Glenn Ligon
Encyclopedia
Glenn Ligon is an American conceptual artist whose work explores race, language, desire, sexuality, and identity. He engages in intertextuality
with other works from the visual arts, literature, and history, as well as his own life.
. In 1985, he participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art
's Independent Study Program. He currently lives and works in New York City
.
for his work Annotations. Ligon's work is greatly informed by his experiences as an African American
and as a gay
man
living in the United States.
Although Ligon's work spans sculptures, prints, drawings, mixed media and even neon signs, painting remains a core activity. In 1989, he mounted his first solo show, "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," in Brooklyn. This show established Ligon's reputation for creating large, text-based paintings in which a phrase chosen from literature or other sources is repeated over and over, eventually dissipating into murk.
Ligon first gained prominence in the early 1990s along with a generation of artists like Lorna Simpson
, Gary Simmons
, and Janine Antoni
. In 1993, Ligon began the first of three series of gold-colored paintings based on Richard Pryor
's groundbreaking stand-up comedy routines from the 1970s. The scatological and racially charged jokes Ligon depicts speak in the vernacular language of the street and reveal a complex and nuanced vision of black culture. In 1994, the art installation To Disembark was shown at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
in Washington, D.C. The title alludes to the title of a book of poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks
. "To Disembark" functions in both works to evoke the recognition that African Americans are still coping with the remnants of slavery and its ongoing manifestation in racism. In one part of the installation, Ligon created a series of packing crates modeled on the one described by ex-slave Henry "Box" Brown in his "Narrative of Henry Box Brown who escaped from Slavery Enclosed in a Box 3 Feet Long and 2 Wide." Each crate played a different sound, such as a heartbeat, a spiritual, or contemporary rap music. Around each box, the artist placed posters in which he characterized himself, in words and period images, as a runaway slave in the style of 19th century broadsheets circulated to advertise for the return of fugitive slaves. In another part of the exhibition, Ligon stenciled four quotes from a Zora Neale Hurston
essay, "how it feels to be colored me," directly on the walls: "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background," "I remember the very day that I became colored," "I am not tragically colored," and "I do not always feel colored." Ligon found Hurston's writing illuminating because she explores the idea of race as a concept that is structured by context rather than essence.
In "A Feast of Scraps" (1994–1998), he inserted pornographic and stereotypical photographs of black men, complete with invented captions ("mother knew," "I fell out" "It's a process") into albums of family snapshots including graduation photographs, vacation snapshots, pictures of baby showers, birthday celebrations, and baptisms, some of which include the artist's own family. Like almost all of Ligon's art, this project draws out the secret histories and submerged meanings of inherited texts and images.
Another series of large paintings was based on children's interpretations of 1970s black-history coloring books. In 2008, Ligon's piece "Warm Broad Glow" was selected to participate in the Renaissance Society's group exhibit, "Black Is, Black Ain't".
, Minneapolis (2000); the St. Louis Art Museum (2000); the Institute of Contemporary Art
, Philadelphia (1998); and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
(1996). A first survey of Ligon's work opened at The Power Plant
in Toronto in June 2005 and traveled to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; Contemporary Arts Museum
in Houston; Wexner Center for the Arts
in Columbus; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery
in Vancouver, and the Mudam
in Luxembourg. The first comprehensive mid-career retrospective devoted to Ligon's work was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art
and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
in 2011. Group shows in which Ligon has participated include the Whitney Biennial
(1991 and 1993), Biennale of Sydney (1996), Venice Biennale
(1997), Kwangju Biennale (2000), and Documenta 11 (2002).
Glenn Ligon is represented by Regen Projects, Los Angeles in Los Angeles; Luhring Augustine in New York; and Thomas Dane Gallery in London.
; the Museum of Modern Art
, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art
, Philadelphia; the Guggenheim Museum
, New York; the Tate Modern
, London; the Walker Art Center
, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art
, New York.
Fellowship for his art work. In 2006 he was awarded the Skowhegan Medal for Painting. In 2010, he won a United States Artists
Fellow award.
