.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
A seminal example of Glenn Ligon’s iconic neon series, Double America 2 boldly distills the legendary American artist’s entire artistic endeavor into a singular concise statement. A rare example from the America series, an extraordinary eleven examples of which are held in the world’s most important institutional collections, these works also inspired the title for Ligon’s groundbreaking mid-career retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Glenn Ligon: America. The present example exhibits a potent proclamation on the duality of the American experience, extoling at once America’s virtue as a beacon of light as well as the country’s faults. Reflecting on Double America, the artist states: “the piece is about the word. What the word means to various views, both here in America and abroad, and I was thinking about how America and democracy has always had this sense of oppositions, of tremendous promise and also [a] tremendous amount of things wrong, things that need to be fixed, to be worked on” (G. Ligon, quoted in “Glenn Ligon—On Double America,” ARTinEmbassies, 11 May 2015 [accessed 9 September 2025], YouTube).
Each serifed capital letter, formed as if from a typewriter script, comprises of a single neon tube appearing to levitate in space in front of the white gallery wall. The letters, reminiscent of his earlier text-based paintings, are connected to each other via the power cables looping between each character, which finally drape gracefully downward to their intentionally visible power supply units. The upper text is presented conventionally, whilst the lower register is rotated 180 degrees to appear upside-down, forming an imperfect yet legible reflection. As with Ligon’s other neon works, the tubes here are painted black, allowing the neon light to emit only indirectly from the back, reflecting off the white wall.
Double America 2 expands Glenn Ligon’s evocative vision in neon outward from his previous explorations in the much-fêted America series, doubling the text to further emphasize the incongruence between the diverging aspects of the United States. The majority of the works in this series reside in institutions. Ligon's first, Untitled (2006, with examples in the Tate Modern, London and Rubell Museum, Miami), presents the text in a conventional manner. A later example, Rückenfigur (2009, with examples in the Whitney Museum, ICA Boston and Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art), continues Ligon’s research into fracture and duality, with each letter reversed while maintaining a forward presentation. The first Double America (2012, with examples in the National Gallery of Art, Astrup Fearnley and a promised gift to SFMOMA) replicates Rückenfigur’s reversed letters while introducing a reflected text. Finally, Double America 2, another example of which resides in the collection of The Broad, Los Angeles, completes Ligon’s investigation of text, reversals, and reflections, incorporating the effects of these earlier works into a singular magisterial culmination.
Well-represented in the permanent collections of so many institutional collections, the America series is Glenn Ligon’s magnum opus, a result of decades of intensive creative exploration and experimentation. Discussing the series in an interview, Ligon explained that “with the America neons, one of the things I was thinking about is how to take this word that we think we know everything about and make it unfamiliar. They are all flipped or turned to the wall; and they come out of thinking about language, but also out of thinking about my relationship as a Black American to the idea of this country and to this peculiar position of being marginalized and central at the same time” (G. Ligon, quoted in “A Brush with... Glenn Ligon: Interview by Ben Luke,” in Glenn Ligon: Distinguishing Piss from Rain: Writings and Interviews, ed. J. Hoff, New York, 2024, p. 301).
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Ligon has integrated text into his practice throughout his career, and his writings and explorations of literature parallel his painting and his investigations in neon. Ligon conjured the concept for the America series through his reading of Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities while pondering the American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. The artist relates how after reflecting on news media publishing images of the war, he realized that “there is a sense that America, for all its dark deeds, is still this shining light. That’s how the piece came about, because I was thinking about Dickens’s ‘the best of times, the worst of times.’ Yes, that’s where America is. We can elect Barack Obama, and we’re still torturing people in prisons in Cuba. Those things are going on at the same time. Of course, because the piece is a black covering over white neon, its gets read as black America/white America, and those kinds of binaries, which is a part of it. I’m not denying that. But I think that maybe if the piece has a kind of richness, it is because of the ambiguity” (G. Ligon, quoted in J. Moran, “Glenn Ligon,” Interview, July 2009, p. 84).
Beginning with his important early Door “Paintings” series, Ligon has reflected on and emphasized seminal writings by African American authors in his work, and Double America 2 continues his engagement. Along with referencing Dickens, the present work recalls the work of the celebrated civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois, who wrote of a double-consciousness of being Black and American. “One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” (W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of The Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, Cambridge, MA, 1909, p. 3).
