When studying Black artists that focuses on race, ethnicity and culture, Mark led me to Glenn Ligon, Michael Ray Charles and Carrie Mae Weems. All three of these artists showed something great abouth cultural and social identities. Glenn Ligon was the first one I looked up and I immediately fell in love with his art work.
Glenn Ligon was born in the Bronx in 1960. His art work is focused on cultural and social identity. What I like about this artist is that he uses texts to make something beautiful while also making bold statements. AS a young boy he loved to read. His mother would not buy him new toys, but any book he wanted he could have. So he grew up loving books and words and began to incorporate his favorite quotes form different authors in his art.
One picture of his that really fascinates me is the Malcom X picture. This picture is a coloring book page of Malcom X colored as a clown. The first time i saw this picture, I was a bit confused as to why, he would color Malcom X as a clown. But when I studied him and his style more, I realised that he used harsh humor in his artwork as well. Malcom was known as a clown to some people during his fight for equality. Ligon took that fact and made a joke out of it. He did more of these coloring book pictures, but this one stands out because of who is on the picture and how he is painted.
Glenn Ligon also worked with neon lights as texts. His vision was to use black neon lights to make bold statements.
I love his idea of texts as artwork so much that I am will to work with texts a little more. I know putting in texts in my work may be risky, because I want the audience to know what I am trying to say without me telling them myself. But the way that he uses it makes you look and think about what he is saying, so it makes me want to try.
Citations:
www.interviewmagazine.com/art/glenn-ligon/#_
www.pbs.org/art21