Glenn Ligon: Distinguishing Piss from Rain

A collection of by turns polemical and personal writings and interviews from conceptual artist and commentator Glenn Ligon in an accessible paperback volume.

This long-awaited and essential publication collects three decades of writings and interviews by Glenn Ligon, whose work has been delivering an incisive examination of race, history, sexuality, and culture in America since his emergence as an artist in the late 1980s. No stranger to text, Ligon has routinely used writings from James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude Stein, Richard Pryor, and others to construct work that centers Blackness within the historically white backdrop of the artworld and culture writ large. He began writing in the early 2000s, engaging deeply with the work of peers such as Julie Mehretu, Chris Ofili, and Lorna Simpson, as well as artists that came before him, among them Philip Guston, David Hammons, and Andy Warhol.

Throughout the publication’s sixteen essays, Ligon combines razor-sharp insight with anecdotal and biographical details, providing the fullest picture yet of the artist and his ongoing evaluation of the art and politics of our time. Complementing these texts are illuminating interviews with Helga Davis, Thelma Golden, Byron Kim, Hamza Walker, and others, as well as a foreword by Thomas (T.) Jean Lax and an afterword by the artist.