Rho I, 1977 (acrylic on canvas)

After meeting Martin Luther King Jr. as a student in Louisiana, Whitten participated in the civil rights movement until 1960, when he refocused on his art studies. Interested in making painting a tangible presence, he devised a method to "expand the gesture while taking my hand out of it," he said. Here the canvas was first painted white and placed parallel to the floor. Thin objects such as cotton strings and paper were thrown onto it. The artist then poured on a layer of gray paint and dragged a long metal rod, regularly notched at 1/8-inch intervals, across the surface, revealing the underlying white. The orderly linear pattern plays with the pure chance of the traces embedded beneath the gray. Whitten’s experimentation emphasized how elements such as the stretcher, brush, and paint itself are essential to experience the painted image.