Born in Chicago in 1977, Rashid Johnson is among an influential cadre of contemporary American artists whose work employs a wide range of media to explore themes of art history, individual and shared cultural identities, personal narratives, literature, philosophy, materiality, and critical history. After studying in the photography department of the Art Institute of Chicago, Johnson’s practice quickly expanded to embrace a wide range of media—including sculpture, painting, drawing, filmmaking, and installation—yielding a complex multidisciplinary practice that incorporates diverse materials rich with symbolism and personal history.

“My work has always had concerns around race, struggle, grief and grievance, but also joy and excitement around the tradition and opportunities of Blackness.”

Johnson’s work is known for its narrative embedding of a pointed range of everyday materials and objects, often associated with his childhood and frequently referencing collective aspects of African American intellectual history and cultural identity. To date, Johnson has incorporated elements / materials / items as diverse as CB radios, shea butter, literature, record covers, gilded rocks, black soap and tropical plants. Many of Johnson’s works convey rhythms of the occult and mystic: evoking his desire to transform and expand each included object’s field of association in the process of reception.

The youngest artist to be included in Thelma Golden’s pivotal Freestyle exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2001, Johnson has been pushing forward ever since. His practice spans several series, and often deals with larger issues that the artist has internalized before setting them to canvas.

“My work has always had concerns around race, struggle, grief and grievance, but also joy and excitement around the tradition and opportunities of Blackness.”

Moving beyond the traditionally slim prescribed territory for African American artists in art history, artists like Johnson explore an expanded realm of ideas and possibilities. With the Bruise Paintings, the painter seeks a wider audience. He uses the stylized face as a stand-in for everyone affected by the shifting, changing world and asks us to become aware of similarities we might share with our fellow humans. A vanguard figure in the contemporary art world, Rashid Johnson employs a diverse range of media to explore the complexities and nuances of Black identity. First rising to prominence in the early 2000s, Johnson represents a pivotal chapter in the development of a new generation of Black artists, who in the recent years have finally become recognized and celebrated by institutions around the world. Johnson’s breakthrough came in 2001, when at the age of 24 he was the youngest artist included in the legendary Freestyle exhibition curated by Thelma Golden at the Studio Museum in Harlem. In the years since, Johnson has emerged as a leading voice among contemporary artists and one of the most respected cultural figures in the world. Seamlessly operating in between painting, sculpture, video, installation, and performance, Johnson’s conceptual practice continues to evolve and expand, just like the constantly shifting socio-political landscape his work reflects.

One of the major through-lines across Johnson’s oeuvre is the presence of the body, whether through image, form, or gesture. Recent series focusing on the figure including his ‘Anxious Audiences’ and ‘Broken Men’, which explore historical depictions of Black subjects as well as a wider examination of universal human experiences. In mirror reliefs such as the present lot, the viewer becomes subject, our own reflection taking the place of Johnson’s anxious figures. The mirrored surface causes the audience to perceive their splintered reflection amid splashes of black soap and the melted wax, obscuring the viewer’s identity and rejecting any kind of straightforward interpretation. Within the diverse lexicon of signs and symbols that make up Johnson’s varied practice, these mirrored works invite the viewer to participate as a central reference point in his ever-expanding collection of cultural touchstones.

 

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Practical Information

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Rashid Johnson
American (Born 1977)
Category: Ultra-Contemporary

 

Public Collections

Rashid Johnson’s works are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Museum Exhibitions

As a leading artist of his generation, Johnson’s work has been exhibited at major institutions around the world, including recent solo presentations at the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Storm King Art Centre, New Windsor; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; MoMA PS1, Long Island City; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; and the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen.

In 2012, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago presented his first major solo museum exhibition, and he won the High Museum of Art’s David C. Driskell Prize for contributions to African American art in 2013. He went on to also present solo shows at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2019), the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2019), the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City (2017), which traveled to the Milwaukee Art Museum (2017), and the Drawing Center, New York (2015). In 2019, Johnson also directed a feature film, based on Richard Wright’s Native Son, that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was released by HBO. Most recently, Johnson completed a commission for the Metropolitan Opera, New York and a major outdoor sculpture at the Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York (both 2021).

Aspen Art Museum

Rashid Johnson: The Hikers – Aspen Art Museum

Gallery Representation

HAUSER & WIRTH

Rashid Johnson – Hauser & Wirth (hauserwirth.com)

David Kordansky Gallery

Rashid Johnson – Artist – David Kordansky Gallery

 

 

PART I: SUMMARY

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Auction Market Overview

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2025 AUCTION STATISTICS
Turnover: USD 9,559,850
-10.8% vs. 2024
# Lots sold: 23
Sell-Through Rate: 85%

MARKET SEGMENTATION
New-York (66%) / Hong-Kong (17%) / London (17%)

Highest Price achieved at Auction:
USD 3,000,000
(16 November 2022)

Auction Summary

 

2025 Auction Highlights

23 lots sold at auction in 2025 for a turnover of USD 9,559,850. With 4 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 85%. The highest price has been achieved by Two Standing Broken Men, dated 2018 that sold at Sotheby’s in New-York, 0n 15 May 2025 for USD 1,758,000.

2025 Top 3 Lots

3 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 4,399,600, representing 46% of the total turnover of 2025.

2024 Auction Highlights

24 lots sold at auction in 2024 for a total turnover of USD 10,713,926. With 2 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 92%. The highest price has been achieved at Christie’s in New-York on 21 November  2024, when Triptych “Box of Rain”, dated 2020-2022, sold for USD 2,712,000.

2024 Top 3 Lots

3 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 5,605,000, representing 52.3% of the total turnover of 2024.

2023 Auction Highlights

24 lots sold at auction in 2023, for a total turnover of USD 10,394,817, a record for the artist. With only one lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 96%. The highest price for 2023 was achieved at Christie’s in New-York on 8 November 2023, when Bruise Painting “Picture Maker” (2021) sold for USD 1,744,000.

2023 Top 3 Lots

This is the only lot that sold above USD 1 million. 8 lots sold above USD 500,000, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 7,187,475, representing 69.1% of the total turnover for 2023.

2022 Auction Highlights

28 lots sold at auction in 2022 for a total turnover of USD 12,353,338. With no lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 100%. The highest price of USD 3 million was achieved at Christie’s in New-York on 17 November 2022 for Surrender Painting “Sunshine” (2022).

2022 Top 3 Lots

4 lots sold above USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 7,005,867, representing 56.7% of the total turnover of 2022.

2021 Auction Highlights

26 lots sold at auction in 2021 for a total turnover of USD 11,777,575. With 2 lots unsold, the sell-through rate is 93%. The highest price of USD 2,550,000 was achieved at Christie’s in New-York on 9 November 2021 for Bruise Painting or “Down You Fall”, a painting dated 2021.

2021 Top 3 Lots

3 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 5,609,000, representing 47.6% of the total turnover for 2021.

 

 

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Top Lots

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#1. Surrender Painting “Sunshine”

Christie’s New-York: 16 November 2022
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 3,000,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Surrender Painting “Sunshine”, 2022
Oil on linen
72×96 inches (182.9 x 243.8 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials ‘R A J’ (on the right-side edge)

#2. Triptych “Box of Rain”, 2020-2022

Christie’s New-York: 21 November 2024
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 2,712,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Triptych “Box of Rain” | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Triptych “Box of Rain”, 2020-2022
Oil on linen, in three parts
Each: 108×60 inches (274.3 x 152.4 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ (on the reverse of the blue canvas)

#3. Bruise Painting “Or Down You Fall”

Christie’s New-York: 8 November 2021
Estimated: USD 650,000 – 850,000
USD 2,550,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Bruise Painting “Or Down You Fall”, 2021
Oil on linen
96 x 84 ¼ inches (243.8 x 214 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ (on the reverse)

#4. Anxious Red Painting December 18th

Christie’s New-York: 11 May 2021
Estimated: USD 200,000 – 300,000
USD 1,950,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Anxious Red Painting December 18th, 2020
Oil on linen
72×96 inches (182.9 x 243.8 cm)
Signed and titled ‘Rashid Johnson December 18th 2020’ (on the reverse)

#5. Two Standing Broken Men, 2018

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2025
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,758,000
READ MORE IN FOCUS SECTIONS

Two Standing Broken Men | The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Two Standing Broken Men, 2018
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, oyster shells, branded red oak, spray enamel, oilstick, black soap and wax
95 x  73 1/8 inches (241.3 x 185.4 cm)

#6. Bruise Painting “Picture Maker”, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 7 November 2023
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,744,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Bruise Painting “Picture Maker”, 2021
Oil on linen
96 1/4 x 86 1/4 inches (244.5 x 219.1 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials ‘R A J’ (on the left side edge)

#7. Standing Broken Men, 2020

Phillips New-York: 15 November 2022
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,724,000

Rashid Johnson – 20th Century & Cont… Lot 5 November 2022 | Phillips

#8. Bruise Painting “U.S. Blue”, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,502,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Bruise Painting “U.S. Blue” | Christie’s (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Bruise Painting “U.S. Blue”, 2021
Oil on linen
96×84 inches (243.8 x 213.4 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials ‘RJ’ (on the reverse)

#9. Bruise Painting “Stardust”, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 20 November 2025
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,397,000
READ MORE IN FOCUS SECTION

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Bruise Painting “Stardust” | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Bruise Painting “Stardust”, 2021
Oil on linen
97 7/8 x 85 3/4 inches (248.6 x 217.8 cm)

#10. Anxious Red Painting September 24th, 2020

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,391,000

Rashid Johnson – Modern & Contemporary A… Lot 14 May 2024 | Phillips

 

PART II: AUCTION RESULTS

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2026 Auction Results

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PRELIMINARY AUCTION RESULTS 
As of 15 June 2026

#1. Untitled Broken Crowd, 2021

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2026
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,024,000

Rashid Johnson | Untitled Broken Crowd | Contemporary Day Auction |

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Untitled Broken Crowd, 2021
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, spray enamel, branded red oak flooring, bronze, oilstick, black soap and wax
72 x 114-1/8 inches (182.9 x 289.9 cm)
Signed (on the reverse)

#2. Untitled Broken Men, 2019

Christie’s New-York: 21 May 2026
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
USD 508,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Untitled Broken Men | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Broken Men, 2019
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, spray enamel, oil stick, black soap and wax
49-3/4 x 38-1/4 inches (126.4 x 97.2 cm)

#3. Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020

Christie’s New-York: 21 May 2026
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 368,300

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Untitled Anxious Red Drawing | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020
Oil on cotton rag
38-1/4 x 50 inches (97.2 x 127 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ (on the reverse)

#4. Untitled Anxious Bruise Drawing, 2022

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2026
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
USD 358,400

Rashid Johnson | Untitled Anxious Bruise Drawing | Contemporary Day

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Bruise Drawing, 2022
Oil on cotton rag
38-1/4 x 50 inches (97.2 x 127 cm)
Signed (on the verso)

#5. Color Men, 2016

#6. 2nd of December, 2012

Christie’s New-York: 21 May 2026
Estimated: USD 70,000 – 100,000
USD 107,950

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), 2nd of December | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
2nd of December, 2012
Burned red oak flooring, black soap, wax, books, vinyl, oyster shell and shea butter
70-1/8 x 96-1/2 x 8-1/8 inches (178.1 x 245.1 x 20.7 cm)

#7. Love in Outer Space 4, 2009

Phillips Hong-Kong: 2 June 2026
Estimated: HKD 70,000 – 100,000
HKD 122,550 / USD 15,635

Rashid Johnson Modern & Contemporary Art

REPEAT SALE

Phillips London: 13 July 2023
Estimated: GBP 10,000 – 15,000
GBP 17,780 / USD 23,280

Rashid Johnson – New Now London Lot 42 July 2023 | Phillips

RASHID JOHNSON
Love in Outer Space 4, 2009
Glass shard and black paint on canvas
24×20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ on a gallery label affixed to the reverse

 

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2025 Auction Results

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23 lots sold at auction in 2025 for a turnover of USD 9,559,850. With 4 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 85%. The highest price has been achieved by Two Standing Broken Men, dated 2018 that sold at Sotheby’s in New-York, 0n 15 May 2025 for USD 1,758,000.

