Edited with text by Naomi Beckwith, Andrea Karnes. Foreword by Mari�t Westermann, Andrea Karnes. Introduction by Naomi Beckwith. Text by Nana Adusei-Poku, Hendrik Folkerts, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Kevin Quashie. Interview by Odili Donald Odita.
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 catalog 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.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The New Yorker
Calvin Tomkins
[The] largest and most ambitious exhibition of his career to date.
Hyperallergic
Natalie Haddad
Through an ever-expanding oeuvre of short films, collages, and multimedia painting, Rashid Johnson has considered Blackness, culture, and the making of art history for nearly three decades. This mid-career survey displays his body of work in the Guggenheim�s rotunda, from a sculptural stage for performances on the ground floor to a site-specific work on the top.
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Featured spreads are from the catalog to Rashid Johnson�s critically acclaimed, three-decade-spanning retrospective on view now at the Guggenheim Museum, en route to Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and MCA Chicago, 2026�2027. Spanning from Johnson�s early self-portraits to his site-specific installations, this beautifully produced volume, printed with gold block edges, takes its title from a poem by Amiri Baraka and features writings by curators Naomi Beckwith and Andrea Karnes, Guggenheim Director Mari�t Westermann and a host of luminaries including Nana Adusei-Poku, Hendrik Folkerts, Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Kevin Quashie, in addition to an interview with Odili Donald Odita. Beckwith quotes the artist: �The subject of my work is freedom.� But she distinguishes this statement from the work�s purpose. �He has learned � that the instrumentalization of Black artists� work toward the purpose of freedom rarely ends well. The purpose of his work is to help him walk the razor�s edge between dichotomies�being and nonbeing, community and individualism, past and future, particularities and capaciousness�and to give form and format to a way of both seeing the world and being in a world of infinite, intertwining possibilities. For Johnson, freedom means an autonomous zone of uninhibited creativity, a tapping into an unconscious flow and getting �lost� in that; of being removed from instrumentalization. � As a scholar of Black cultural history, from slave narratives to Afrofuturism, from Beat poetry to hip-hop, Rashid Johnson is familiar with the neutering effects of Black resistance and brilliance when it is absorbed and packaged by a dominant culture: to be captured is a fate far worse than death.� continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 8.75 x 12 in. / 256 pgs / 225 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $65.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $95 GBP £55.00 ISBN: 9780892075669 PUBLISHER: Guggenheim Museum AVAILABLE: 5/27/2025 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Guggenheim Museum. Edited with text by Naomi Beckwith, Andrea Karnes. Foreword by Mari�t Westermann, Andrea Karnes. Introduction by Naomi Beckwith. Text by Nana Adusei-Poku, Hendrik Folkerts, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Kevin Quashie. Interview by Odili Donald Odita.
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 catalog 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.
