An expansive and generously illustrated volume featuring incisive reflections on race, art and contemporary culture by one of the greatest artists working today. ‘Glenn Ligon: Distinguishing Piss from Rain; Writings and Interviews’ brings together key writings by and interviews with Glenn Ligon in one volume for the first time since his sold-out 2011 anthology ‘Yourself in the World’. This publication, the latest from Hauser & Wirth Publishers, presents a collection of both polemical and personal writings and interviews in an accessible paperback volume, with 100 illustrations. Over 400 pages,
this book provides the fullest picture yet of the artist and his ongoing evaluation of the art and politics of our time.
Image courtesy of Hauser & Wirth Publishers
Glenn Ligon is among the great artists of our time or any time. Words are among the materials he knows how to wield with irony, wit, multivalence, and directness. In this brilliant collection of his essays and interviews, Ligon’s polyphony speaks out with a resonance sharpened by acuity and hilarity, and with an intellectual luminousness that continues to determine how I see the world.
Wayne Koestenbaum
Best known for his landmark text-based paintings, Ligon draws on the influential words of leading 20th-century cultural figures, including James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude Stein and Richard Pryor, constructing work that centers Blackness within the historically white backdrop of the art world and culture at large. Ligon’s work has been examining race, history, sexuality and culture in America since his emergence as an artist in the late 1980s. Early in his career, Ligon started to incorporate text into his paintings, using the stenciled words that would become a hallmark of his oeuvre.
What a delight—to read the artwork in the world through Glenn Ligon’s brilliant, incisive eye
Saidiya Hartman
Image courtesy of Hauser & Wirth Publishers
Ligon started writing in the early 2000s. The first of the historical texts in this book, ‘Black Light: David Hammons and the Poetics of Emptiness’ was published in Artforum in 2004 and established his renown as an ‘artist who writes.’ Other essays engage with, or respond to, the work of peers such as Julie Mehretu, Chris Ofili and Lorna Simpson, amongst others, and reveal Ligon’s deep engagement with artists who came before him, including Philip Guston, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Andy Warhol.
More recently he has been a guest on podcasts with the likes of Helga Davis and Ben Luke, edited transcripts of which are also included in addition to interviews with Thelma Golden, Byron Kim and others. With a foreword by Thomas (T.) Jean Lax and a preface by the artist, the publication showcases Ligon’s virtuosic combinations of razor-sharp insight with anecdotal and biographical details.
Image courtesy of Hauser & Wirth Publishers
To celebrate the release of ‘Distinguishing Piss from Rain,’ Ligon will be in conversation with writer Dr. Kellie Jones and artist Julie Mehretu in The Cooper Union’s historic Great Hall in New York on 1 October 2024, with readings from the book by legendary performer Helga Davis. This event is co-sponsored by The Cooper Union School of Art.
‘Glenn Ligon: Distinguishing Piss from Rain; Writings and Interviews’
Release date: 30 July 2024
Edited by James Hoff. Introduction by Thomas (T.) Jean Lax. Text by Glenn Ligon
English; softcover
16.5 x 24 cm, 400 pages
ISBN: 978-3-906915-88-3
$38 / £32 / €35 / HKD 325 / CHF 35 UK/ Europe release date: 17 June 2024 US/
©2024 Glenn Ligon, Hauser & Wirth Publishers
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