2025 Top 3 Lots

3 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 4,399,600, representing 46% of the total turnover of 2025.

 

 

#1. Two Standing Broken Men, 2018

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2025
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,758,000

Two Standing Broken Men | The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Two Standing Broken Men, 2018
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, oyster shells, branded red oak, spray enamel, oilstick, black soap and wax
95 x  73 1/8 inches (241.3 x 185.4 cm)

#2. Bruise Painting “Stardust”, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 20 November 2025
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,397,000
READ MORE IN FOCUS SECTION

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Bruise Painting “Stardust” | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Bruise Painting “Stardust”, 2021
Oil on linen
97 7/8 x 85 3/4 inches (248.6 x 217.8 cm)

#3. Anxious Red Painting August 20th, 2020

Property from an Important European Collection
Sotheby’s New-York: 18 November 2025
Estimated: USD 1,o00,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,244,600
READ MORE IN FOCUS SECTION

Anxious Red Painting August 20th | The Now & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Anxious Red Painting August 20th, 2020
Oil on canvas
94 x 120 1/8 inches (238.8 x 305.1 cm)
Signed and dated 2020 (on the reverse)

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USD 1 million

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#4. Untitled Anxious Audience, 2016

Christie’s New-York: 15 May 2025
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 604,800

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Untitled Anxious Audience | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Audience, 2016
Black soap and wax on ceramic tiles
73 x 94 3/4 x 3 inches (185.4 x 240.7 x 7.6 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ (on the reverse)

#5. Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020

Christie’s London: 6 March 2025
Estimated: GBP 200,000 – 300,000
GBP 441,000 / USD 564,480

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Untitled Anxious Red Drawing | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020
Oil on cotton rag
38 3/8 x 50 inches (97.5 x 127 cm)

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USD 500,000

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#6. Untitled Escape Collage, 2017

Phillips Hong-Kong: 27 May 2025
Estimated: HKD 3,500,000 – 5,500,000
HKD 3,810,000 / USD 486,170

Rashid Johnson Modern & Contemporary Art: Evening & Day Sale

#9. Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020

Sotheby’s New-York: 26 September 2025
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 406,400

Untitled Anxious Red Drawing | Contemporary Curated | 2025 | Sotheby’s

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020
Oil on cotton rag
38 1/4 x 50 inches (97.2 x 127 cm)

#10. Untitled Anxious Men, 2015

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 28 September 2025
Estimated: HKD 2,500,000 – 3,500,000
HKD 3,048,000 / USD 391,775

Rashid Johnson 拉希德 · 約翰遜 | Untitled Anxious Men 無題焦慮的人 | Modern & Contemporary Day Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Men, 2015
Black soap and wax on white ceramic tile
72 7/8 x 47 1/4 x 2 1/2 inches (185 x 120 x 6.4 cm)

#11. Untitled Escape Collage, 2016

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2025
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 292,100

Rashid Johnson Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session

#14. Left + Right, 2010

Phillips London: 18 October 2025
Estimated: GBP 60,000 – 80,000
GBP 141,900 / USD 190,530

Rashid Johnson Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale

RASHID JOHNSON
Left + Right, 2010
Mirror, wood, MDF, wax, vinyl record Roland Kirk “Left and Right”
Two-way radios CB, books, shea butter, space rock
110 7/8 x 139 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches (281.5 x 355 x 30 cm)

#15. Art Ensemble, 2010

Phillips London: 26 June 2025
Estimated: GBP 70,000 – 90,000
GBP 127,000 / USD 173,865

Rashid Johnson Modern & Contemporary Art: Evening & Day Sale

#16. The Battle for Intergalactic Supremacy, 2008

#17. Past, 2011

#18. Soul Mate, 2012

Sotheby’s New-York: 26 February 2025
Estimated: USD 80,000 – 120,000
USD 107,950

Soul Mate | Contemporary Curated | 2025 | Sotheby’s

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Soul Mate, 2012
Mirrored tiles, black soap and wax on panel
120×156 inches (304.8 x 396.2 cm)

#19. Jones, 2013

Phillips New-York: 28 February 2025
Estimated: USD 80,000 – 120,000
USD 101,600

Rashid Johnson – New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art, New York Friday, February 28, 2025 at EST | Phillips

#21. Cosmic Slop 9, 2008

Bonhams New-York: 15 May 2025
Estimated: USD 18,000 – 25,000
USD 38,400

Bonhams : RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) Cosmic Slop 9 30 1/8 x 20 in (76.5 x 50.8 cm) 

#23. Cosmic Slop 6, 2008

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Lots Passed

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Untitled Escape Collage, 2017

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 28 September 2025
Estimated: HKD 3,000,000 – 4,000,000
PASSED

Rashid Johnson 拉希德・約翰遜 | Untitled Escape Collage 無題 逃脫拼貼 | Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Untitled Escape Collage, 2017
Ceramic tile, mirror, vinyl, spray enamel, branded red oak flooring, oil stick, black soap and wax on panel
70 5/8 x 94 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches (180.5 x 240 x 6.3 cm)

Color Men, 2015

Sotheby’s New-York: 16 May 2025
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
PASSED

Color Men | Contemporary Day Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Color Men, 2015
Spray enamel, black soap and wax on ceramic tile
72 1/2 x 47 1/4 inches (184.2 x 120 cm)

Shuttle to Mars, 2011

Sotheby’s London: 5 March 2025
Estimated: GBP 50,000 – 70,000
PASSED

Shuttle to Mars | Contemporary Day Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Shuttle to Mars, 2011
White ceramic tiles, black soap, book, shea butter and space rock
48 1/2 x 78 1/2 x 8 inches (123.2 x 199.4 x 20.3 cm)

 

 

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2024 Auction Results

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24 lots sold at auction in 2024 for a total turnover of USD 10,713,926. With 2 lots failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 92%. The highest price has been achieved at Christie’s in New-York on 21 November  2024, when Triptych “Box of Rain”, dated 2020-2022, sold for USD 2,712,000. 3 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 5,605,000, representing 52.3% of the total turnover of 2024.

2024 Top 3 Lots

 

#1. Triptych “Box of Rain”, 2020-2022

Christie’s New-York: 21 November 2024
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 2,712,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Triptych “Box of Rain” | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Triptych “Box of Rain”, 2020-2022
Oil on linen, in three parts
Each: 108×60 inches (274.3 x 152.4 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ (on the reverse of the blue canvas)

#2. Bruise Painting “U.S. Blue”, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,502,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Bruise Painting “U.S. Blue” | Christie’s (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Bruise Painting “U.S. Blue”, 2021
Oil on linen
96×84 inches (243.8 x 213.4 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials ‘RJ’ (on the reverse)

#3. Anxious Red Painting September 24th, 2020

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,391,000

Rashid Johnson – Modern & Contemporary A… Lot 14 May 2024 | Phillips

#4. The Crowd, 2017

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2024
Estimated: HKD 6,000,000 – 8,000,000
HKD 7,620,000 / USD 974,175

Rashid Johnson 拉希德・約翰遜 | The Crowd 人群 | The Now Evening Auction | Contemporary Art | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
The Crowd, 2017
White ceramic tile, black soap and wax
184.2 x 245.1 x 6.4 cm (72 1/2 x 96 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches)

#5. Untitled Escape Collage, 2018

The Rosa de la Cruz Collection
Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 604,800

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Untitled Escape Collage | Christie’s (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Escape Collage, 2018
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, vinyl, spray enamel, oilstick, black soap and wax
72 1/4 x 96 1/2 inches (183.6 x 245 cm)

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USD 500,000

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#6. Untitled Escape Collage, 2019

Christie’s New-York: 22 November 2024
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 441,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Untitled Escape Collage | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Escape Collage, 2019
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, branded red oak flooring, vinyl, spray enamel, oilstick, black soap and wax
97 x 121 x 2 1/2 inches (246.4 x 307.3 x 6.4 cm)

#7. Untitled (Color Men), 2018

Sotheby’s New-York: 21 November 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 408,000

Untitled (Color Men) | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Untitled (Color Men), 2018
Black soap and wax on ceramic tiles
81 3/4 x 72 1/8 x 3 inches (207.6 x 183.2 x 7.6 cm)

#8. Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020

Christie’s New-York: 17 May 2024
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
USD 403,200

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020
Oil on cotton rag
38 1/4 x 50 inches (97.2 x 127 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ (on the reverse)

#9. Untitled Color Men, 2018

Christie’s New-York: 13 March 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 403,200

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Untitled Color Men | Christie’s (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Color Men, 2018
Black soap and wax on ceramic tiles mounted on panel
94 1/4 x 72 1/4 x 3 inches (238.8 x 184.2 x 7.6 cm)

#10. Untitled Seascape Drawing, 2022

Sotheby’s New-York: 27 February 2024
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 300,000
USD 400,000

Untitled Seascape Drawing | Iovine and Young Center for High School Education Benefit Auction | Hosted by Sotheby’s | Special Projects | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Untitled Seascape Drawing, 2022
Oil on cotton rag
38×50 inches (96.5 x 127 cm)

#11. Compass, 2013

Sotheby’s New-York: 1 March 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 177,800

Compass | Contemporary Curated | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Compass, 2013
Mirrored tile, black soap, wax, vinyl, shea butter
49 1/2 x 72 1/2 x 7 inches (125.7 x 184.2 x 17.8 cm)
Signed (on the reverse)

#12. Cosmic Slop “Hardcore Jollies”, 2012

Christie’s New-York: 1 October 2024
Estimated: USD 40,000 – 60,000
USD 176,400

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Cosmic Slop “Hardcore Jollies” | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Cosmic Slop “Hardcore Jollies”, 2012
Black soap and wax on panel, in artist’s frame
96 x 1203/4 inches  (243.8 x 306.7 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid’ (on the reverse)

#13. Untitled Anxious Drawing, 2017

Christie’s New-York: 22 November 2024
Estimated: USD 120,000 – 180,000
USD 151,200

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Untitled Anxious Drawing | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Drawing, 2017
Oil on cotton rag
31 1/8 x 47 1/4 inches (79×120 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ (on the frame backing)

#14. Watch, 2011

Christie’s New-York: 1 October 2024
Estimated: USD 30,000 – 50,000
USD 151,200

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Watch | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Watch, 2011
Branded red oak flooring, black soap, wax and paint, in artist’s frame
72 1/4 x 49 1/2  inches (183.5 x 125.7 cm)
Signed and dated ‘Rashid Johnson 2011’ (on the reverse)

#15. Glenn, 2013

Christie’s New-York: 22 November 2024
Estimated: USD 80,000 – 120,000
USD 144,900

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Glenn | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Glenn, 2013
Burned red oak flooring, black soap and wax
84 3/4 x 60 1/2 inches (215.3 x 153.7 cm)
Signed ‘R. Johnson’ (on the reverse)

#16. Support System, 2012

Phillips New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 60,000 – 80,000
USD 127,000

Rashid Johnson – Modern & Contemporary … Lot 374 May 2024 | Phillips

#17. North, 2013

Phillips New-York: 12 March 2024
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 113,400

Rashid Johnson – New Now New York Lot 52 March 2024 | Phillips

#18. Cosmic Slop “Laugh Out Loud”, 2012

Phillips New-York: 25 September 2024
Estimated: USD 50,000 – 70,000
USD 95,250

Rashid Johnson – New Now: Modern … Lot 165 September 2024 | Phillips

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Christmas, 2012
Black soap and wax on Masonite, in artist’s wooden frame
72 3/4 x 48 3/4 inches (184.8 x 123.8 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ (on the reverse)

#21. Cosmic Slop, 2011

Phillips New-York: 15 May 2024
Estimated: USD 40,000 – 60,000
USD 50,800

Rashid Johnson – Modern & Contemporary … Lot 375 May 2024 | Phillips

#22. Young Gifted and Black, 2005

Christie’s New-York: 1 October 2024
Estimated: USD 40,000 – 60,000
USD 50,400

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Young Gifted and Black | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Young Gifted and Black, 2005
Spray paint on fabric
81 x 59 1/2  inches (205.7 x 151.1 cm)

 

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2023 Auction Results

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24 lots sold at auction in 2023, for a total turnover of USD 10,394,817, a record for the artist. With only one lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 96%. The highest price for 2023 was achieved at Christie’s in New-York on 8 November 2023, when Bruise Painting “Picture Maker” (2021) sold for USD 1,744,000. This is the only lot that sold above USD 1 million. 8 lots sold above USD 500,000, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 7,187,475, representing 69.1% of the total turnover for 2023.

