Standing Broken Men

2021

Standing Broken Men, 2021. Rashid Johnson (American, b. 1977). Ceramic tile, mirror tile, branded red oak, bronze, spray enamel, oil stick, black soap, wax; 240.7 x 186.7 x 7.6 cm (94 3/4 x 73 1/2 x 3 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Agnes Gund in honor of Helena Huang 2021.161 © Rashid Johnson At the center of a frenzied mosaic, an abstract, fractured figure stares, wide-eyed, out at the viewer. Standing Broken Men and a related series of mixed-media mosaic works grew out of Johnson’s Anxious Men and Anxious Audiences series (2015–18) in which the artist used frantic marks to render abstracted faces in gridded formations. As Standing Broken Men exemplifies, Johnson continues to make vivid the experience of anxiety, now composing figures through fragmented shards. Through this technique, brokenness is inherent in the figures and the pictorial worlds they inhabit. However, their pieces are reassembled into dynamic colorful wholes, suggesting the possibility for healing and renewal. Standing Broken Men is composed of fine art and organic materials, all of which are common throughout Rashid Johnson’s work.