In 2009, President Barack Obama
added Ligon's 1992 Black Like Me No. 2, on loan from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
, to the White House
collection, where it was installed in the President's private living quarters.
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined...
with other works from the visual arts, literature, and history, as well as his own life.
Early life and career
Born in 1960 in the Bronx, Ligon graduated with a B.A. from Wesleyan UniversityWesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
. In 1985, he participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
's Independent Study Program. He currently lives and works in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
Work
Ligon works in multiple media, including painting, neon, video, photography, and digital media such as Adobe FlashAdobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
for his work Annotations. Ligon's work is greatly informed by his experiences as an African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
and as a gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
man
Man
The term man is used for an adult human male . However, man is sometimes used to refer to humanity as a whole...
living in the United States.
Although Ligon's work spans sculptures, prints, drawings, mixed media and even neon signs, painting remains a core activity. In 1989, he mounted his first solo show, "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," in Brooklyn. This show established Ligon's reputation for creating large, text-based paintings in which a phrase chosen from literature or other sources is repeated over and over, eventually dissipating into murk.
Ligon first gained prominence in the early 1990s along with a generation of artists like Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson is an African American artist and photographer who made her name in the 1980s and 1990s with artworks such as Guarded Conditions and Square Deal. Her work often portrays black women combined with text to express contemporary society's relationship with race, ethnicity and sex...
, Gary Simmons
Gary Simmons
Gary Simmons is a former ice hockey goaltender. He played parts of 4 seasons in the NHL with the California Seals, Cleveland Barons, and Los Angeles Kings.-External links:...
, and Janine Antoni
Janine Antoni
Janine Antoni is a contemporary artist whose work focuses mostly on process. She often uses her whole body or different parts of it, such as her mouth, hair, eyelashes, and brain as tools and with them performs everyday activities to create her artwork.She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College...
. In 1993, Ligon began the first of three series of gold-colored paintings based on Richard Pryor
Richard Pryor
Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor was an American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, writer and MC. Pryor was known for uncompromising examinations of racism and topical contemporary issues, which employed colorful vulgarities, and profanity, as well as racial epithets...
's groundbreaking stand-up comedy routines from the 1970s. The scatological and racially charged jokes Ligon depicts speak in the vernacular language of the street and reveal a complex and nuanced vision of black culture. In 1994, the art installation To Disembark was shown at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the...
in Washington, D.C. The title alludes to the title of a book of poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.-Biography:...
. "To Disembark" functions in both works to evoke the recognition that African Americans are still coping with the remnants of slavery and its ongoing manifestation in racism. In one part of the installation, Ligon created a series of packing crates modeled on the one described by ex-slave Henry "Box" Brown in his "Narrative of Henry Box Brown who escaped from Slavery Enclosed in a Box 3 Feet Long and 2 Wide." Each crate played a different sound, such as a heartbeat, a spiritual, or contemporary rap music. Around each box, the artist placed posters in which he characterized himself, in words and period images, as a runaway slave in the style of 19th century broadsheets circulated to advertise for the return of fugitive slaves. In another part of the exhibition, Ligon stenciled four quotes from a Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...
essay, "how it feels to be colored me," directly on the walls: "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background," "I remember the very day that I became colored," "I am not tragically colored," and "I do not always feel colored." Ligon found Hurston's writing illuminating because she explores the idea of race as a concept that is structured by context rather than essence.
In "A Feast of Scraps" (1994–1998), he inserted pornographic and stereotypical photographs of black men, complete with invented captions ("mother knew," "I fell out" "It's a process") into albums of family snapshots including graduation photographs, vacation snapshots, pictures of baby showers, birthday celebrations, and baptisms, some of which include the artist's own family. Like almost all of Ligon's art, this project draws out the secret histories and submerged meanings of inherited texts and images.
Another series of large paintings was based on children's interpretations of 1970s black-history coloring books. In 2008, Ligon's piece "Warm Broad Glow" was selected to participate in the Renaissance Society's group exhibit, "Black Is, Black Ain't".
