I love Thelonious Monk's song "Just a Gigolo." It's probably a minor song for him, but whenever I hear a recording of him playing it, I'm mesmerized, because Monk clearly loved pop music. He took it very seriously and made… — Glenn Ligon Copy Share Image
Throughout African-American literature, the writer has, in a sense, been burdened by the necessity of pleading the case for the whole race. For example, writers of slave narratives tend to lose their individual voices, as they were expected to stand in for all other voices, which were absent. — Glenn Ligon Copy Share
Race is not something inherent to one's being: One does feel more or less colored, depending on the situation. — Glenn Ligon Copy Share Image
I think there's an interest right now in the performance aspect of artworks, instead of just hanging things on walls. We're in a moment when a lot of younger artists are looking at work from the '60s and '70s - they are looking at the pieces by Marina Abramovic or Vito Acconci. These pieces have a time element. They were… — Glenn Ligon Copy Share
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… — Glenn Ligon Copy Share
It's a great idea: to feel the rhythm of something by seeing how it flows on a page. — Glenn Ligon Copy Share Image
In writing, something is always left out: it can't be articulated in the space of an essay. — Glenn Ligon Copy Share Image
Willem de Kooning paintings are a language to be learned. When they were first shown, they were ridiculed as being just drips and splatters… — Glenn Ligon Copy Share Image
My mother really didn't come from artists. Her famous quote to me was, "The only artists I've ever heard of are dead." The pottery… — Glenn Ligon Copy Share Image
