran really fast. I didn’t know anyone could run that fast. He scored and the whole stadium was screaming and cheering and then he kissed me.”
The football coach described the same play as, “defense got caught in a run blitz and the secondary bit on the play action. Man coverage on our #1 receiver with no help up top.” I ask you, dear reader, who had more fun at that Bills game?
It was the young woman, of course. She processed the experience without an imposed, conceptual filter demanding she deconstruct and analyze the game, thus allowing her to feel unmediated pleasure.
She simply enjoyed the experience.
Conclusion
I respectfully suggest that you take time to see Buffalo AKG Art Museum’s excellent Stanley Whitney’s “How High the Moon” retrospective. Abandon preconceptions and observe the paintings the way you would listen to a song on the radio or watch a football game.
You may see drama or hear rhythm in Whitney’s wobbly color grids, and you may not. It doesn’t matter.
Enjoy the experience.
The Stanley Whitney Retrospective Exhibit, “How High the Moon” is on display at the Buffalo AKG Museum of Art through May 26 2024. More information can be found here.
Favorite quote: "Whitney manipulates space and color the way Miles Davis manipulates and harmony and rhythm, using improvisation as a methodology. "
Also really appreciated the football analogy to modern art however, unless you have Darrelle Rivas or Deon, you should never put your CB on an island.