WEBVTT

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[Glenn Ligon: Layers of Meaning]

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There's lots of levels

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on which my paintings can be approached.

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One can approach it as simply

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an object that has a certain kind of

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beauty.

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One can approach it as

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and object that has a text in it

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that has different levels of legibility.

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If one knows James Baldwin

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and realizes that the text in my painting

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is from an essay that he's written,

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then that opens up the painting--

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gives it a different level of meaning.

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The paintings that address

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"The Million Man March"

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were made in the mid-90's,

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a couple of years after Louis Farrakhan,

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the leader of the nation of Islam,

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organized a march

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on The Mall in Washington D.C.

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about the visibility and presence

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of black men in the country,

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which I find rather ironic,

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since black people have been in this country

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since the beginning,

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before there was even a country.

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But we feel the need to assert

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our personhood.

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The irony of this march, perhaps,

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was that black women were encouraged

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to absent themselves from work,

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but not to attend the march

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as full participants.

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When I started to think about making

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silkscreen paintings using images of the march,

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this kind of notion of absence

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or disappearance with women

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was something I was interested in

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and something I tried to find

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in the images themselves.

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Like any artwork,

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things become richer if you know more about
them;

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but I don't think that's crucial.

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Someone can walk into a museum

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and not know a single thing about

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a Jackson Pollock painting

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and still have a reaction to it--

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still get something from it.

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The thing that they get from it

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may be richer if they know more about it,

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but that's like anything. [LAUGHS]

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You know? That's about being in the world.