User:EricaTweed/sandbox

Glenn Ligon

Intend to Edit:

'''Copeland, Huey. "Glenn Ligon and Other Runaway Subjects." Representations 113, no. 1 (2011): 73-110. doi:10.1525/rep.2011.113.1.73.'''

To Disembark (1993)


 * inspired by historical moments 82
 * boxes used to represent Henry "Box" Brown (literally shipped himself to freedom from Virginia), songs like Strange Fruit and Sound of da Police are emitted from them. This singing is evocative of Brown's singing when he arrived at freedom in Philidelphia 82
 * lithographs that appear similar to runaway handbills, fictional slave narratives, which the artist based on himself, and quotations from Zora Neale Hurstons "How it Feels to be Colored Me" are also incorporated in the show 82
 * links past and present (juxtaposition of the older song with a more contemporary)

To Disembark, Ligon's 1993 show comments on the linkage between slavery of the past and the time's racial injustices. Ligon was inspired by historical moments throughout slavery, and was specifically inspired by the story of Henry "Box" Brown. Brown was a slave who literally shipped himself from Virginia to freedom in Philadelphia via a box crate. Much of To Disembark centers around the crates that Ligon has constructed and are dispersed throughout the gallery. Ligon also took note of how Brown was allegedly singing when he arrived in Philadelphia. To incorporate this element, Ligon placed speakers inside the crates quietly playing songs such as "Strange Fruit" sung by Billie Holiday and "Sound of da Police" by KRS-one. The juxtaposition of these two songs, one released in the early 1900s and the other the early 2000s, is a comment on although many years have passed, but the struggle is still present. "Strange Fruit" has been used by other black artists such as Hank Willis Thomas in his photography series of the same name.

Black Book

Firstenberg, Lauri. "Neo-Archival and Textual Modes of Production: An Interview with Glenn Ligon." Art Journal 60, no. 1 (2001): 42-47. doi:10.2307/778044.


 * points out the issues present in Mapplethrope's representation of the black male body
 * made Mapplethorpe's images more public as they at first only existed in book form in terms of how they were presented, but also viewed

Sisley, Logan. "Visualizing Male Homosexuality in the Family Album." In Exposed Memories: Family Pictures in Private and Collective Memory, edited by Bán Zsófia and Turai Hedvig, 139-52. Central European University Press, 2010. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.hws.edu:2048/stable/10.7829/j.ctt2jbm8r.13.


 * Black book was what outed ligon as an artist, he said
 * led into Feast of Scraps

In Notes on the Margin of the Black Book (1991-1993), Ligon reacts to Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs of black male bodies from his 1996 book titled, Black Book. Ligon explicitly points out the problematics of these visuals in Mapplethorpe's book with his row of textual placards between the rows of photographs. These images were first published in Mapplethorpe's book, which limited the scope under which they were viewed. Ligon, however, made these pictures public literally in how they were present, in a museum, but also through how they were viewed. Ligon forced viewers to look at these images in a room full of others. This brings forward the uncomfortability of viewing such images publicly, and allows for open discussion of them. It was this show that quickly led Ligon into Feast of Scraps.



Painting[edit]
Although Ligon's work spans sculptures, prints, drawings, mixed media and neon signs, painting remains a core activity. Highly influenced by wide reading, he has incorporated texts into his paintings, in the form of literary fragments, jokes, and evocative quotes from a selection of authors, which he stencils directly onto the canvas by hand.

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 continuously, eventually dissipating into murk. Untitled (I Am a Man) (1988), a reinterpretation of the signs carried during the Memphis Sanitation Strike in 1968 — made famous by Ernest Withers's photographs of the march, is the first example of his use of text.

Ligon gained prominence in the early 1990s, along with a generation of artists including Janine Antoni, Renée Green, Marlon Riggs, Gary Simmons, and Lorna Simpson. 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 which Ligon depicts are expressed in the vernacular language of the street and reveal a complex vision of black culture.

For Notes on the Margin of the Black Book (1991–93), Ligon separately framed 91 erotic photographs of black males cut from Robert Mapplethorpe's 1988 Black Book, installing them in two horizontal rows. Between them are two more rows of small framed typed texts, 78 comments on sexuality, race, AIDS, art and the controversy over Mapplethorpe's work that was launched by then-Texas Congressman Dick Armey.

In A Feast of Scraps (1994–98), 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 the latter photos include the artist's own family. This project draws from the secret histories and submerged meanings of inherited texts and images.

Another series of large paintings was based on children's coloring and additions to drawings of iconic figures in 1970s black-history coloring books.