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ralowe's review
3.0
i have a strictly singular way in which i'm reading books right now, from cover to cover in sequential order. all the books i review on here is based on this process. i would even read specialized dictionaries this way. although i think glenn ligon is a very important artist whose head i'd like to get inside of, this interest is greatly disserved by reading interviews by him in rapid sequence, like i just did. interviews are notoriously disappointing and misleading, and as i read ligon's in this manner, the repetition only chips away at the verisimilitude of anecdotes. i became to take ligon as rather an enterprise of art business representation, and i became really skeptical of his whole career. i don't think that was supposed to happen. i had this book recommended to me on my quest for artists who write about their process, and that first portion of this book that gave me that was just fine. unseemly things instead clung to my recollections like his appreciation for jeff koons, which: is that real? is that something you're just supposed to say? ligon hit it big kind of early on and has had an incredible career doing something that i feel like if anyone else were doing it would have gotten thrown out. but this just reveals how little i actually know about the art world. i was doing research on how conceptual artists go about their stuff, having previously spent a lot of time adoring adrian piper and her writings. something ligon repeats is an incomprehension of metaphor which rings false to me since he uses words. part of being an artist requires the grandiose airy statement and i wanted more of him actually saying the things he wants to say instead of the warholian saying what you have to say to get the interview over with. ligon is such an excellent essayist, hopefully he'll have incentive to return to more of that kind of thing in the future!
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