Lot 30
  • 30

Glenn Ligon

Estimate
600,000 - 800,000 USD
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Description

  • Glenn Ligon
  • Black Like Me #1
  • signed, titled and dated 1992 on the reverse
  • oil stick, gesso and graphite on linen
  • 80 1/4 x 30 in. 203.2 x 76.2 cm.

Provenance

Max Protetch Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1992

Condition

This painting is in excellent condition. Under UV light, there are no apparent restorations. The canvas is not framed.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

Glenn Ligon's artistic output is amongst the crowning achievements of a generation of conceptually motivated artists whose works canvassed social themes of race, sexuality and gender.  Ligon's particular genius lies not only in the deeply personal and affecting intellectual gravitas of his oeuvre, but in the great diversity within an array of medium including paintings, photography and neon. Of all of his works, words are the most prevalent, and he nods toward the great influence that literature bears on him, noting himself that "when I choose a text [to use in a work], it's because I've had a very visceral reaction to it." (Artist quoted by Byron Kim, "An Interview with Glenn Ligon," in Exh. Cat., Philadelphia, Institute of Contemporary Art, Glenn Ligon: Unbecoming, 1997, p. 51).

The highly politicized text for the present work, Black Like Me #1, 1992, was appropriated from John Howard Griffin's seminal quasi-sociological exercise eponymously titled and published in 1961 at the very height of the Civil Rights crisis. In the fall of 1959, John Howard Griffin, a relatively obscure author was deeply troubled by the racial situation in his native South. He wanted to experience, and subsequently document, discrimination based on skin color. He went to a dermatologist in New Orleans with what can only be called an astonishing request: He wanted "to become a Negro."  The dermatologist cooperated with Griffin's effort, darkening his skin with a combination of oral medication and extensive exposure with ultraviolet rays. Griffin did not look in the mirror until the process was complete, and he was stunned: "The transformation was total and shocking. I had expected to see myself disguised, but this was something else. I was imprisoned in the flesh of an utter stranger, an unsympathetic one with whom I felt no kinship. . . . I looked into the mirror and saw reflected nothing of the white John Griffin's past. No, the reflections led back to Africa, back to the shanty and the ghetto, back to the fruitless struggles against the mark of blackness. . . . I had tampered with the mystery of existence and I had lost the sense of my own being. This is what devastated me. The Griffin that I was had become invisible." (Jonathan Yardley, "John Howard Griffin Took Race all the Way to the Finish," Washington Post, Saturday, March 17, 2007, n.p.).

Ligon appropriates and isolates Griffin's profound observation, and then subsequently repeats infinitesimally the text throughout: THE GRIFFIN THAT I WAS HAD BECOME INVISIBLE.  Stenciled in stark capital black letters across the top of the canvas, the text repeats line after line until the words at the bottom dissolve into abstraction.  The results are startling. The format of the work is referential to human scale, and the humanity of the experience coupled with the dizzying text becomes profoundly unsettling.  Intense layers of oil stick, gesso and graphite render the painting more or less illegible.

Black Like Me #1, 1992, poses a conceptual polemic. Is the work an appropriation? Is it a painting of text? Fundamentally, the use of both form and language establish Ligon's paintings as something all-encompassing. According to Darby English, "Ligon alters these conceptions by rendering the work's meaning structure open by means both appropriative (e.g. repurposing texts and forms) and mechanical (e.g. painting through a stencil, typing), which locate him somewhere between the source and its manifestation, between representer and represented." (Darby English, "Glenn Ligon: Committed to Difficulty," in Exh. Cat., Toronto, The Power Plant (and traveling), Glenn Ligon – Some Changes, 2005, p. 38).  The build-up of paint and oil stick on the canvas surface, which gradually becomes darker as the text proceeds from top to bottom, and the struggle to decipher the text emerges as an integral part of its meaning: the struggle to understand Griffin's identity. Literally and metaphorically, the words, "The Griffin that I was had become invisible" progress into a void of black.

Glenn Ligon's Black Like Me No. 2, in the Collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution Washington DC, acquired by the museum in 1993, is presently on extended loan to President Barak Obama to hang in the first family's living quarters.