I love Thelonious Monk's song "Just a Gigolo. " It's probably a minor song for him, but whenever … - Glenn Ligon

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Quote of the day

Whatever things injure your eye you are anxious to remove; but things which affect your mind you defer.

Glenn Ligon

I love Thelonious Monk's song "Just a Gigolo. " It's probably a minor song for him, but whenever I hear a recording of him playing it, I'm mesmerized, because Monk clearly loved pop music. He took it very seriously and made an amazing thing out of it.

Monk, Pop Music, Seriously, Song, Thelonious, Thing

Same Author Quotes

There's a kind of slowness and inefficiency about rendering text in paint. We're in a world that's very fast, so things that slow you for a minute-give you pause-are good.

Giving, Good, Kind, Things, World

My job is not to produce answers. My job is to produce good questions.

Answers, Art, Good Questions, Job, Jobs, Questions

Paint is a very sensual material. It's lovely to work with and lovely to look at.

Look, Looks, Lovely, Sensual, Work

A key text for me is James Baldwin's essays. And, in particular, his essay Stranger in the Village. It's a text that I've used in a lot of paintings. The essay is from the mid-'50s, when he's moved to Switzerland to work on a novel, and he finds himself the only black man living in a tiny Swiss village. He even says, "They don't believe I'm American - black people come from Africa. " The essay is not only about race relations, but about what it means to be a stranger anywhere.

Believe, Mean, Men, Relations, Village

My mother really didn't come from artists. Her famous quote to me was, "The only artists I've ever heard of are dead. " The pottery classes were meant to be a part of my overall uplift. I knew what it meant to be sent to art classes, but I still didn't know anything about being an artist.

Art, Dead, Mother, Overall, Uplift, Uplifting