[Glenn Ligon: Layers of Meaning]
There's lots of levels
on which my paintings can be approached.
One can approach it as simply
an object that has a certain kind of
beauty.
One can approach it as
and object that has a text in it
that has different levels of legibility.
If one knows James Baldwin
and realizes that the text in my painting
is from an essay that he's written,
then that opens up the painting--
gives it a different level of meaning.
The paintings that address
"The Million Man March"
were made in the mid-90's,
a couple of years after Louis Farrakhan,
the leader of the nation of Islam,
organized a march
on The Mall in Washington D.C.
about the visibility and presence
of black men in the country,
which I find rather ironic,
since black people have been in this country
since the beginning,
before there was even a country.
But we feel the need to assert
our personhood.
The irony of this march, perhaps,
was that black women were encouraged
to absent themselves from work,
but not to attend the march
as full participants.
When I started to think about making
silkscreen paintings using images of the march,
this kind of notion of absence
or disappearance with women
was something I was interested in
and something I tried to find
in the images themselves.
Like any artwork,
things become richer if you know more about them;
but I don't think that's crucial.
Someone can walk into a museum
and not know a single thing about
a Jackson Pollock painting
and still have a reaction to it--
still get something from it.
The thing that they get from it
may be richer if they know more about it,
but that's like anything. [LAUGHS]
You know? That's about being in the world.