Throughout his career, the artist Glenn Ligon (b. 1960) has been deeply engaged with the written word: his artworks are full of painted, drawn, sculpted, photographed, and printed text. In recent years, Ligon has also emerged as a prolific writer. His articles and critical essays have appeared in exhibition catalogues and leading art magazines and range from trenchant reviews to introspective musings on his own art and life experience. 
Edited by Scott Rothkopf, who provides an introduction to Ligon's written corpus, this impressive volume begins with the artist's first major essay, a superbly crafted text written in 2004 about the artist David Hammons and his relationship to a younger generation of black artists. In all, ten essays and twelve interviews are included, all of which demonstrate Ligon's straightforward exposition, ironic asides, knowing pop references, literary citations, and clever turns of phrase. This volume will be an indispensible reader to all those interested in contemporary art and culture.

Yourself in the World: Selected Writings and Interviews

Arts & Photography

Ligon, Glenn

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

30 Americans

Sirmans, Franklin

Wallace, Michele

Hobbs, Robert

Shaw, Gwendolyn DuBois

Roselione-valadez, Juan

Rubell Museum

Eminent Domain

Pinson, Stephen C.

New York Public Library

The New York Public Library

Published on the occasion of an exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem.

Glenn Ligon stranger

Studio Museum in Harlem

From its inception in the 1960s, the Rubell Collection has been able to boast a particularly fine range of African-American art. Recent New York exhibitions (such as the Harlem Studio Museum's Freestyle and Frequency, or the Renaissance Society's Black Is, Black Ain't) inspired the Rubell family to mount an exhibition of their holdings in this area, reproduced here in 30 Americans. With a late addition to this exhibition, there are in fact 31 artists: Nina Chanel Abney, John Bankston, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mark Bradford, Iona Rozeal Brown, Nick Cave, Robert Colescott, Noah Davis, Leonard Drew, Renée Green, David Hammons, Barkley L. Hendricks, Rashid Johnson, Glenn Ligon, Kalup Linzy, Kerry James Marshall, Rodney McMillian, Wangechi Mutu, William Pope L., Gary Simmons, Xaviera Simmons, Lorna Simpson, Shinque Smith, Jeff Sonhouse, Henry Taylor, Hank Willis Thomas, Mickalene Thomas, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Kehinde Wiley and Purvis Young.

Rubell Family Collection

From its inception in the 1960s, the Rubell Collection has been able to boast a particularly fine range of African-American art. Recent New York exhibitions inspired the Rubell family to mount an exhibition of their holdings in this area, reproduced here in 30 Americans. With a late addition to this exhibition, there are in fact 31 artists: Nina Chanel Abney, John Bankston, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mark Bradford, Iona Rozeal Brown, Nick Cave, Robert Colescott, Noah Davis, Leonard Drew, Renée Green, David Hammons, Barkley L. Hendricks, Rashid Johnson, Glenn Ligon, Kalup Linzy, Kerry James Marshall, Rodney McMillian, Wangechi Mutu, William Pope L., Gary Simmons, Xaviera Simmons, Lorna Simpson, Shinque Smith, Jeff Sonhouse, Henry Taylor, Hank Willis Thomas, Mickalene Thomas, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Kehinde Wiley and Purvis Young. This expanded second edition of the catalogue features additional color plates and an updated design.

Since the 1960s, Miami's Rubell family has collected the works of the most relevant contemporary African American artists as an integral part of their broader mission to collect the most interesting art of our time. 30 Americans serves as both the catalogue for their current exhibition of African American art at the Contemporary Art Center New Orleans and a visual record of the Rubell family's diverse collection, which spans genres and generations. This expanded third edition contains not only artists long collected by the Rubells such as Robert Colescott, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Renée Green, David Hammons, Barkley Hendricks, Kerry James Marshall, Gary Simmons, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker and Carrie Mae Weems, but also those who have recently been catapulted to the forefront of the art world, such as Kalup Linzy, Nick Cave, Iona Rozeal Brown, Rashid Johnson, Mikalene Thomas, Hank Willis Thomas, Kehinde Wiley and Wangechi Mutu.

30 Americans: Rubell Family Collection, Third Edition

On Value is a collaboration between Triple Canopy and choreographer/artist Ralph Lemon. The book is a multifarious conversation about the value of artworks and the labor and bodies that make them, especially as defined by institutions with whom artists have often had fraught relationships. In essays, poems, interviews and artworks, 19 contributors consider artworks that resist institutional parameters; how and why performers, choreographers and dancers might go about making art institutions into proper venues for their works; and how race figures into assessments of value. On Value emerges from Value Talks, a series of private conversations organized by Lemon in 2013 and 2014 at MoMA.

Triple Canopy and Ralph Lemon: On Value

Moten, Fred

Bishop, Claire

Bither, Philip

Lowry, Glenn

Finkelpearl, Tom

Rainer, Yvonne

Edwards, Adrienne

Lax, Thomas

Beasley, Kevin

Court, Paula

Janevski, Ana

La Rocco, Claudia

Michelson, Sarah

Pendleton, Adam

Rawls, William

Triple Canopy

For AutoWork, two teams of curators in the United States and Germany invited internationally renowned artists to work with the BMW group's corporate identity--in the widest sense of the term: its employees, products, customers, work processes and image, using both photography and film. The artists were granted absolute artistic freedom and complete autonomy. Included among the project's participants in Germany are Heike Baranowsky, Thomas Struth, Rineke Dijkstra, Thomas Demand, Nina Fischer & Maroan El Sani, Candida H fer, Boris Michailov, Johannes Muggenthaler, Ursula Rogg, and Alexander Timtschenko. Included among the project's participants in the US are Sharon Lockhart, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Wolfgang Tillmans, Beat Streuli, Todd Eberle, Glenn Ligon, Catherine Opie, Paul Searight, and Gillian Wearing.

AutoWerke II: Contemporary Photography on and off the road

DEMAND, THOMAS

Lockhart, Sharon

Tillmans, Wolfgang

Michailov, Boris

El Sani, Maroan

Fischer, Nina

Lorenz, Gunter

Wearing, Gillian

Van Lamsweerde, Inez

Baranowsky, Heike

Muggenthaler, Johannes

Rogg, Ursula

Searight, Paul

Timtschenko, Alexander

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Hatje Cantz Publishers

The oil portraits of London-based artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (born 1977) depict characters who exist outside of a specific time and place. Typically completed in just one day, her pieces feature predominantly black subjects situated on ambiguous, sparse backgrounds. This is her first monograph.

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

ALS, Hilton

Gad, Amira

Individual Artists

Koenig Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ligon, Glenn. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ligon, Glenn