Untitled (I Am a Man)

1988

Glenn Ligon

Artist, American, born 1960

The words “I AM A MAN” are painted in all capital, bold black letters against a white ground in this vertical painting. The words are spaced so they take up most of the composition, with “I AM” on the top line, “A” at the center of the composition, and “A MAN” at the bottom. “AM” is underlined. The white paint is thickly applied and brushstrokes, drips, and cracks are visible on the surface. A sliver of raw, off-white canvas is visible at the top right corner.
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Glenn Ligon was born in the Bronx in 1960, attended the Walden School in New York on a scholarship, and graduated from Wesleyan University in 1982. He participated in the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program in 1985, known at that time for its language-based approach. Ligon is best known for intertextual works that re-present American history and literature, in particular narratives of slavery and civil rights, for contemporary audiences. His work engages a powerful mix of racial and gender-oriented struggles for the self, leading viewers to reconsider problems inherent in representation.

Untitled (I Am a Man) is just such a representation—a signifier—of the actual signs carried by 1,300 striking African American sanitation workers in Memphis, made famous in Ernest Withers' 1968 photographs. Prompted by the wrongful deaths of two coworkers from faulty equipment, the strikers marched to protest low wages and unsafe working conditions. They took up the slogan "I Am a Man" as a variant on the first line of Ralph Ellison's prologue to Invisible Man, "I am an invisible man." By deleting the word "invisible," the Memphis strikers asserted their presence, making themselves visible in standing up for their rights. Martin Luther King Jr. traveled to Memphis to address the striking workers; the next day, he was assassinated.

This painting is Ligon's most important and iconic work. As the first object in which he used a selected text, Untitled (I Am a Man) is his breakthrough. He took pains to differentiate the painting from the original signs, avoiding a one-to-one relationship by reorganizing the line breaks. And while he preserved the original black-on-white of the sign, his choice to paint the black letters in eye-catching enamel calls attention to a black figure ("Man") as a text that replaces the human form in figurative painting. Throughout his career, Ligon has used "blackness" as a trope for both personal and collective experience. As Ligon has said (paraphrasing Muhammed Ali), "It's not about me. It's about we." The deliberately rough surface of the painting, which Ligon later documented by having a condition report made as an ancillary work of art, seems to index the scars and struggles of the work's great subject.

Untitled (I Am a Man) was the first painting by Ligon to join the collection. His other works at the Gallery include a suite of etchings, a print portfolio, a neon sculpture, and two paintings that were recently conveyed from the Corcoran Collection.


Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Article:  16 Black Artists to Know

Are you a fan of Glenn Ligon, Alma Thomas, or Gordon Parks? We’ve paired eight Black artists you might know with eight others to discover.

Video:  Conversations with Artists: Glenn Ligon

On March 15, 2013, Glenn Ligon discussed the layers of history, meaning, and physical material of three of his works in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art. 


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist; purchased 1 November 2012 through (Luhring Augustine, New York) by NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2015

  • Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age, Museum Brandhorst, Munich; Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, 2015-2016, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

Bibliography

2012

  • Vogel, Carol. "Inside Art: National Gallery of Art Acquires Glenn Ligon Painting." New York Times 162, no. 55 (November 16, 2012): C26.

2013

  • Donovan, Molly. "Glenn Ligon, Untitlted (I Am A Man)." National Gallery of Art Bulletin 48 (Spring 2013): 24-25, repro.

2015

  • "Art for the Nation: The Story of the Patrons' Permanent Fund." National Gallery of Art Bulletin, no. 53 (Fall 2015): 32, repro.

2023

  • Ramos, Carmen E. "Collecting for the Nation." _Art for the Nation_no. 67 (Fall 2023): 11, fig. 13.

Wikidata ID

Q20197972


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