By Bob Ray Sanders
bobray@star-telegram.com
When artist Glenn Ligon was trying to find his "voice" while a student at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York during the mid-1980s, it didn't take long to discover it in the words of others, including a famous writer who had lived and died in Fort Worth just a few years earlier.
Although Ligon's treatment of words from John Howard Griffin's
Black Like Me implies a far deeper and more complicated meaning than the author could have imagined, the artist's visual interpretations present powerfully thought-provoking images that speak boldly to the viewer.
Griffin, who died in 1980, was a white writer who had been blind, regained his sight, turned his skin dark and toured the Deep South several weeks as a black man, producing his 1961 book that is still in publication.
Ligon, regarded as one of the country's most influential artists of the last 20 years, is black, and his text-inspired works also draw from the writings of Ralph Ellison, Jean Genet, James Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as the comedic commentary of Richard Pryor.
His
Black Like Me #2, a door-size painting of stenciled black words on a white background, continuously repeats the sentence from the book, "ALL TRACES OF THE GRIFFIN I HAD BEEN WERE WIPED FROM EXISTENCE" -- the text becoming blacker, more blurry and almost illegible toward the bottom.
That painting, owned by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden of the Smithsonian Institution, obviously spoke to President Barack Obama since he selected it in 2009 to hang in the family quarters of the White House.
Ligon, who said he met the president last month during a fundraiser at the Apollo Theater, was surprised the White House chose one of his works, making him the youngest artist to have a painting hanging at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
While that piece is not on public display, about 100 of Ligon's artworks -- paintings, prints, photography, drawings and sculptural installations -- will be on exhibit at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth through June 3.
Glenn Ligon: America is a "midcareer retrospective" that spans 25 years of the artist's work dating to his days as a student.
Visitors should be prepared to be engaged and provoked. The soft-spoken, low-key artist is anything but shy in his work, which boldly confronts the issues of racial and sexual identity, and unashamedly tackles many literary, historical and societal topics.
During a visit last week to the museum, where the
America exhibit occupies most of the second floor gallery space, a large group of high school or college students were studying the individual works. I overheard a woman I presumed to be the instructor whisper to a guard that she did not want her students to visit one gallery.
That particular space has a printed notice at the entrance: "This gallery contains mature subject matter, including language, nudity and sexual content."
In the gallery are photographs of black male nudes by acclaimed and much maligned photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The pictures are symmetrically aligned on three walls where Ligon has added framed printed quotations of politicians, writers and social commentators about the controversy the photographer's work has ignited over the years.
As we walked through the museum as workers were installing the exhibition, I asked Ligon what I thought was an appropriate question considering he had grown up black in the Bronx, but had received a scholarship at age 6 to the prestigious Walden School in Manhattan from which he graduated.
"As a child, did you ever think you were special?" I asked.
Shrugging off the question, he said, "I don't think I was special. My parents were normal lower middle-class black folks who thought education was important."
Near the end of the exhibition are copies of some framed end-of-the-year reports for the young Walden student that seem to contradict his statement.
One from 1973, when Ligon would have been around 13, read: "Glenn is a very talented young man. He has unusual artistic gifts, a very sophisticated writing style, and a perceptive and accomplished mind."
Under "General Impressions," it said: "Glenn also can be moody and grouchy. He has a penchant for pestering his peers until they are driven to punch him (usually in the arm)."
When you see his work, there is no doubt he is quite special.
But this warning: Be prepared to be pestered.
Bob Ray Sanders' column appears Sundays and Wednesdays.817-390-7775 Twitter: @BobRaySanders
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