Glenn Ligon
Black Rage
London, UK: Ridinghouse, 2015
27.9 × 21.6 cm
Silkscreen and digital print
Edition of 30 [+ 6AP] signed, numbered and dated copies
Black Rage is considered the first book to examine the "full range of black life" from the vantage point of psychiatry. Released in 1968, in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the book describes the insidious effects of slavery on black lives and the resulting anger experienced by African-Americans in the face of persistent racism.Written by two black psychiatrists (William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs), the title was later turned into an ABC television special called To Be Black. It also led to the legal concept of 'black rage' and, more recently, the 2016 Carol Anderson book White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, about the white backlash to black progress.
Glenn Ligon's 2015 digital print on white wove paper features an image of the paperback edition of the book, heavily annotated in the style of a museum condition report. As if mapped out by a conservator, pen marks, cracks, smudges, and yellowing protective tape is noted, indicating various flaws and alterations found on the cover due to age and wear.
The print was released at the same time as Ligon's artist book A People on the Cover, which looks at the representation of black people in the United States on book covers.
The book has been source material for Ligon since at least 1993. In 2019, a companion work was released in an edition of a hundred copies - Black Rage (Back Cover).