The curator and Whitney museum director Scott Rothkopf asserts that “America—as place, a nation, a concept, and a dream—is something that Ligon’s work has always been about,” with quotations from Black writers and activists including Richard Dyer, James Baldwin, Michael Brenson, and Malcom X appearing across his oeuvre (S. Rothkopf, Glenn Ligon: America, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2011, p. 47). Double America 2 unites the various strands of Ligon’s celebrated career together into a concise visual statement, operating at once as a self-portrait of an artist engaging with his identity and a reflective mirror for society to reflect upon.
Each serifed capital letter, formed as if from a typewriter script, comprises of a single neon tube appearing to levitate in space in front of the white gallery wall. The letters, reminiscent of his earlier text-based paintings, are connected to each other via the power cables looping between each character, which finally drape gracefully downward to their intentionally visible power supply units. The upper text is presented conventionally, whilst the lower register is rotated 180 degrees to appear upside-down, forming an imperfect yet legible reflection. As with Ligon’s other neon works, the tubes here are painted black, allowing the neon light to emit only indirectly from the back, reflecting off the white wall.
Double America 2 expands Glenn Ligon’s evocative vision in neon outward from his previous explorations in the much-fêted America series, doubling the text to further emphasize the incongruence between the diverging aspects of the United States. The majority of the works in this series reside in institutions. Ligon's first, Untitled (2006, with examples in the Tate Modern, London and Rubell Museum, Miami), presents the text in a conventional manner. A later example, Rückenfigur (2009, with examples in the Whitney Museum, ICA Boston and Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art), continues Ligon’s research into fracture and duality, with each letter reversed while maintaining a forward presentation. The first Double America (2012, with examples in the National Gallery of Art, Astrup Fearnley and a promised gift to SFMOMA) replicates Rückenfigur’s reversed letters while introducing a reflected text. Finally, Double America 2, another example of which resides in the collection of The Broad, Los Angeles, completes Ligon’s investigation of text, reversals, and reflections, incorporating the effects of these earlier works into a singular magisterial culmination.
Well-represented in the permanent collections of so many institutional collections, the America series is Glenn Ligon’s magnum opus, a result of decades of intensive creative exploration and experimentation. Discussing the series in an interview, Ligon explained that “with the America neons, one of the things I was thinking about is how to take this word that we think we know everything about and make it unfamiliar. They are all flipped or turned to the wall; and they come out of thinking about language, but also out of thinking about my relationship as a Black American to the idea of this country and to this peculiar position of being marginalized and central at the same time” (G. Ligon, quoted in “A Brush with... Glenn Ligon: Interview by Ben Luke,” in Glenn Ligon: Distinguishing Piss from Rain: Writings and Interviews, ed. J. Hoff, New York, 2024, p. 301).
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Ligon has integrated text into his practice throughout his career, and his writings and explorations of literature parallel his painting and his investigations in neon. Ligon conjured the concept for the America series through his reading of Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities while pondering the American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. The artist relates how after reflecting on news media publishing images of the war, he realized that “there is a sense that America, for all its dark deeds, is still this shining light. That’s how the piece came about, because I was thinking about Dickens’s ‘the best of times, the worst of times.’ Yes, that’s where America is. We can elect Barack Obama, and we’re still torturing people in prisons in Cuba. Those things are going on at the same time. Of course, because the piece is a black covering over white neon, its gets read as black America/white America, and those kinds of binaries, which is a part of it. I’m not denying that. But I think that maybe if the piece has a kind of richness, it is because of the ambiguity” (G. Ligon, quoted in J. Moran, “Glenn Ligon,” Interview, July 2009, p. 84).
Beginning with his important early Door “Paintings” series, Ligon has reflected on and emphasized seminal writings by African American authors in his work, and Double America 2 continues his engagement. Along with referencing Dickens, the present work recalls the work of the celebrated civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois, who wrote of a double-consciousness of being Black and American. “One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” (W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of The Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, Cambridge, MA, 1909, p. 3).
The curator and Whitney museum director Scott Rothkopf asserts that “America—as place, a nation, a concept, and a dream—is something that Ligon’s work has always been about,” with quotations from Black writers and activists including Richard Dyer, James Baldwin, Michael Brenson, and Malcom X appearing across his oeuvre (S. Rothkopf, Glenn Ligon: America, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2011, p. 47). Double America 2 unites the various strands of Ligon’s celebrated career together into a concise visual statement, operating at once as a self-portrait of an artist engaging with his identity and a reflective mirror for society to reflect upon.