Glenn Ligon Overview

Although Ligon is famous for his text-oriented explorations of African American history, much of his recent art is like a tabloid TV show, exposing a secret world of interracial gay sex. Ligon's work, which spans several mediums, calls out the difficulties... [more]

Although Ligon is famous for his text-oriented explorations of African American history, much of his recent art is like a tabloid TV show, exposing a secret world of interracial gay sex. Ligon's work, which spans several mediums, calls out the difficulties of growing up black and gay in middle-class America, from images of a teenager's secret cache of porno magazines to evocations of Jeffrey Dahmer's cannibalism. Two of his strongest pieces are "Twin" and "Colonial." "Twin" consists of a trundle bed littered with porn magazines showing black and interracial gay sex; tucked under the bed is the 1992 Newsweek issue with Jeffrey Dahmer on the cover. In "Colonial," small pictures of Dahmer's victims (all men of color) have been cut from magazines and taped to a mirror like portraits of loved ones. Together, these works effectively conjure not only a gay teenager's fear of being "found out," but also the dangers that arise when sexual desires cannot be openly acknowledged. His piece, "Console," shows a stereo playing an Al Green record and cluttered with a copy of Jet magazine, a Disneyland mug, a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr., and a JFK/Martin Luther King ashtray. According to critic Anastasia Aukeman, these debased icons have a bizarre potency: it's astonishing that the ideals of the Civil Rights movement can be encapsulated untarnished in such kitsch items. "End," meanwhile, pairs a worn easy chair with an end table which displays six commercial color portraits of the artist taken at Sears. Aukeman notes that these four smiling poses, set against standard backdrops, suggest an ideal son on the one hand and the forces of familial pressure on the other. Ligon explores the myth of the family further in a series of 11" x 18" photos entitled "Album." Each photo presents a page from an imaginary photo album which intersperses family snapshots with pornographic pictures clipped from magazines. The work is an almost comical reminder that sexuality -- and especially homosexuality -- is usually occluded in family self-representations. [show less]