Glenn Ligon Response

Glenn Ligon’s career truly sprouted when he was given a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1989. He describes his decision as pivotal due to his decision of becoming an artist rather than working a normal 40-50 hour a week job. The “Whitney” holds majority of Ligon’s work and he has a very sentimental and personal emotion towards this place. He was very amused and inspired by the generation of abstract expressionists such as Pollock growing up. His mother played a key role in his art involving words due to the fact that during his childhood she would allow him to purchase any book no matter the cost. Toys, on the other hand, she was stricter on. He explains that having such freedom with books rather than toys motivated him to give more attention to books and grow a love for them early in his life. He found that the messiness of his stencil words made his work that much more interesting. He finds his mistakes or someone else’s critiques is what keeps his work moving forward and the collaboration with other people makes his art that much more successful and interesting in the end. When he got involved with neon’s he went against the rules of neon’s and created something spectacular. The neon shop right by where he lived gave him literal light to his art. He collaborated with the owner, Matt to make a black neon sign possible. As matt disagreed in the beginning, they were actually able to spray paint the neon’s black so the letters would be black with an accent of light behind it, still characterizing it as neon. Glenn Ligon is very inspiring and his artwork is definitely something to engage and look into for motivation.