2023 Top 3 Lots

 

#1. Bruise Painting “Picture Maker”, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 7 November 2023
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,744,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Bruise Painting “Picture Maker”, 2021
Oil on linen
96 1/4 x 86 1/4 inches (244.5 x 219.1 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials ‘R A J’ (on the left side edge)

#2. Untitled Escape Collage, 2016

Phillips New-York: 17 May 2023
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 990,600

Rashid Johnson – 20th Century & Contempo… Lot 16 May 2023 | Phillips

#3. Untitled Anxious Audience, 2017

Christie’s London: 28 June 2023
Estimated: GBP 700,000 – 1,000,000
GBP 756,000 / USD 963,776

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Audience, 2017
Black soap and wax on ceramic tiles
73 x 94 1/2 inches (185.4 x 240 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials ‘RJ’ (on the reverse)

#4. Untitled Escape Collage, 2018

Christie’s New-York: 15 May 2023
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 819,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Escape Collage, 2018
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, branded red oak flooring, vinyl, spray enamel, animal skin, black soap and wax, in artist’s frame
Overall: 73×97 inches (185.4 x 264.4 cm)

#5. Untitled Escape Collage, 2017

Phillips Hong-Kong: 30 March 2023
Estimated: HKD 5,000,000 – 7,000,000
HKD 6,350,000 / USD 808,928

Rashid Johnson – 20th Century & Contem… Lot 23 March 2023 | Phillips

#6. Untitled Escape Collage, 2018

Phillips New-York: 15 November 2023
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 635,000

Rashid Johnson – 20th Century & Co… Lot 331 November 2023 | Phillips

#7. Untitled Escape Collage, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 10 November 2023
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 630,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Escape Collage, 2021
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, branded red oak flooring, vinyl, spray enamel, oilstick, black soap and wax
94×72 inches (246.4 x 185.4 cm)

#8. Untitled Anxious Men, 2015

Christie’s New-York: 10 November 2023
Estimated: USD 450,000 – 650,000
USD 604,800

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Men, 2015
White ceramic tile, black soap and wax
81 1/4 x 60 x 2 inches (206.4 x 152.4 x 5.1 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ (on the reverse)

#9. Untitled Escape Collage, 2020

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 3,556,000 / USD 454,086

Rashid Johnson 拉希德・約翰遜 | Untitled Escape Collage 無題 逃脫拼貼 | A Long Journey: A Selection from the Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei Collection | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1971)
Untitled Escape Collage, 2020
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, branded red oak flooring, vinyl, spray enamel, oil stick, black soap, wax
73 x 97 1/4 x 2 1/4 inches (185.4 x 247 x 5.7 cm)

#10. End of Fall, 2015

Yongle Auction Beijing: 22 February 2023
Estimated: CNY 1,800,000 – 2,800,000
CNY 3,105,000 / USD 450,450

RASHID JOHNSON
End of Fall, 2015
Ceramic tile, spray enamel, vynil, black soap, wax
96 1/2 x 72 1/2 x 6 3/8 inches (245 x 184.2 x 6.4 cm)

#11. Untitled Anxious Men, 2015

Christie’s New-York: 12 May 2023
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
USD 403,200

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Men, 2015
Black soap and wax on ceramic tile
47 1/2 x 34 inches (120.7 x 86.4 cm)

#12. Untitled Anxious Men, 2015

Christie’s New-York: 10 March 2023
Estimated: USD 150,000 – 200,000
USD 352,800

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Untitled Anxious Men | Christie’s (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Men, 2015
Black soap and wax on ceramic tile
38 1/2 x 25 5/8 inches (97.8 x 65.1 cm)

#13. Untitled Anxious Men, 2014

Sotheby’s London: 2 March 2023
Estimated: GBP 180,000 – 250,000
GBP 228,600 / USD 272,922

Untitled Anxious Men | Modern & Contemporary Day Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Men, 2014
Spray enamel, black soap and wax on ceramic tiles
96 1/2 x 72 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches (245.1 x 184.2 x 6.4 cm)

#14. Genealogy, 2014

Christie’s London: 14 October 2023
Estimated: GBP 150,000 – 200,000
GBP 138,600 / USD 168,061

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Genealogy | Christie’s (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Genealogy, 2014
Branded red oak flooring, black soap and wax
96 3/4 x 72 5/8 x 3 inches (245.7 x 184.4 x 7.6 cm)

#15. Django, 2012

Sotheby’s New-York: 19 May 2023
Estimated: USD 120,000 – 180,000
USD 165,100

Django | Contemporary Day Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1971)
Django, 2012
Black soap and wax on branded red oak flooring, in artist’s chosen frame
73 1/2 x 49 1/2 inches (186.7 x 125.7 cm)
Signed (on the reverse)

#16. This Year, 2014

Phillips London: 12 October 2023
Estimated: GBP 100,000 – 150,000
GBP 127,000 / USD 155,086

Rashid Johnson – 20th Century & Con… Lot 131 October 2023 | Phillips

#17. The Barefoot Prophet, 2013

Phillips New-York: 15 November 2023
Estimated: USD 120,000 – 180,000
USD 152,400

Rashid Johnson – 20th Century & Co… Lot 332 November 2023 | Phillips

#18. East Side, 2013

Christie’s New-York: 10 November 2023
Estimated: USD 120,000 – 180,000
USD 126,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), East Side | Christie’s (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
East Side, 2013
Burned red oak flooring, black soap and wax, in artist’s frame
72×48 inches (182.9 x 121.9 cm)

#19. The Funky Funktioneer, 2013

Phillips London: 13 July 2023
Estimated: GBP 80,000 – 120,000
GBP 88,900 / USD 116,406

Rashid Johnson – New Now London Lot 14 July 2023 | Phillips

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Soul Mate, 2012
Mirrored tiles, black soap and wax on panel
120×156 inches (304.8 by 396.2 cm)

#21. Kiss Yourself, 2010

Christie’s New-York: 12 May 2023
Estimated: USD 80,000 – 120,000
USD 94,500

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Kiss Yourself | Christie’s (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Kiss Yourself, 2010
Mirrored tile, black soap, wax, shea butter, space rock, books and LP in record sleeve, in eight parts
60 1/2 x 60 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches (153.7 x 153.7 x 21 cm)

#23. All Over the Body, 2014

Phillips New-York: 27 September 2023
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 88,900

Rashid Johnson – New Now New York Lot 36 September 2023 | Phillips

#23. Cosmic Slop “Giving Up”, 2012

Sotheby’s New-York: 9 March 2023
Estimated: USD 60,000 – 80,000
USD 69,850

Cosmic Slop “Giving Up” | Contemporary Curated | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b.1977)
Cosmic Slop “Giving Up”, 2012
Black soap and wax
73 1/8 x 48 3/4 inches (185.7 x 123.8 cm)
Signed (on the reverse)

#24. Love in Outer Space 4, 2009

Phillips London: 13 July 2023
Estimated: GBP 10,000 – 15,000
GBP 17,780 / USD 23,281

Rashid Johnson – New Now London Lot 42 July 2023 | Phillips

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2022 Auction Results

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28 lots sold at auction in 2022 for a total turnover of USD 12,353,338. With no lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 100%. The highest price of USD 3 million was achieved at Christie’s in New-York on 17 November 2022 for Surrender Painting “Sunshine” (2022). 4 lots sold above USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 7,005,867, representing 56.7% of the total turnover of 2022.

2022 Top 3 Lots

#1. Surrender Painting “Sunshine”

Christie’s New-York: 16 November 2022
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 3,000,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Surrender Painting “Sunshine”, 2022
Oil on linen
72×96 inches (182.9 x 243.8 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials ‘R A J’ (on the right-side edge)

#2. Standing Broken Men, 2020

Phillips New-York: 15 November 2022
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,724,000

Rashid Johnson – 20th Century & Cont… Lot 5 November 2022 | Phillips

#17. Flowers for a Lady, 2013

Sotheby’s New-York: 11 March 2022
Estimated: USD 100,000 – 150,000
USD 151,200

Flowers for a Lady | Contemporary Curated | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1971)
Flowers for a Lady, 2013
Black soap, wax and spray enamel on branded wood, in artist’s frame
72 1/2 x 49 3/4 inches (184×124 cm)
Signed (on the verso)

#23. This Is How It Should Be Done, 2016

Sotheby’s New-York: 11 March 2022
Estimated: USD 80,000 – 120,000
USD 113,400

This Is How It Should Be Done | Contemporary Curated | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
This Is How It Should Be Done, 2016
Black soap and wax on plaster, in walnut artist’s frame
52×42 inches (131.8 x 106.4 cm)

26 lots sold at auction in 2021 for a total turnover of USD 11,777,575. With 2 lots unsold, the sell-through rate is 93%. The highest price of USD 2,550,000 was achieved at Christie’s in New-York on 9 November 2021 for Bruise Painting or “Down You Fall”, a painting dated 2021. 3 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 5,609,000, representing 47.6% of the total turnover for 2021.

2021 Top 3 Lots

 

 

#1. Bruise Painting “Or Down You Fall”, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 8 November 2021
Estimated: USD 650,000 – 850,000
USD 2,550,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Bruise Painting “Or Down You Fall”, 2021
Oil on linen
96 x 84 ¼ inches (243.8 x 214 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ (on the reverse)

#2. Anxious Red Painting December 18th, 2020

Christie’s New-York: 11 May 2021
Estimated: USD 200,000 – 300,000
USD 1,950,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Anxious Red Painting December 18th, 2020
Oil on linen
72×96 inches (182.9 x 243.8 cm)
Signed and titled ‘Rashid Johnson December 18th 2020’ (on the reverse)

#3. Untitled Anxious Audience, 2016

Sotheby’s New-York: 18 November 2021
Estimated: USD 700,000 – 900,000
USD 1,109,000

Untitled Anxious Audience | The Now Evening Auction | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b.1977)
Untitled Anxious Audience, 2016
Black soap and wax on white ceramic tile, in two parts
95 1/2 x 159 inches (242.6 x 403.9 cm)
Signed (on the reverse)

#4. Color men, 2015

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 18 June 2021
Estimated: USD 2,200,000 – 4,200,000
HKD 7,435,000 / USD 957,772

Rashid Johnson 拉希德・約翰遜 | Color men 有色人種 | Contemporary Curated: Asia | JAY CHOU x SOTHEBY’S | Evening Sale | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1971)
Color men, 2015
Ceramic tile, spray enamel, black soap and wax
72 1/2 x 49 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches (184.2 x 125.7 x 6.4 cm)

#5. The Wave, 2014

Sotheby’s London: 13 April 2021
Estimated: GBP 120,000 – 180,000
GBP 680,500 / USD 935,009

