The Modern Art Musuem of Fort Worth’s Focus exhibitions are typically given over to up-and-coming younger artists, so it’s notable that their latest one is devoted to a painter who’s 69 years old. However, it’s hard to argue that Stanley Whitney isn’t deserving of the honor. His enormously inviting and pleasing oil paintings prove that abstract fields of color still offer rewarding subjects to an artist of his gifts.
A native of Philadelphia, Whitney found inspiration for his art not only in forebears like Barnett Newman and his mentor Philip Guston, but also in music, citing Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come as a seminal influence that got him out of the binaries of the 1960s civil-rights movement that he grew up in. His tilted grids feature unevenly sized blocks of juicy colors set off with the occasional black bar for contrast. The titles of the works take their cues from either the hues on display (“My Name is Peaches”) or occasionally from musicians who spur the artist creatively (“My Tina Turner”). The inexactitude of the shapes and proportions lends his pieces a vibrancy and energy that’s all Whitney’s own. Coming off a major 2015 retrospective in New York (where he currently makes his primary home), Stanley Whitney comes to us in the midst of a cultural moment.
Focus runs Jan 21-Apr 2 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St, FW. Admission is $4-10. Call 817-738-9215.
