Study for “White Series” brings written language and a worked surface into an intimate encounter. Made in oilstick on paper in 1995, it belongs to the context of Glenn Ligon’s White works, which explore the relationship between racial identity and the conventions of visibility. In the related painting White #19, Ligon repeatedly stencilled a passage from Richard Dyer’s essay White until accumulating marks began to obstruct the words. That interplay between recognition and resistance gives a way into this study: reading becomes a physical act of looking, while language can both disclose meaning and hold it back.
Catalogue record and images from the Joseph Clark Collection. Rights in the work remain with the artist or their estate.