The Wave | Contemporary Curated | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
The Wave, 2014
Black soap and wax on burnt red oak flooring, in 6 parts
Each: 120 1/2 x 34 1/4 inches (306×87 cm)
Overall: 306 by 522 cm. 120 1/2 x 205 1/2 inches (306×522 cm)

#6. The Moment of Creation

Sotheby’s New-York: 30 September 2021
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 540,300

The Moment of Creation | Contemporary Curated | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
The Moment of Creation
Mirrored tile, black soap, wax, vinyl, cb radio, plant, books, oyster shells, shea butter, books, space rocks, ink jet photograph on glass
71 x 129 1/4 x 8 inches (180.3 x 328.3 x 20.3 cm)

#7. Untitled Anxious Men, 2015

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2021
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 528,200

Untitled Anxious Men | Contemporary Art Day Auction | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Men, 2015
Black soap and wax on white ceramic tile
72 3/4 x 47 1/4 inches (184.8 x 120 cm)

 

 

PART III: FOCUS

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Untitled Escape Collage

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Rashid Johnson’s Untitled Escape Collage is a group of large-scale paintings of kaleidoscopic color and ephemeral collage that incorporate the vestiges of the artist’s life in America, as well as symbols of the contemporary African-American experience, to create his layered, complex symphony of materials. Within this series, Johnson constructs multiple facets of his own personal identity through assemblages of wallpaper patterning created from stock photographs of tropicalia. These are collaged over ceramic tiles that have been splattered and marked with color spray paint and swathed in black soap, which the artist has also utilized in his portraiture, and wax. Weaving in photographic images of indigenous masks, Johnson’s combination of abstraction and figuration produces a narrative of the African American experience replete with imagery. Although these compositions could appear suggestive of black culture, in general, certain elements point directly towards Johnson’s more personal experiences. Replete with emotional symbolism, the present work embodies an act of longing and optimism on the part of the artist. Gathering together disparate elements of personal and parasocial history, Untitled Escape Collage revels in juxtaposition – between material and paraphernalia – yet is brought together by Johnson’s use of paint. Replete with shades of green, yellow and red, the chromatic vibrancy of the present work is in stark contrast to the typical sparse compositions of Johnson’s previous series. Offering a landscape of flora and fauna to explore, the present work is a testament to Johnson’s ability to redefine the narrative surrounding art made by black artists, while creating meaningful, impactful, and beautiful works in the process.

Untitled Escape Collage, 2016

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2025
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 292,100

Rashid Johnson Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session

Coinciding with Rashid Johnson’s landmark mid-career survey taking over the Guggenheim Museum’s iconic rotunda, Untitled Escape Collage, 2016, is a fantastic collision of patterns, textures and materials that highlights his distinct Afrofuturist iconography and showcases his ambidexterity across materials. Over the past three decades, Johnson has built one of the most important bodies of work amongst artists working today.

Untitled Escape Collage is grounded in the historical experience of the African diaspora but looks towards an imagined future. The work emblematizes ideas of escape and imagining, visualizing a liberated future through abstracted, symbolic forms. An optimistic and conceptually creative pursuit, Johnson’s work draws from Afrofuturism’s fantastical eclecticism and open-mindedness.

“I really wanted to create a body of work that spoke to the agency of the black character. In order to do that, I started to produce more of an escapist strategy in the way that the work was coming to life,” 

Instead of connoting avoidance, Johnson sees “escapism” as an optimistic pursuit that allows for ambition, self-exploration and open-ended questioning.

Untitled Escape Collage, 2018

Phillips New-York: 15 November 2023
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 635,000

Rashid Johnson – 20th Century & Co… Lot 331 November 2023 | Phillips

In Rashid Johnson’s wall-based sculptures the world is laid out on a two-dimensional plane but also collapses in on itself in a psychedelic rift on reality. In Untitled Escape Collage, 2018, Johnson constructs a fictional habitat comprised of African masks, hyper saturated palm trees, patterned animal skins and colored ceramic tiles. Johnson’s assemblage is familiar and otherworldly alike, an abstract imagining of alternative futures. Johnson’s exploration of escape is grounded in the tenants of Afrofuturism, a diverse artistic and cultural aesthetic that promotes the African diasporic experience and envisions liberated Black futures.

In Untitled Escape Collage, visual collisions fuse in a manner that gives way to something greater than the sum of their parts. Patterned in a homogenous, diamond-oriented shape, the kaleidoscopic composition encompasses geometric blocks of tropicalia, cut outs of masks and smears of black wax, soap and enamel. Ovoid collages are sliced by gestural linear smears. Palm trees, a frequent motif across Johnson’s practice, are featured throughout the work in heavily filtered photographs that feature light leaks and color casts reminiscent of Instagram filters used to idealize reality. To Johnson, the tree symbolizes success and carefree escape from the cold of his Midwestern upbringing. In concert with his eclectic visual tableau, they form the backbone of a utopic Afrofuturist imagining.

Untitled Escape Collage sits within a lineage of Afrofuturism that spans the fields of music, literature, philosophy and fashion. The breadth of this aesthetic allows the for diverse imaginative approaches as well as comprehensive worldbuilding, as exemplified in the present example. The term “Afrofuturism” was coined by Mark Dery in a 1994 essay titled “Black to the Future” and describes fantastical and magical realist approaches to thinking about and representing Black life. Afrofuturism was further developed and popularized by the musician Sun Ra, whose mythical persona, elaborate performances and science-fiction inspired visuals complemented his experimental sound. The artists Rammellzee (often remembered as a friend and collaborator of Basquiat), Ellen Gallagher, Lauren Halsey and Wangechi Mutu have all engaged with Afrofuturist ideas and visuals, which are characterized by rich color palettes, openness to technology, and references to historic African imagery.

Beyond Afrofuturism, Johnson stresses the relatability of escape to all our lives. “Escape is impossible, in some respect,” he says. “Escape is temporary, at best.” But despite the futility of escape, the idea of escape opens up questions—“How we escape, where we escape, what’s possible, where can we go?”—that cause us to think creatively. “It all loops back into the bits of self-exploration,” Johnson says, which is what making art is all about.

Untitled Escape Collage, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 10 November 2023
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 630,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Escape Collage, 2021
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, branded red oak flooring, vinyl, spray enamel, oilstick, black soap and wax
94×72 inches (246.4 x 185.4 cm)

The hypnotic and hyperactive surface of Untitled Escape Collage is captivating example of Rashid Johnson’s artistic practice. Executed in 2021, Untitled Escape Collage is characterized, like Johnson’s oeuvre, by the dynamic interplay of imagery and materials. Here, Johnson sets the scene with a lush, tropical background. Images of palm trees and indigenous masks are then layered atop the mossy surface, creating a kaleidoscope effect amongst the materials and their respective subjects. His use of materials like ceramic tile and wax not only adds a unique tactile quality to his art but also imbues it with layers of symbolism and cultural references. In doing so, Johnson bridges the gap between traditional and contemporary art, making him a pivotal artist in the ongoing dialogue of art’s role in reflecting and influencing society. Johnson’s exploration of themes related to race, identity, and cultural heritage set him apart as an artist with a powerful and socially relevant message. Untitled Escape Collage serves as a testament to his ability to weave profound narratives, and provoke critical discussions within the realm of contemporary art. Through layers of symbolism and juxtaposition the present lot hits at the desire for liberation and escape.

Untitled Escape Collage, 2016

Phillips New-York: 17 May 2023
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 990,600

Rashid Johnson – 20th Century & Contempo… Lot 16 May 2023 | Phillips

Rashid Johnson prefers the term “collision” over “collage” to describe the combinations of patterns, textures, and materials in his work.ⁱ In Untitled Escape Collage, 2016, diamonds of verdant, hyper-saturated palm trees press against a tight grid of white, orange, and green tiles. The diagonals of the diamonds clash against the squared grid. The work seems to alternate between two spaces—the hard grid of city reality (Johnson’s native Chicago, perhaps, or his current home, New York), against the fantasy of palm trees, which, to Johnson, represent success and escape from the cold of his Midwestern upbringing. These overlapping maps are interconnected by yellow oilstick marks and small, ovoid cut-outs in the diamonds, like eyes in a mask, which reveal glimpses of the underlying tile. On top of this collision/collage are four distinct areas of black soap, melted and dripping down the tile surface.

Johnson combines a core of conceptualism with a deep interest in materials. As an art student, he enjoyed viewing Abstract Expressionist works at the Art Institute of Chicago, finding inspiration in the ways in which Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, and others manipulated paint in unexpected ways. The experimental quality of the Abstract Expressionists inspired his own integration of unusual materials into his work, particularly shea butter and black soap, as seen in Untitled Escape Collage. Indeed, Johnson’s large swaths of black soap in Untitled Escape Collage mimic Pollock’s drip paintings and Kline’s wide black gestures, while remaining grounded in the material’s cultural roots. Comparing the application of black soap in Untitled Escape Collage to the drip paintings of Pollock, or the wide black gestures of Kline, one can see how black soap achieves this visual abstraction, while staying connected to its cultural root. Black soap is a traditional West African soap, which Johnson described as “this kind of healing material,” found not only in West Africa, but “on the streets of Harlem, Brooklyn, and Chicago. It becomes this signifier,” he said, “a symbol for cleansing material. It’s for people with sensitive skin, so I’m [using it to talk] about a sensitive issue,” namely, race. This deep conceptual and cultural meaning behind black soap gives the work its conceptual heft. By pouring black soap in a thick wash down the front of Untitled Escape Collage, the material transforms, abstract and symbolic at once.

Untitled Escape Collage, 2018

Christie’s New-York: 15 May 2023
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 819,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Escape Collage, 2018
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, branded red oak flooring, vinyl, spray enamel, animal skin, black soap and wax, in artist’s frame
Overall: 73×97 inches (185.4 x 264.4 cm)

Layered, complex, and awash in history, Rashid Johnson’s Untitled Escape Collage is a symphony of materials that collaborate to create a mirror that the artist holds up to society. Across its highly active surface, Johnson incorporates disparate materials such as the African beauty staple black soap (a material he has also used in his portraits), ceramic and mirrored tiles, and wax, which he uses to adhere his objects to the support. The choice of black soap as a medium creates heretofore unimagined art historical innovations, while centering the objects of African and African American life within Johnson’s oeuvre. What results is a layered, textural assemblage that embodies the European avant-gardes of Dada and Situationist International, but also the pioneering work of Black artists, like the Gee’s Bend Quilters, Faith Ringgold, and Robert Colescott. Johnson, always unafraid to bare his soul to the viewer, offers an interwoven narrative with Untitled Escape Collage, and invites us to consider under what conditions we might need to escape. Of course, that query has everything to do with racial, gendered, and socioeconomic disparities. Johnson’s work has always been a source of empowerment and social justice, qualities that become even more powerful through the artist’s combination of abstraction and figuration.

Peppered with photographic reproductions of indigenous masks, Untitled Escape Collage celebrates Black history and creativity. Johnson moves seamlessly between the masks and the Ellsworth Kelly-like planar abstractions, reminding us that identity is both legible and opaque. Like Kelly’s series of Parisian windows, Untitled Escape Collage is a sumptuous, kaleidoscopic map of colors that refers to the natural world and transcends it.

“I think about most things that I make as quite topographic. So you imagine a landscape, the different materials in it, then just begin to translate them. Making a painting using a thousand different cuts brings that paint to life. Inside of this exists maybe 300 abstract micro-paintings. And then stepping back, just one large macro.”

This micro-macro interplay is very present in Untitled Escape Collage, which invites detailed inspection even as it aims to be immersive and sublime. Of special note is vibrancy here; Johnson’s work is often spare, but Untitled Escape Collage is filled with color, notably an affecting purple. It reminds one Wassily Kandinsky’s fantastical paintings.

