GLENN LIGON (B. 1960)

Glenn Ligon first developed his signature monochrome works with text overlay with the Prologue series, based on the prologue to Ralph Ellison's seminal classic novel on race Invisible Man. Published in 1952, this work addressed many of the social and political issues facing African-Americans in the early twentieth century, including individual and personal identity, how that interfaces with black identity and the rising faction of black nationalism. In this work, the black text on a black background emphasizes the coded language of invisibility. For Ligon, Ellison's novel was a fundamental inspiration for text in his work, challenging the viewer to examine both societies and their individual opinions on African-American identity. More than fifty years after the book was published, Ligon finds the text still relevant and that by being African-American he found his race to make his presence visibly invisible. As Ellison states and Ligon includes in this work "I am invisible, understand simply because people refuse to see me."

Text feaured in the present lot:
I am an invisible man. No,
I am not a spook like
Those who haunted ed-
gar Allan Poe. Nor am
I one of your Hollywood
movie ectoplasms. I am
flesh and bone, fibers
and liquids and I might
even be said to possess
a mind. I am invisible,
understand simply be-
cause people refuse to
see me. Like the bodi-
less heads you see some
times in circus side-
shows, it is as though
I have been surrounded
by mirrors of hard, dis-