Parity Pipeline

Genre

Synopsis

JACK WHITTEN: A COSMIC SOUL explores the extraordinary life and work of one of the most innovative and overlooked artists of our time.  A recent review of Jack’s  landmark career retrospective at MoMA asked: “Is Whitten the most important American artist that you’ve never heard of? Jack Whitten was a pioneer of abstraction who transcended narrow categories while tracing the history of segregation, political upheaval, and cultural movements, vastly expanding our way of ‘seeing’ the Black experience.  The film explores how Whitten exorcised and confronted the traumas of racial terror that permeate American history, but also pushed against the narrow expectations of what was expected of him as a Black artist.   It shows how Jack charted his own path over five decades, leaving an indelible mark on the art world,  one that the culture is only now coming to terms with.   The audience will experience how Jack developed original techniques while re-mixing and re-defining genres to create his own revolutionary oeuvre. 

The film will look and feel like Whitten’s art- vibrant, bold and visually exciting. We will visualize his work  on screen through  graphic treatments and innovative animation. Through Jack’s extensive on-camera interviews, archival material, and voiceover excerpts from his journals, the viewer will step inside Whitten’s mind and see how he incorporated themes of space, technology, and the cosmos into his work, reimagining a society that was free of limitations.   The film will also feature Jack’s wife of forty years and his adult daughter who oversees his estate, as well as artists, musicians, writers, critics, curators, and other thinkers who will illuminate his life and work and show how society has finally caught up with an artist who refused to be defined by anyone’s rules.