Quotessence
Home / Authors / Glenn Ligon
Glenn Ligon

Glenn Ligon Quotes

Visual Artist

Filter quotes by topic

AllArtArtistPaintPaintingCanvasThinkingBlackI RealizedPeopleAbstractAnswersArchitectureArtworkAudienceBehindsBeing An ArtistBelieveBlack PeopleBuildingColtrane

Famous Glenn Ligon Quotes

“At a lecture, a guy said to me, "You know, when I look at your work, I don't know what I'm looking at, but when I look at a Willem de Kooning painting, I know what that is." I said, "Well, the paintings I'm doing have a very legible sentence at the top of the canvas." At a lecture, a guy said to me, "You know, when I look at your work, I don't know what I'm looking at, but when I look at a de Kooning painting, I know what that is." I said, "Well, the paintings I'm doing have a very legible sentence at the top of the canvas."”

GuyPaintingCanvas
Author:Glenn Ligon
Create image

“A key text for me is James Baldwin's essays. And, in particular, his essay Stranger in the Village. It's a text that I've used in a lot of paintings. The essay is from the mid-'50s, when he's moved to Switzerland to work on a novel, and he finds himself the only black man living in a tiny Swiss village. He even says, "They don't believe I'm American - black people come from Africa." The essay is not only about race relations, but about what it means to be a stranger anywhere.”

PeopleMenBelieveMeanBlackNovelPaintingRelationMovedStrangerBlack PeopleEssays
Author:Glenn Ligon
Create image