American - Artist | 1960 -
I like having a studio to go to. It's like having a job.
Glenn Ligon
JobGoLikeStudioHaving
In high school, driver's ed was at the same time as drama class. And I had to take drama class. Now I can sing the lead in 'Oklahoma!,' but I can't drive.
TimeSchoolDriveHigh SchoolI Can
It's an artist's job to always have their antennas up.
JobArtistAlwaysUp
I have been interested in neon for a long time. The first neon I made was in 2006, using the word 'America.'
TimeAmericaLongLong TimeFirst
My mother used to say that when I told her that I wanted to be an artist, her famous line was, 'The only artists I've ever heard of are dead.' It just wasn't in her experience... I don't think she had a sense that one could be an artist, because there wasn't anyone in my family who had done that.
FamilyMotherExperienceThinkDone
I took a very small image and blew it up to enormous scale. What happens when you do that is that the information in the image starts to become indistinct. The image darkens.
SmallYouInformationBecomeImage
I was in the 1993 Whitney Biennial and the 1994 'Black Male' show at the Whitney, and I've never seen such vicious press. Twenty plus years later, critics who hated that Biennial have come to Jesus and decided it was a really important, seminal show that they misunderstood.
BlackImportantMisunderstoodNever
The Carrie Mae Weems photograph 'Blue Black Boy,' I thought, was fantastic.
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'A Small Band' was commissioned for the facade of the Central Pavilion at the Fifty-Sixth Venice Biennale in 2013.
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I met Obama once, backstage at the Apollo in Harlem.
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Much of my work is engaged with 'America' - the idea of America.
WorkAmericaIdeaEngagedMuch
Things like Ferguson and Eric Garner show us there's an unequal distribution of forward momentum in America.
ForwardAmericaMomentumThingsUs
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