Untitled Escape Collage, 2017

Phillips Hong-Kong: 30 March 2023
Estimated: HKD 5,000,000 – 7,000,000
HKD 6,350,000 / USD 808,928

Rashid Johnson – 20th Century & Contem… Lot 23 March 2023 | Phillips

To ruminate on themes as heavy and diverse as race, gender, sexuality and identity, one could do well to turn to the oeuvre of Rashid Johnson. His artistic practice is multifaceted, encompassing various forms such as painting, sculpture, large-scale installation, film, and mosaic, and producing works that reflect visual cosmologies which reference his upbringing in Chicago and African diasporic culture.

For Johnson, the act of creation is an act of bearing his soul to the world; as such, the indication of post-blackness is crucial to Johnson’s work. The term was coined by the director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, Thelma Golden, who included Johnson in an important show, Freestyle, in 2001. It describes a new generation of African American artists who were moving beyond the constraints of identity politics and making art that addressed broader cultural concerns. One of the defining characteristics of Johnson’s work is his use of materials. He often incorporates everyday objects, such as shea butter, ceramic tiles, and books, into his works. These materials are imbued with cultural significance, and their inclusion in Johnson’s work speaks to his interest in the ways in which objects can function as markers of identity and history.

 

 

 

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Anxious Red Painting/Drawing

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Anxious Red Painting August 20th, 2020

Property from an Important European Collection
Sotheby’s New-York: 18 November 2025
Estimated: USD 1,o00,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,244,600

Anxious Red Painting August 20th | The Now & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Anxious Red Painting August 20th, 2020
Oil on canvas
94 x 120 1/8 inches (238.8 x 305.1 cm)
Signed and dated 2020 (on the reverse)

The surface of Anxious Red Painting August 20th resonates with ferocious immediacy, its incendiary field of scarlet forming both barrier and wound: scratched, smeared, and scoured lines coalesce into an expanse of anxious figuration. Within its monochromatic vigor, crimson becomes both matter and metaphor, burning with the simultaneity of fear and vitality, rage and resilience.

Composed in a grid of feverishly rendered faces, the painting confronts the viewer with the collective roar of psychic unrest. Part of Rashid Johnson’s celebrated Anxious Red series, the present work extends his career-long investigation into collective anxiety and the personal trauma of the African American experience. Using red as a declaration of urgency, he evokes emotion through color, line and form: Johnson translates the tension between inner life and public crisis into gesture. Created during the initial months of 2020, the series evolved from his earlier Anxious Men works — transforming the black soap and wax of those mosaics into fields of searing pigment.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Six Crimee, 1982. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Art © 2025 Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

In Anxious Red Painting August 20th, Johnson distills the spirit of Anxious Men into a singular chromatic plane. The heads, once delineated against white tile grids, now dissolve into loops and slashes, subsumed by the fervor of mark-making. Johnson’s hand moves restlessly, his line trembling with psychic charge; each incision recalls both scar and script, a visceral record of endurance.

“The healing process starts with the negotiation of blunt force trauma…
It’s the story of recovery.”

Cy Twombly, Untitled (Bacchus), 2005. Museum Brandhorst/Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich.
Image © bpk Bildagentur / Art Resource, NY. Art © Cy Twombly Foundation

For Johnson, red is both warning and witness — an assertion of presence that refuses despair. The painting internalizes collective emotion within the intimacy of gesture; each scrawl and incision is a confrontation with immediacy, an attempt to register breath in a moment of suffocation. Anxiety here is not a transient mood but a sustained condition of existence.

“How to tolerate and how to interpret and how to locate ourselves in this time, how to, in a sense, be both historians and illustrators.” 

As in the tactile intensity of Jean Dubuffet’s art brut and the scrawled exuberance of Cy Twombly, Johnson’s hand oscillates between scripture and gestural mark making. Yet his language is wholly his own—a palimpsest of African diasporic memory and contemporary unease. Within this framework, Anxious Red Painting August 20th reads as both painting and performance—a ritualized act of making that fuses emotion, intellect, and physicality. The surface, smeared and scratched, evokes the immediacy of human touch, recalling the artist’s engagement with material as metaphor.

“I suffer from what Rosalind Krauss was calling the post-medium condition, where an artist employs several mediums to bring to life whatever specific ideas they have. For me, it’s always been that way.” 

Jean Dubuffet, Etre Par, 1963. Private Collection.
Image © Heinrich Zinram Photography Archive / Bridgeman Images. Art © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Each mark in Anxious Red Painting August 20th operates as both fissure and filament, fracture and thread; it acknowledges the pain of fragmentation while envisioning the beauty of recomposition. As the eye roams across the all-over field, it finds no sanctuary, only movement, the same restless agitation that defined the era of its making. The result is an image both monumental and intimate. The painting’s vast field confronts the viewer with unflinching directness, yet its every gesture feels deeply personal, drawn from the fraught intersection of selfhood and society. Its anxiety is communal, a chorus of voices compressed into pigment.

Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020

Sotheby’s New-York: 26 September 2025
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 406,400

Untitled Anxious Red Drawing | Contemporary Curated | 2025 | Sotheby’s

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020
Oil on cotton rag
38 1/4 x 50 inches (97.2 x 127 cm)

Eighteen figures with clenched teeth and dilated eyes peer back at its viewer in Rashid Johnson’s Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, fiercely interrogating the tensions and traumas of contemporary life. Executed in 2020, the present work sees the artist’s now iconic motif of anxious audiences rendered in red oil on cotton rag. Untitled Anxious Red Drawing and a suite of other drawings have been made during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, witnessing the artist adopting a sanguine red medium for the first time in his Anxious Men series.

“While making those scrawled faces and seeing myself reflected in them, I saw them as incredibly anxious characters. The idea of anxiety and the idea of a world that’s not giving us as many answers as we have questions is something that I’m definitely negotiating in this body of work.”

The frenetic strokes of red pigment portraying the figures with dire urgency are not only a clear reference to questions of race and grievance as Johnson’s other works have explored, but also encounter an unprecedented moment of our time. Testament to the singular intellectual rigor and fervid visual lexicon, the artist’s mid-career survey exhibition Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers opened to critical acclaim at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and will travel to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2026.

Jean Dubuffet, Vicissitudes, 1977. Tate, London. Art © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Drawing has always been a central part of Johnson’s multifaceted practice.

“I’ve never thought of drawings as a precursor to a more substantial object. I’ve always thought of drawings as objects that are final.” 

Arranged with a near shamanistic, stylized frontality, Johnson’s figures in the present work and their frenetic energy evoke the irrepressible tactility found in works by Jean Dubuffet or Jean-Michel Basquiat, or the calligraphic style of Cy Twombly.

“The healing process starts with the negotiation of blunt force trauma…
It’s the story of recovery.”

In Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, the splintering factures of Johnson’s oilstick present a pictorial plane at once suffused with direct lucidity and conceptual complexity. The artist’s recent output invokes a range of history, from his personal sobriety journey in 2014, the aftershocks of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, devastating persistence of police brutality, and the ramifications of a pandemic. Faced with this world of unrelenting tumult, Johnson’s crowd stares out, each perhaps quivering with different emotion—anger, paralysis, fear, indignation, grief, and more. Despite these divulging emotions seeping out of the composition, lying at the conceptual backbone of the present work is a sense of collectivity and community; each line in Untitled Anxious Red Drawing could be a scar or a cut, yet the resilience of the image gives way to notions of shared healing and rebuilding.

Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020

Christie’s London: 6 March 2025
Estimated: GBP 200,000 – 300,000
GBP 441,000 / USD 564,480

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Untitled Anxious Red Drawing | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Red Drawing, 2020
Oil on cotton rag
38 3/8 x 50 inches (97.5 x 127 cm)

Three scrawled red rows of faces, their eyes wide and mouths haywire in a graphic state of emergency, return our gaze from Rashid Johnson’s Untitled Anxious Red Drawing (2020). The work is part of his ongoing ‘Anxious Men’ series, which reflect on the fundamental and interconnected traumas that course through contemporary society. It belongs to a group created in 2020 that were influenced by the crises of the coronavirus pandemic and the murder of George Floyd. Where the features of the earlier ‘Anxious Men’ had been scratched into layers of black soap and wax, these new drawings consisted of intense, immediate color applied directly to white supports. Johnson worked with a paint manufacturer in upstate New York to develop oil sticks in a special shade of crimson, which he called ‘Anxious Red’. The present work’s frenetic, tangled red lines charge the image with visceral urgency.

A major survey of Johnson’s work, Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers, will open at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, in April 2025. One of the most prominent artists working today, Johnson first made a splash in 2001 as an innovative photographer. He has since developed a complex mixed-media practice, engaging with aspects of African-American intellectual history, collective identity and experience. He has assembled structures of piled-up books, tropical plants, shea butter and record covers; he has scorched wooden floorboards, cast metal sculptures and made colorful, glittering mosaics. During the pandemic—working in solitude at home, away from his studio—he began to experiment with painting and drawing.

“For many years, I’d found ways to make marks and paintings without using traditional means… But I was always a painter, in a way, and now I saw how accessible and direct and immediate traditional painting was.”

Johnson’s ‘Anxious Men’ series started with a group of single figures, their features incised into splashes of black soap and wax on ceramic tiling, that were debuted at the Drawing Center in New York in late 2015. He had conceived of these characters as spectators to a time when high-profile cases of police brutality against Black men were rocking the United States. He soon began to multiply the nervy faces into grids that he called ‘Anxious Audiences’

“I was a new father who was going to have to explain to his son the complexities of America’s issue with race’, he said. ‘In a lot of ways, those paintings were a catharsis.”

These concerns took on fresh relevance during the tumult of 2020. In the present work, the faces’ features are linked through Johnson’s looping, cursive line, speaking of a state of tension that was common to people across the world at the time. If social distancing kept us apart, we were in some ways connected: no one was alone in their anxiety. Untitled Anxious Red Drawing is an electric picture of the vulnerability and strength of shared experience.

Anxious Red Painting September 24th, 2020

Phillips New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,391,000

Rashid Johnson – Modern & Contemporary A… Lot 14 May 2024 | Phillips

Executed in 2020, Rashid Johnson’s Anxious Red Painting September 24th emanates a raw, visceral intensity that offers a poignant reflection of our uncertain era. Distressed and agitated, the artist’s scrawled faces emerge from a thick web of brilliant red impasto. The present work is from a discrete body of work that served as Johnson’s visual exploration of communal apprehension, reflecting the shared experiences of individuals amidst the upheaval of 2020. While these deeply personal images originate from the artist’s experience during the turmoil of the year, the array of faces give tangible form to the collective sentiments that are felt concurrently among humanity. The profound resonance of Anxious Red Painting September 24th is underscored by the inclusion of a similar work in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, speaking to this series’ significance within Johnson’s oeuvre. Working in the midst of great social instability, Johnson has imbued this painting with a negotiation of the complex interplays between subjectivity and universality, figuration and abstraction.

Jean Dubuffet, Dhôtel shaded with apricot (Dhôtel nuancé d’abricot), July-August, 1947. Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Image: © CNAC/MNAM, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY
Artwork: © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

A strikingly poignant relic from a period of global disquiet, Anxious Red Painting September 24th encapsulates the isolation, fear, and frustration the world collectively experienced during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020. Employing one of Johnson’s most enduring pictorial tropes—wincing, nervous faces—the present work represents a progression from Johnson’s acclaimed Anxious Men series (2015–2017) intensified by a new medium: a singular shade of red paint (aptly titled “Anxious Red”). This bespoke hue, custom-produced to match the emotional distress caused by a global pandemic, replaced his previous black and white palette with a visceral crimson. “These new works are pared down, and I like the spartan quality of them…,” Johnson recalled. I associate [the vivid red] with urgency, blood, and alarm. I spent time quickly conjuring images that had a relationship to earlier works but are fresh and new because of the circumstances in which they were made. I needed a cathartic release, a way to describe my emotional state… This was something that I felt needed to happen quickly.” This body of work captured the tumultuous emotions of a world in turmoil, executed with an amplified urgency reflecting the severity of contemporary events.

