Glenn Ligon: Layers of Meaning | "Exclusive" | Art21

[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.