Featuring a red and black abstract cover, Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers celebrates contemporary art with its gold-lettered title across the front.
An open book displays a dark-themed spread with sepia portraits and text, titled Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers, evoking the contemporary art style of Rashid Johnson’s site-specific installations.
An open copy of "Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers" shows a photo of three people in a modern living room with a round wood coffee table and contemporary art on white walls.
An open copy of "Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers" displays a black abstract artwork with swirling lines on the left and an article titled DEATH TAKES THE PISS... with text and a small photo of installations on the right.
An open book, "Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers," shows a page with abstract red circles and lines forming a grid on white, echoing contemporary art styles.
An open book titled "Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers" displays colorful, abstract mosaic art with vibrant geometric shapes, patterns, and human-like figures in reds, yellows, blacks, and whites on a white background.
Featuring a red and black abstract cover, Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers celebrates contemporary art with its gold-lettered title across the front.
An open book displays a dark-themed spread with sepia portraits and text, titled Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers, evoking the contemporary art style of Rashid Johnson’s site-specific installations.
An open copy of "Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers" shows a photo of three people in a modern living room with a round wood coffee table and contemporary art on white walls.
An open copy of "Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers" displays a black abstract artwork with swirling lines on the left and an article titled DEATH TAKES THE PISS... with text and a small photo of installations on the right.
An open book, "Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers," shows a page with abstract red circles and lines forming a grid on white, echoing contemporary art styles.
An open book titled "Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers" displays colorful, abstract mosaic art with vibrant geometric shapes, patterns, and human-like figures in reds, yellows, blacks, and whites on a white background.

Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers

$65.00
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From his early self-portraits to his site-specific installations, this volume underscores Rashid Johnson’s fearless engagement with the central themes, questions, and aesthetics of the contemporary era.

Co-organized by the Guggenheim New York and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, A Poem for Deep Thinkers is a three-decade survey of Rashid Johnson’s artistic career. It situates the artist within three interconnected spheres: as a scholar of art history; as a mediator of Black popular culture and its widespread commodification; and as an artist engaged with the globalization of contemporary art.

The exhibition and accompanying catalogue feature nearly 90 artworks, including early photographs, Cosmic Slops, spray-painted text works, collage paintings, Broken Men mosaics, film projects, and key sculptures and installations that incorporate materials such as shea butter, black soap, plants, ceramic vessels, and wax. These explorations demonstrate Johnson’s uncommon fluency with multiple materials and forms as well as a nuanced ability to synthesize the condition of the human psyche.

Lavishly produced with gold block edges and illustrated with more than 200 images, the publication offers creative meditations on excerpts by literary icons Toni Morrison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jean Genet, Paul Beatty and Amiri Baraka, interspersed among insightful essays and an interview that further illuminate Johnson’s work. 

Born and raised in Chicago, Rashid Johnson (born 1977) received fine arts degrees from Columbia College Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. At the age of 24, his work was included in Thelma Golden’s 2001 exhibition Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Johnson made his directorial debut with his 2019 adaptation of Richard Wright’s Native Son.

 

Edited with text by Naomi Beckwith, Andrea Karnes. Foreword by Mariët Westermann, Andrea Karnes. Introduction by Naomi Beckwith. Text by Nana Adusei-Poku, Hendrik Folkerts, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Kevin Quashie. Interview by Odili Donald Odita.

•    Published in 2025
•    Hardcover
•    256 pages
•    8.75 x 12 inches
•    225 color images 

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