Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers

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.