Cy Twombly, Untitled, 2005. Private Collection. Sold for $41,640,000 USD through Phillips, New York, November 2022. Artwork: © Cy Twombly Foundation.

Arranged in a gridded structure, twenty-eight abstracted visages meet the eyes of the viewer. Rendered with dynamic red gestures against a white background, Johnson’s ensemble of characters coalesces the cartoon-esque whimsy of Keith Haring with the expressive fervor of Cy Twombly’s approach. Each blocked head is comprised of a pair of protruding eyes and a series of energetic lines forming clenched teeth or tightly pressed lips, depending on the application of the strokes. Enclosed within squares, the heads appear agitated, as though striving to escape their boundaries and enter physical reality.  Despite the sinuous smoothness of the strokes, they adhere to a consistent thickness, furthering the claustrophobic nature of the composition. Resisting a singular interpretation, Anxious Red Painting September 24th embodies the collective tumultuous energy that was catalyzed by the pandemic’s profound disruption to our daily existence. Reflecting on this body of work, Johnson said, “I think that they’ve always had so much opportunity to explore themes that were related to the times which they were made.” Viewing his work as a point of reference for the current moment, the artist perceives the whole of society in these contorted faces. “[T]he characters have more or less graduated into really being deconstructed in a way where they’re just losing their minds, more or less. I think with what we’ve been facing around quarantine, in particular, the absurdity of being removed from our society and the complexity of that has definitely evolved how the characters are able to speak.”

Anxious Red Painting December 18th, 2020

Christie’s New-York: 11 May 2021
Estimated: USD 200,000 – 300,000
USD 1,950,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Anxious Red Painting December 18th, 2020
Oil on linen
72×96 inches (182.9 x 243.8 cm)
Signed and titled ‘Rashid Johnson December 18th 2020’ (on the reverse)

Lauded for his multifaceted approach and timely embodiment of our uncertain era, Rashid Johnson’s dynamic oeuvre speaks to a world inundated with impulses and overstimulation, as well as an artist’s journey through a treacherous world.

“Fear is a stabilizer and anxiety is an alert system. There’s so many things happening today that my spidey sense goes off, and that’s my anxiety, and I’m happy to have it.” 

Capitalizing on his internalized disquiet, Anxious Red Painting December 18th encapsulates some of the edge and frustration of life during Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. Part of an ongoing motif of grimacing, anxious faces, Johnson’s diaristic canvas evolved from his Anxious Men series (2015-17) by employing a new red paint (fittingly titled ‘Anxious Red’) custom-tailored to the artist’s need to create during the emotional intensity of a global pandemic. Swapping black and white media for bloody crimson, Johnson’s new body of work exhibits an increased urgency in line with the severity of current affairs.

Composed on a horizontal grid, twenty-eight stylized faces stare out at the viewer. Rendered in frenetic strokes of red over an armature of black lines on white, Johnson’s cadre of characters exhibits the cartoonish structure of Keith Haring overlaid with the fervor of Cy Twombly’s passionate mark-making. Each visage is composed of two bulging eyes and a jumble of lines that forms thinly-stretched lips or jagged teeth depending on the direction of the artist’s stroke. Inscribed within black rectangles, these faces vibrate and jostle within their frames in an effort to spill out into real space. Though Anxious Red Painting December 18th swaps the black media for red oil, the order underlying the entire composition lends itself to a logical continuation of the artist’s earlier works. The lines are serpentine and full of movement, but they remain bound by even thickness and Johnson’s visual substructure.

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Anxious Men/Audience

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Untitled Anxious Men, 2015

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 28 September 2025
Estimated: HKD 2,500,000 – 3,500,000
HKD 3,048,000 / USD 391,775

Rashid Johnson 拉希德 · 約翰遜 | Untitled Anxious Men 無題焦慮的人 | Modern & Contemporary Day Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Men, 2015
Black soap and wax on white ceramic tile
72 7/8 x 47 1/4 x 2 1/2 inches (185 x 120 x 6.4 cm)

Fresh to market, this large-scale Untitled (Anxious Men) (2015) showcases Rashid Johnson’s most iconic motif, the Anxious Man, a series that dominates his top auction results and stands as his most celebrated body of work. Executed in Johnson’s signature combination of black soap and wax on white ceramic tile, this piece embodies the artist’s mastery of materiality and psychological depth, distilling the raw, universal experience of modern anxiety. As Johnson himself observes, each work in this series is utterly unique.

“They’re really like snowflakes…none of them are the same…born of the actual moment to which they’re made.”

This 2015 iteration, executed in the very year the Anxious man series was created, captures one such irreplicable moment. Its gestural marks and material imperfections frozen in time as a testament to Johnson’s spontaneous creative process. The series’ auction record was set at $2.7 million in November 2023, with three of Johnson’s top five prices achieved in the last two years alone, underscoring accelerating market demand. Here, Johnson’s abstract yet figurative forms invite viewers to project their own emotions, forging an intimate connection while layering personal and cultural narratives through symbolic materials like shea butter and black soap. The choice in material was a deliberate evocation of his Afrocentric upbringing and what he describes as the “Africanness” of his childhood home (Art in America, 2012).

Johnson’s current solo exhibition, A Poem for Deep Thinkers at the Guggenheim Museum (on view until January 2025), reinforces his status as a defining contemporary voice, amplifying the critical and investment appeal of the Anxious Men series. This 2015 work, created during the series’ formative years, channels the cathartic urgency of Jean Dubuffet’s art brut and the gestural force of Abstract Expressionism. Its poured wax and smeared soap surfaces is reminiscent of Chicago bathhouse tiles and bears the unmistakable imprint of Johnson’s hand, with every drip and crack preserving the energy of its creation. This work arrives at a watershed moment. With pieces in the Whitney, MoMA, and Guggenheim, Johnson’s institutional legacy is secure even as his market reaches new heights. Untitled (Anxious Men) (2015) represents both a cultural touchstone and a strategic acquisition: it distills the emotional power of Johnson’s most sought-after works while benefiting from the series’ proven market performance. More than just a painting, it offers collectors ownership of a singular artistic performance, one that, like all works in this series, can never be exactly repeated.

Untitled Anxious Men, 2015

Christie’s New-York: 10 November 2023
Estimated: USD 450,000 – 650,000
USD 604,800

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Men, 2015
White ceramic tile, black soap and wax
81 1/4 x 60 x 2 inches (206.4 x 152.4 x 5.1 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ (on the reverse)

“Fear is a stabilizer and anxiety is an alert system. There’s so many things happening today that my spidey sense goes off, and that’s my anxiety, and I’m happy to have it.”

Untitled Anxious Audience, 2017

Christie’s London: 28 June 2023
Estimated: GBP 700,000 – 1,000,000
GBP 756,000 / USD 963,776

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Audience, 2017
Black soap and wax on ceramic tiles
73 x 94 1/2 inches (185.4 x 240 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials ‘RJ’ (on the reverse)

 

Untitled Anxious Men, 2015

Christie’s New-York: 12 May 2023
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
USD 403,200

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Men, 2015
Black soap and wax on ceramic tile
47 1/2 x 34 inches (120.7 x 86.4 cm)

“Fear is a stabilizer and anxiety is an alert system… There’s so many things happening today that my spidey sense goes off, and that’s my anxiety, and I’m happy to have it.”

Untitled Anxious Collage, 2017

Phillips New-York: 15 November 2022
Estimated: USD 500,000 – 700,000
USD 567,000

Rashid Johnson – 20th Century & Con… Lot 31 November 2022 | Phillips

In Untitled Anxious Collage, the apprehensive faces are set against imagery of palm trees, which for Johnson symbolizes daydreams of triumph and manhood. By incorporating the tropical vinyl wallpaper, the present work materializes the dynamic tension between gesture and stillness, frenzy and tranquility, and presages Johnson’s employment of palm tree imagery in his later Escape Collages conceived in 2016.

“Escapism is something that was an underlying condition of what was happening in my work. I really wanted to create a body of work that spoke to the agency of the black character. In order to do that, I started to produce more of an escapist strategy in the way that the work was coming to life.”

In Untitled Anxious Collage, the palm trees at once recall the aspirational spirit of Higher Goals by David Hammons—who is a noted influence on Johnson’s practice—and evoke a sense of nostalgia or yearning with their sepia coloration. As elements of the background emerge through the gaping eyes and mouths, the idea of escapism appears to pervade the minds of the rendered figures, yet the implications of Johnson’s “escapist strategy” are ultimately enriching.

Untitled Anxious Audience, 2016

Christie’s London: 13 October 2022
Estimated: GBP 700,000 – 1,000,000
GBP 882,000 / USD 1,000,453

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Untitled Anxious Audience, 2016
Black soap and wax on ceramic tiles
73 x 94 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches (185.4 x 240 x 6.4 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ (on the reverse)

Fifteen faces grimace wide-eyed from Rashid Johnson’s Untitled Anxious Audience (2016). They are laid down in a thick, tactile compound of black soap and wax, splattered and scrawled into grid formation upon a ground of white ceramic tiling almost 2.5 metres across. Their whirling eyes and gritted teeth are scratched into the soap mixture with a visceral sgraffito energy that counters their blocky, rectilinear silhouettes. The work is electric with emotive tension. Johnson’s Anxious Audience series developed from a group of single figures, the Anxious Men, that he debuted at the Drawing Center in New York in late 2015. He had conceived of these characters as spectators to the tumult of the moment—‘global immigration issues, attacks on America, and attacks within America by police on young black men’. After becoming a father, he began to take a wider view, multiplying his anxious men into ‘audiences’ of subjectivity.

“I was coming to the realization that my anxiety was not mine exclusively… When something happens to me, it happens to my family, to the human family.”

With their vivid, frantic expressions, the Anxious Audiences act as a cathartic mirror for our collective concerns. The Anxious Audiences saw Johnson reach new heights of formal ambition. The present composition’s mural scale and gestural intensity rival the force of a vast Abstract Expressionist canvas, while its tiled ground and textural depth lend it the weighty presence of sculpture or architecture. As a piece of scenography, it conjures the unnerving echo of a bathroom-stall freak-out, walling us in and collapsing public and private spaces of emotion. Indeed, there is a reflexive intimacy and confrontation in viewing the faces as an ‘audience’—they witness us as we witness them.

The modular, anonymous faces in Untitled Anxious Audience seem to figure this reach for identity: if Johnson’s black soap cannot capture the complexities of individual selfhood, it nonetheless constitutes a vision of communal experience. The stark contrast between soap and tiling also complicates deeper ideas of difference between black and white. If the faces appear to besmirch the sterile tiling, the fact that they are formed of soap contradicts any notion of dirt and disorder: no less than the bathroom, they in fact express a mode of cleanliness. Embedding such subtleties in the very substance of his work, Johnson creates a picture whose vital immediacy gradually unfolds rich, complex and shifting layers of meaning. In doing so, he foregrounds the importance of the nuanced, thoughtful engagement that is required to navigate contemporary life with care and understanding. Ultimately, perhaps, such an approach might allow us—as audience members and as actors in the world—to transcend the conflict that animates these highly-strung faces.

