[Untitled] (Cancellation Prints)
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Object Label
Glenn Ligon is known for his use of stenciled quotations. In 2003 he discovered that one of his earlier print projects, featuring text from author Zora Neale Hurston’s 1928 essay “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” had not been cancelled by the printer. (Cancellation of a series, by marking the plates with an X, ensures that no unauthorized copies of an artist’s work can be made.) For [Untitled] (Cancellation Prints), Ligon himself cancelled the plates by drawing large drypoint Xs over the stenciling—but then authorized an edition from them anyway. As he explained:
Cancelled but present, new but haunted by the ghosts of their earlier meanings, the prints speak to the mutability of questions of racial identity and a shift in the cultural context in which the original works were received.
Caption
Glenn Ligon American, born 1960. [Untitled] (Cancellation Prints), 1992–2003. Hardground, softground, aquatint and spit bite etching with drypoint, Sheet: 28 1/4 x 20 in. (71.8 x 50.8 cm) Image: 24 x 15 3/4 in. (61 x 40 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Robert A. Levinson Fund and gift of Dr. and Mrs. Frank L. Babbott, by exchange, 2003.60a-b. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2003.60b_PS9.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
[Untitled] (Cancellation Prints)
Date
1992–2003
Medium
Hardground, softground, aquatint and spit bite etching with drypoint
Classification
Dimensions
Sheet: 28 1/4 x 20 in. (71.8 x 50.8 cm) Image: 24 x 15 3/4 in. (61 x 40 cm)
Signatures
Each signed and dated lower right in graphite: "Glen Ligon '03
Credit Line
Robert A. Levinson Fund and gift of Dr. and Mrs. Frank L. Babbott, by exchange
Accession Number
2003.60a-b
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
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Frequent Art Questions
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These are some of my favorite works by Glenn Ligon. Ligon works primarily with text in his artwork, taken from writers and thinkers of the 20th century. These two prints reference both Zora Neale Hurston's essay "How it Feels to Be Colored Me" and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.Each quote here is from "How it Feels to be Colored Me." The plates used to make these prints were originally used in 1992 to print Ligon's "Four Untitled Etchings" series, which also included other prints with quotes by Ellison.These prints, made in 2003, play off of this original series with several key changes. These changes includes allusions to Ellison’s writing in the choice of ink, rather than via text, as well as the inclusion of the “X” generally used to cancel plates in print shops at the end of production.
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