Exhibitions
Ligon's work has been the subject of exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe. Recent solo exhibition include the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2001); the Kunstverein München, Germany (2001), the Walker Art CenterWalker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
, Minneapolis (2000); the St. Louis Art Museum (2000); the Institute of Contemporary Art
Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
The Institute of Contemporary Art or ICA is a contemporary art museum located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The museum is associated with the University of Pennsylvania, and is located on its campus. The Institute is one of the country's leading museums dedicated to exhibiting the innovative...
, Philadelphia (1998); and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...
(1996). A first survey of Ligon's work opened at The Power Plant
The Power Plant
The Power Plant is one of Canada’s leading public galleries devoted to contemporary art, located in Toronto, Ontario at Harbourfront Centre. As a non-collecting art gallery, The Power Plant has presented new and recent work by numerous Canadian artists along with their international peers.Over its...
in Toronto in June 2005 and traveled to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; Contemporary Arts Museum
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
The Contemporary Arts Museum – Houston is a not-for-profit institution in Houston, Texas, dedicated to presenting the contemporary art of our time to the public....
in Houston; Wexner Center for the Arts
Wexner Center for the Arts
The Wexner Center for the Arts is The Ohio State University’s multidisciplinary, international laboratory for the exploration and advancement of contemporary art...
in Columbus; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery
Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery
The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the campus of the University of British Columbia....
in Vancouver, and the Mudam
Mudam
The Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art , abbreviated to Mudam, is a museum of modern art in Luxembourg City, in southern Luxembourg. The museum stands on the site of the old Fort Thüngen, in the Kirchberg quarter, in the north-east of the city....
in Luxembourg. The first comprehensive mid-career retrospective devoted to Ligon's work was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
in 2011. Group shows in which Ligon has participated include the Whitney Biennial
Whitney Biennial
The Whitney Biennial is a biennale exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, USA. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932, the first biennial was in 1973...
(1991 and 1993), Biennale of Sydney (1996), Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
(1997), Kwangju Biennale (2000), and Documenta 11 (2002).
Glenn Ligon is represented by Regen Projects, Los Angeles in Los Angeles; Luhring Augustine in New York; and Thomas Dane Gallery in London.
Collections
Ligon's work is represented in many public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, ChicagoMuseum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary art venues...
; the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art is among the largest art museums in the United States. It is located at the west end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park. The Museum was established in 1876 in conjunction with the Centennial Exposition of the same year...
, Philadelphia; the Guggenheim Museum
Guggenheim Museum
Guggenheim Museum may refer to:* The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, United States* The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy* The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain* The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas, United States...
, New York; the Tate Modern
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...
, London; the Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
, New York.
Recognition
In 2005, Ligon won an Alphonse Fletcher FoundationFletcher Foundation
The Fletcher Foundation is a nonprofit foundation that supports civil rights and environmental education. It was created with a $50 million endowment in 2004 by New York financier and philanthropist Alphonse Fletcher, Jr....
Fellowship for his art work. In 2006 he was awarded the Skowhegan Medal for Painting. In 2010, he won a United States Artists
United States Artists
United States Artists is an independent nonprofit and nongovernmental philanthropic organization based in Los Angeles, California and dedicated to supporting the work of living American artists by the granting of cash awards, called USA Fellowships...
Fellow award.
In 2009, President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
added Ligon's 1992 Black Like Me No. 2, on loan from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the...
, to the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
collection, where it was installed in the President's private living quarters.
See also
- African American artAfrican American artAfrican American art is a broad term describing the visual arts of the American black community . Influenced by various cultural traditions, including those of Africa, Europe and the Americas, traditional African American art forms include the range of plastic arts, from basket weaving, pottery,...
- African-American literature
- Conceptual ArtConceptual artConceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
- Gay Artists
External links
- Annotations
- http://www.mudam.lu/index.php?article=547Glenn Ligon: Some changes at Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean - MudamMudamThe Grand Duke Jean Museum of Modern Art , abbreviated to Mudam, is a museum of modern art in Luxembourg City, in southern Luxembourg. The museum stands on the site of the old Fort Thüngen, in the Kirchberg quarter, in the north-east of the city....
Luxembourg] - Glenn Ligon at Regen Projects