Untitled Anxious Audience, 2016

Sotheby’s New-York: 18 November 2021
Estimated: USD 700,000 – 900,000
USD 1,109,000

Untitled Anxious Audience | The Now Evening Auction | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b.1977)
Untitled Anxious Audience, 2016
Black soap and wax on white ceramic tile, in two parts
95 1/2 x 159 inches (242.6 x 403.9 cm)
Signed (on the reverse)

Untitled Anxious Audience confronts the viewer with brutal force; as its surface splinters and breaks, the many faces of its graphic image stare wildly in an unsettling group. Soft soap and wax are smeared across the plane of the work, scraped away in areas, rendering worried countenances in terrible scribbles, slashes, and graffiti-like marks. The incised lines that make up the pictorial armature of Untitled Anxious Audience evoke violence and rupture, while Rashid Johnson’s cursive visual forms create beautifully precarious patterns. With this work, Johnson develops his own unique take on the artistic legacies of art brut, embodying the calligraphic style of Cy Twombly, the tactility of Jean Dubuffet and the Pop vernacular of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Densely layered wax and black soap gives way to pristine white tile, generating high monochromatic contrast. A natural oily sheen creates complex textures that splatter and clot. Black, here, is tangible matter rather than negative space or void. Johnson explores the luminescence of wax and oil-based materials, while summoning their connotations of both the private and public spheres. Linked to African Diasporic homeopathic traditions, black soap and shea butter are related to self-care. Raising issues related to mental health and generational hardship, Johnson’s approach to trauma centers collectivity and community. Each line in Untitled Anxious Audience could be a scar or a cut, yet the resilience of the image gives way to notions of healing and rebuilding.

 

 

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Bruise Paintings

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Bruise Painting “Stardust”, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 20 November 2025
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,397,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Bruise Painting “Stardust” | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Bruise Painting “Stardust”, 2021
Oil on linen
97 7/8 x 85 3/4 inches (248.6 x 217.8 cm)

Rashid Johnson has built a diverse and critically engaged body of work that explores the intersections of personal history, cultural identity, and collective experience. His groundbreaking exhibition Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers, currently on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, offers an immersive exploration of the artist’s celebrated visual language, tracing the evolution of his thirty-year career. As Vogue notes, “the show’s installation in Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic rotunda offers a fascinating view into Johnson’s mind” (Sporne, Vogue, April 2025).

Johnson’s Bruise Painting “Stardust” (2021) exemplifies the expressive intensity and emotional depth of his Bruise Paintings series. Developed as a response to his earlier Anxious Men paintings—created during the pandemic to convey feelings of anxiety, isolation, and loss—this series offers a consoling and poetic counterpoint, evoking resilience and reflection in the face of uncertainty.

Installation view
Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Photo: David Heald. © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Artwork: © Rashid Johnson. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Rendered in a lush spectrum of blacks and blues, Bruise Painting “Stardust” features an oil-coated linen surface structured around a loose grid, framing Twombly-like lines that evoke abstracted faces with scribbled eyes and bared teeth. The work recalls the instantly recognizable figuration of Jean-Michel Basquiat combined with the ordered restraint of Agnes Martin—two artists who, notably, have each had solo exhibitions at the Guggenheim during Johnson’s tenure on its Board of Trustees. Drawing inspiration from the soulful melancholy of Fats Waller’s jazz standard “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue”—popularized by Louis Armstrong and later invoked in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man—Johnson infuses the painting with layered references to Black cultural and intellectual history. Through its richly textured surface and resonant symbolism, Bruise Painting “Stardust” becomes both an act of healing and an affirmation of creative endurance in the wake of collective and personal trauma.

Bruise Painting “Picture Maker”, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 7 November 2023
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,744,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Bruise Painting “Picture Maker”, 2021
Oil on linen
96 1/4 x 86 1/4 inches (244.5 x 219.1 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials ‘R A J’ (on the left side edge)

Bruise Painting by Rashid Johnson confronts the viewer with a multitude of black and blue forms, half-human faces rendered in vital planes of line and color. Measuring over eight feet by seven feet, this monumental painting acts like a mural that slowly unfolds its universal message of empathy and understanding. Bruise Painting becomes a skin of sorts comprised of the aleatory and grid-like patterns alike that build the natural world, and, as in nature, every cell is both connected and interdependent. Emerging from this latticework is a series of faces akin to the carnivalesque, surreal crowds of James Ensor. Yet even within this complex scene, we can be sure that there is some respite for these figures, since bruises are signs of the body’s healing. Subject matter is not the only appeal of Bruise Painting. Johnson’s technical rigor is evident in his creation of a signature pigment combination for this series. This combination of precisely formulated pigments with raw linen engenders a textured scene with a unique interplay of foreground and background.

Rashid Johnson in his home studio, Long Island, 2020. Photo: Jason Schmidt. Artwork: © Rashid Johnson. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Emerging from Johnson’s celebrated Anxious Men series (2015-2017), the Bruise Paintings (2021—) respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying political turmoil. Yet, as always, Johnson also shows his skilled command of art history. The bruise or wound in art history carries a religious connotation, especially with images of Saint Thomas, like Caravaggio’s Baroque masterpiece The Incredulity of Saint Thomas (1602). In it, we see the doubting disciple’s finger physically enter Christ’s flesh in a way that is both shocking and sensual. Similarly, in Caravaggio’s Young Sick Bacchus (c. 1593), there could be a correlation between the black and blue of Bruise Painting and the god’s sickly appearance inspired by the artist’s own grave illness. Fast forwarding to the twentieth century, perhaps the most famous comparisons would be Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #30 (1979) and Nan Goldin’s Heart-Shaped Bruise, NYC (1980). As with Bruise Painting, Sherman and Goldin focus on social ills with a disarming beauty. Given that the present work also has a filmic quality with its narrative progression of faces and scenes, we could also compare it to David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986). The blue tones of the film give the entire mise-en-scène a bruise-like quality, which is made flesh by Isabella Rossellini’s black eyes. This outpouring of emotion resonates throughout Bruise Painting, which translates a world of feeling into the language of abstraction.

The Bruise Paintings are also part of Johnson’s activist practice. Earlier this year, he donated a smaller work from the Bruise Paintings to an auction that raised $6 million to save the childhood home of musician and civil rights icon Nina Simone. This charitable stance also characterizes Johnson’s relationship with younger artists, especially Black artists in need of exposure and mentorships.

The present work distills Johnson’s emotionally, politically, and autobiographically replete body of work, which only continues to push the boundaries of painting, sculpture, and performance. In anxiety and angst, Johnson has found beauty without shying away from the hard truths he hopes to convey. With an unparalleled command of abstraction, Johnson paints universal symbols that draw connections among communities instead of sowing resentment. Bruise Painting is the work of an artist’s artist, and Johnson has garnered the praise of supporters within and beyond the art world with his incisive view of the human condition.

Bruise Painting “Or Down You Fall”, 2021

Christie’s New-York: 8 November 2021
Estimated: USD 650,000 – 850,000
USD 2,550,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Bruise Painting “Or Down You Fall”, 2021
Oil on linen
96 x 84 ¼ inches (243.8 x 214 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ (on the reverse)

Embracing universal symbols, Rashid Johnson creates monumental compositions that deal with internal struggles and emotional states. Bruise Painting “Or Down You Fall” is a twisting winding illustration of the artist’s recent Bruise Painting series. Evolving out of his 2015-17 Anxious Men series, this painting was named not only for the deep blue and black paint used, but also as a response to a society recovering from a great amount of pain and suffering. Organized in a six-by-five grid, Johnson’s epic composition is drenched in dark blue and black tones. Drawing from his own personal iconography, the mass of anxious faces evolves from earlier works into an increasingly frantic, alarming amalgam of bulging eyes and gritted teeth. With allusions to the animated faces of Keith Haring’s canvases and the loose lines of artists like Cy Twombly, Or Down You Fall pulses and swarms with raw energy. Some of the characters are rendered in a lighter blue, their looping eye sockets appearing ghostly next to the others, while some have given over completely to an inky demise. A patchwork of squares emerges from the jumble like a coded message and just as quickly sinks back into the depths. The density and claustrophobic nature of the surface puts one on edge, something to which the mask-like visages can certainly relate.

“It’s like the smiley face, or the peace sign. This is anxiety. It’s really interesting that way. And it’s interesting that maybe we didn’t have a symbol for it previously. It was something that universally understood, anxiety, it’s not a new condition, yet there was still space to frame really specifically.” 

Organized in a six-by-five grid, Johnson’s epic composition is drenched in dark blue and black tones. Drawing from his own personal iconography, the mass of anxious faces evolves from earlier works into an increasingly frantic, alarming amalgam of bulging eyes and gritted teeth. With allusions to the animated faces of Keith Haring’s canvases and the loose lines of artists like Cy Twombly, Or Down You Fall pulses and swarms with raw energy. Some of the characters are rendered in a lighter blue, their looping eye sockets appearing ghostly next to the others, while some have given over completely to an inky demise. A patchwork of squares emerges from the jumble like a coded message and just as quickly sinks back into the depths. The density and claustrophobic nature of the surface puts one on edge, something to which the mask-like visages can certainly relate.

 

 

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Broken Crowd/Men

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Untitled Broken Crowd, 2021

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2026
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,024,000

Rashid Johnson | Untitled Broken Crowd | Contemporary Day Auction |

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Untitled Broken Crowd, 2021
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, spray enamel, branded red oak flooring, bronze, oilstick, black soap and wax
72 x 114-1/8 inches (182.9 x 289.9 cm)
Signed (on the reverse)

Executed in 2021, Untitled Broken Crowd belongs to one of the most compelling and immediately recognizable bodies of work in Rashid Johnson’s recent oeuvre. Expansive in scale and charged with restless energy, the present work transforms Johnson’s now-iconic fractured visages into a densely orchestrated field of line, reflection and material tension. Across its wide horizontal surface, faces appear and dissolve within a lattice of black mosaic contours, mirrored fragments, branded red oak flooring and passages of spray enamel, oilstick, black soap and wax. The result is at once architectural and improvisatory: a work that reads as both image and object, its composite surface alive with interruption, compression and rhythmic dispersal. In Johnson’s hands, fragmentation never signals mere rupture; rather, it becomes a mode of building, of allowing identity, emotion and collective presence to emerge through accumulation and fracture alike.

“I say that I suffer from what Rosalind Krauss was calling the post-medium condition, where an artist essentially employs several mediums in order to bring to life whatever specific ideas that they have. For me it’s always been that way.”

The artist in front of Untitled Broken Crowd. Photography by Kendall Mills, 2021.

What distinguishes the Broken Crowd works is the way they hold multiplicity in unstable but forceful balance. Here, individual heads cohere only partially before slipping back into the larger structure, so that the “crowd” is never fully fixed as portrait, pattern or social tableau. Johnson’s visual language—at once graphic, tactile and improvisational—allows these figures to register as both singular presences and part of a larger collective condition. The present work is especially powerful in this regard. Its broad format gives the composition the sweep of a frieze, while the repeated faces, staggered across a fractured grid, create an insistent rhythm of encounter and dispersal. Mirror tile interrupts the surface with flashes of reflection, implicating the viewer within the work’s field, while ceramic tile and bronze introduce shifts of density and weight that keep the entire composition in a state of formal and psychological tension. The crowd is broken, but it is also animated, held together through pulse, repetition and a remarkable internal momentum.

Left: Jean Dubuffet, La ronde des images, 1977. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.. Art © 2026 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.
Right: Mark Bradford, Method Man, 2004. Private Collection. Sold at Sotheby’s New York in November 2021 for $6 million. Art © 2025 Mark Bradford. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Johnson’s practice has long moved between personal narrative and broader histories of Black cultural experience, weaving symbolic materials and autobiographical vocabularies into works of unusual formal intensity. Sotheby’s notes that his multidisciplinary oeuvre interrogates cultural identity, critical history and personal narrative, while many of his more recent series—including the Broken Crowd works—bring a “caring and attentive lens” to existential themes of anxiety and interiority. That framework is crucial to understanding the present work. Untitled Broken Crowd does not offer a single legible scene so much as a field of psychic and social compression, in which repeated faces flicker between expression and mask, intimacy and distance. The jagged tessellation of the surface suggests both connection and disjunction, while the work’s scale insists on the crowd as something bodily, immersive and shared. Johnson’s achievement lies in making such complexity feel neither illustrative nor fixed, but materially and emotionally immediate.

