Stanley Whitney talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Whitney, born in Philadelphia in 1946, makes abstract paintings that feature interlocking rectangles, squares and bands of paint whose intense colours hum with musical resonance and rhythm.
Stanley Whitney's By the Love of Those Unloved (1994)
Private Collection. © Stanley Whitney. Photo: Lisson Gallery, courtesy of Stanley Whitney Studio
Rigorously structured yet full of improvisation and unexpected incident, his paintings are both arresting and slow-burning: they grab you with their bold hues and hold you with their complex harmonies and dissonances, their sense of constant movement. He is particularly known for his square-format paintings of the past two decades but his career has been a lifelong search for a distinctive form of painting—one that, as he has said, is defiantly abstract yet contains “the complexity of the world”.
Stanley Whitney's Untitled (1978)
Private Collection. © Stanley Whitney. Photo: Lisson Gallery, courtesy of Stanley Whitney Studio
He reflects on his encounters with an early mentor, Philip Guston; being painted by Barkley Hendricks, a fellow student at Yale; and his close friendship with David Hammons.
He discusses his love of Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paolo Veronese and Henri Matisse, as well as the work of Gees Bend quilters. And explains how he connects this deep love of painting to musical greats including Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Charlie Mingus. Plus he discusses in detail his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including “what is art for?”
Stanley Whitney's Untitled (1983)
Private Collection. © Stanley Whitney. Photo: Robert McKeever, courtesy of Stanley Whitney Studio
• Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, US, 9 February-27 May; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, US, 14 November-16 March 2025; Institute of Contemporary Art /Boston, US, 17 April 2025–1 September 2025
• Stanley Whitney: Dear Paris, Gagosian, Paris, until 28 February.
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture app.
The free app offers access to a vast range of international cultural organisations through a single download, with new guides being added regularly. They include the Studio Museum in Harlem, where Stanley Whitney had his first solo show in a public institution in New York, in 2015. If you download the guide to the Studio Museum, you can explore the latest in the museum’s artist-in-residence exhibitions, called And ever an edge. On the guide you can find video and audio interviews with the artists in the exhibition. Because the Studio Museum is closed as it prepares to open its new building on 125th Street, the exhibition is staged at another New York museum on Bloomberg Connects, MoMA PS1.