<![CDATA[Blanton Museum of Art Collections]]> http://utw10658.utweb.utexas.edu/items/browse?tags=2000.29&sort_field=added&sort_dir=a&output=rss2 Fri, 29 Mar 2024 03:26:01 -0500 koven.smith@blantonmuseum.org (Blanton Museum of Art Collections) Zend_Feed http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <![CDATA[Untitled (Hands/Stranger in the Village)]]> http://utw10658.utweb.utexas.edu/items/show/2985

Dublin Core

Creator

Glenn Ligon

Title

Untitled (Hands/Stranger in the Village)

Date Created

1999

Spatial Coverage

103.5 cm x 114.8 cm (40 3/4 in. x 45 3/16 in.)

Identifier

2000.29

Medium

Silkscreen, coal dust, and glue on paper mounted on linen

Description

Glenn Ligon has long investigated the relationship between image and text, race and identity. Untitled (Hands/Stranger in the Village) features an excerpt from “Stranger in the Village,” a 1953 essay in which the late African American writer James Baldwin reflects on the year he spent living in a small town in Switzerland. This text is superimposed on a photograph taken during the Million Man March in Washington, DC, in 1995. In Baldwin, Ligon found a writer who spoke directly to his own experience of isolation and displacement as a gay black man. Yet if Baldwin functions as a point of identification for the artist, the opposite is true of the Million Man March. Organized by Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, the march, with its emphasis on patriarchy and heterosexuality, served to affirm the value of black men but was widely criticized for the invisibility of black women and queer black men. Ligon transferred the excerpt from “Stranger in the Village” to canvas using stencils and coal dust, a byproduct of crushed coal often used to sandblast buildings. In addition to serving as an artistic material, coal dust functions here as a symbol of racial prejudice. It also purposefully obscures the Baldwin text, underscoring the precarious position and visibility of black people in American life.

Rights Holder

Michener Acquisitions Fund, 2000

Date

New York, 1960 -

Type

painting

Has Version

http://utw10658.utweb.utexas.edu/plugins/Dropbox/files/object_images/ART New/2000.29.zif

Requires

14292
http://utw10658.utweb.utexas.edu/plugins/Dropbox/files/object_images/ART New/2000.29.tif
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Sat, 21 Jan 2017 15:39:48 -0600