Rashid Johnson’s Broken Works in Select Public Collections

The material vocabulary of the present work is central to that immediacy. Johnson’s use of ceramic tile, mirror tile, branded red oak flooring, bronze, oilstick, black soap and wax is never merely additive; each element carries distinct visual and symbolic force. The oak planks establish a structural armature, their branded surfaces evoking use, inscription and pressure. Black soap and wax lend the work its velvety density and absorptive depth, while mirrored passages open the composition outward, creating moments of reflection that are both literal and destabilizing. Spray enamel and oilstick animate the surface with quickened marks and chromatic accents, so that the work oscillates between construction and gesture, permanence and improvisation. This is one of Johnson’s great strengths as an artist: to marshal materials of different temperature, texture and cultural resonance into compositions that remain rigorously built yet palpably alive.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Six Crimee, 1982. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Art © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

By 2021, Johnson had already secured his position as one of the most influential American voices in contemporary art, with a practice spanning painting, sculpture, film and installation, and with major institutional recognition including A Poem for Deep Thinkers at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Untitled Broken Crowd belongs emphatically to that mature moment. Monumental without heaviness and emotionally charged without sacrificing formal clarity, it gives concentrated expression to the concerns that have made Johnson’s art so resonant: identity as composite, history as layered material, and collectivity as both burden and possibility. In its fractured faces, reflective interruptions and commanding scale, the present work stands as a particularly strong example of the Broken Crowd series—urgent, sophisticated and unmistakably of its moment.

Two Standing Broken Men, 2018

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2025
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,758,000

Two Standing Broken Men | The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Two Standing Broken Men, 2018
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, oyster shells, branded red oak, spray enamel, oilstick, black soap and wax
95 x  73 1/8 inches (241.3 x 185.4 cm)

Grinning or grimacing, perhaps screaming through clenched teeth, the couple in Rashid Johnson’s Two Standing Broken Men lament a fraught national history whilst radically suggesting a path toward remediation. A paragon of the Chicago-born and New York-based artist’s critically acclaimed mosaics, Two Standing Broken Men addresses the simultaneous personal and political trauma which charge Johnson’s practice, which appropriately mines his lived experience, collective memory, the art historical canon, and critical history.

“The healing process starts with the negotiation of blunt force trauma…
It’s the story of recovery.”

Rashid Johnson in front of one of his works in his studio in Brooklyn, New York, 2019.
Photo © Chris Sorensen for The Washington Post via Getty Images. Art © 2025 Rashid Johnson

Executed in 2018, Two Standing Broken Men sees the artist approach his long-developed themes of the intersections of race and class with new vigor. Testament to the present work’s significance within the artist’s accomplished career, other Broken works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Studio Museum, Harlem, in addition to the two monumental panels he produced for his Metropolitan Opera commissions. In April the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York opened to great acclaim a mid-career survey of Johnson’s work, Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers, which will subsequently travel to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Here, the vast, splintered surface further intensifies the anguish and anxiety which characterize his oeuvre, but his sprawling Two Standing Broken Men bespeaks an enlightened approach to trauma which centers collectivity and community, acknowledging each cleavage in the mosaic as both a scar and a stitch.

Left: Norman Lewis, Ritual, 1962. Private Collection. Sold at Sotheby’s New York in November 2019 for $2.8 million. Art © Estate of Norman Lewis, Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY. Right: Mark Bradford, Method Man, 2004. Private Collection. Sold at Sotheby’s New York in November 2021 for $6 million. Art © 2025 Mark Bradford. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Johnson’s output of the last few years invokes a range of recent history, from his personal sobriety journey in 2014, the effects of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, to the devastating persistence of police brutality. As if witnesses to this world of unrelenting tumult, Johnson’s crowd stares out, paralyzed and ruptured by the upheavals of the last decade, and their eyes bulge as though recognizing us, too, as collateral victims of such cruelty. Arranged with a kind of shamanistic, stylized frontality, Johnson’s heads are shattered and afflicted by the very world they confront. The frenetic, fractured surface evokes the irrepressible tactility of a Jean Dubuffet or Jean-Michel Basquiat, while the texturally variegated surface addresses the multidisciplinary practice Johnson has cultivated, one which spans painting, sculpture, drawing, video, and installation. Each medium, from black soap to shards of mirror, represent symbolically loaded choices, the former strongly tied to diasporic culture and expectations around Black beauty, and the latter perhaps alluding to the broken reflections we find in the wake of unrest. Johnson’s embrace of unconventional media aligns him with one of his greatest artistic inspirations, David Hammons, who reflected upon the Black experience using chicken grease and basketball backboards as his media, and set the precedent that addressing one’s identity means not merely depicting it but weaving the truth of being into the fibers and process of the work itself.

 

Jean Dubuffet, Paris Polka, 1961. Private Collection. Image © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images.
Art © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Johnson’s use of tile references a Russian-Turkish bathhouse he frequented during his program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. “The tile became one of the signifying materials of that place,” Johnson reflected, “It became kind of a spiritual signifier and theme, representing a place where I got a lot of relief.” (Rashid Johnson quoted in: Claire Barliant, ‘Escape artist – an interview with Rashid Johnson’, Apollo, 8 November 2020, online) Cracked and scrawled upon as they may be, the now effaced tile faces of Johnson’s crowd represent fortitude and congregation, replicating those memories of peace; despite the acuities of their incisions and diversity of their composition, Two Standing Broken Men, notably, takes form not as rubble but as a medium anchored by art historical importance, its strength derived from the amalgamation of its constituent parts. Thus the crowd proposes togetherness as a cure to cruelty, human fallibility, subjugation and disenfranchisement, a great and expansive assertion that the composite whole might be more unimaginably beautiful than the fictive, undamaged alternative. Johnson’s mosaic courageously reconciles mental health and generational struggle, pieces of personal history and the collective fault lines of colonial projects and displacement – through art, Johnson’s resilient monoliths assure us that we can construct a new future in the present.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Six Crimee, 1982. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Art © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York

Recently the curator of Seven Rooms and a Garden at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Johnson’s strength and vulnerability in his worldly – and, at times, autobiographical – body of work have earned him a place as one of Contemporary Art’s leading voices. Johnson not only has defined the scope of aesthetic and conceptual nuances in artmaking today but in his roles as a scholar and mentor for Black creatives. A paragon of his mature corpus, Two Standing Broken Men testifies to his sophisticated negotiations of pain and healing, happiness and grief, bringing to life the “tradition and opportunities of Blackness” that have long galvanized not only Johnson but a generation (Rashid Johnson quoted in: Hillarie M. Sheets, “In Rashid Johnson’s Mosaics, Broken Lives Pieced Together,” The New York Times, 26 September 2021 (online))

Standing Broken Men, 2020

Phillips New-York: 15 November 2022
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,724,000

Rashid Johnson – 20th Century & Cont… Lot 5 November 2022 | Phillips

 

 

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Color Men

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Color Men, 2016

Composed of spray enamel, black soap, and wax on ceramic tile, Rashid Johnson’s Color Men, 2016, juxtaposes the orderliness of a grid with fast-paced, gestural mark-making. Featuring Johnson’s signature materials and motifs, the present example embodies order and disruption. Unfolding across a modular surface of neatly arranged ceramic tiles, four faces, arranged analogously in quadrants, are built in a process of accumulation and deduction. Scratched, dragged, and partially erased through dense applications of black soap and wax, Johnson’s working process resists precision. Solidified accumulations scatter across the plane, producing a surface that feels open-ended rather than overly resolved. Working across painting, sculpture, installation and film, Johnson has developed a practice that draws deeply from his upbringing in Chicago and the broader histories of the African diaspora. His work persistently engages questions of personal, racial, and cultural identity, synthesizing art historical references with vernacular materials and symbolic forms. In Color Men, these concerns manifest through a composition that is both materially rich and psychologically charged.

The figures that populate Color Men evolve from Johnson’s Anxious Men series, first presented in his 2015 solo exhibition at the Drawing Center in New York. Here, faces linger between legibility and dissolution. Anonymous and abstracted faces are rendered through a process that resembles drawing by erasure: thick applications of black soap and wax are scratched, smeared, and reworked, recording the immediacy of the artist’s hand.

“The black soap and wax is melted down into a liquid, and after it’s poured you have between five and ten minutes to manipulate it.”

Thus, materiality dictates form, and the resulting faces appear caught in states of heightened emotionality– an accumulation of gestures through which repetition compounds into a sense of unease. Johnson has described the creation of these works as a cathartic act, a means of processing his own anxieties amid a broader climate of violence, racial injustice, and political instability.

 

Untitled (Color Men), 2018

Sotheby’s New-York: 21 November 2024
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 408,000

Untitled (Color Men) | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Untitled (Color Men), 2018
Black soap and wax on ceramic tiles
81 3/4 x 72 1/8 x 3 inches (207.6 x 183.2 x 7.6 cm)

Executed in 2018, Rashid Johnson’s Untitled (Color Men) stands as an outstanding example of the artist’s expert synthesis of materiality and autobiographical narrative, presented within a broader socio-cultural framework. In terms of materiality, Johnson’s iconic use of black soap and wax, both mediums of profound symbolic resonance, extends beyond pure aesthetics, invoking a larger dialogue with cultural history and identity. Black soap, sourced from West Africa and celebrated for its restorative and moisturizing properties, carries with it a multi-faceted connotation of healing and resilience deeply rooted in African diasporic traditions and culture. Yet, in Johnson’s hands, this traditionally nurturing substance transforms into a medium of turbulent, visceral expression – his energetic drips and splatters taking after the Abstract Expressionist gestural tradition.

“The materials I’ve used over the last five to 10 years were things that were close to me, that reminded me of certain aspects of my experience growing up – for example, the relationship I had to Afrocentrism through my parents in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. My mother would always have shea butter around, and she wore dashikis. I was celebrating Kwanzaa, hearing the unfamiliar language, Swahili, and seeing black soap and chew sticks around the house, things that were about applying an Africanness to one’s self.” 

In Untitled (Color Men), Johnson masterfully channels the medium’s symbolic weight into his semi-autobiographical exploration, where personal narrative intertwines with the collective memory of the African American experience. The use of black soap is particularly evocative of Johnson’s upbringing in Chicago where he engaged with Afrocentric philosophies, thus delivering a confluence where individual and collective histories converge. The central figure in Untitled (Color Men) is deliberately abstracted, its anonymity embodying both the artist’s personal introspections and the collective anxieties of a broader socio-political unease. The abstracted visage – striking in its brilliant yellow hue and framed by stark black tile and a pseudo-border marked by chaotic, swirling black splatters – radiates with a psychological intensity. The nameless, faceless figure universalizes the scene, transforming it into an emblem of shared anxiety and vulnerability. Johnson subverts yellow’s typical warmth, turning it instead into a symbol of inner turmoil surrounded by black which heightens the unease and suggests an encroaching darkness that contrasts with the sterile, clinical associations of the tile. This anonymous figure thus encapsulates an intersection of Johnson’s recurring themes: the Black experience in America, the fluidity between abstraction and figuration, and the interrogation of personal identity through art.

Left: Jackson Pollock, One: Number 31, 1950, 1950. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2024 Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Right: Jean Dubuffet, Portrait of Henri Michaux, 1947. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

“My mother is an African history professor so she would have these kinds of materials around the house. When I got older I started to see how things like shea butter and black soap were African products that really speak to an African-American audience … I thought about what these materials must mean to the people that are using them and came to the conclusion that they were a way to culturize oneself in Africanness as you’re exploring or looking for an identity, especially in a country that has had such a complicated history with the people … There’s an absurdity to it, but it’s also really poetic.”

Untitled (Color Men) seamlessly extends from Johnson’s renowned Anxious Men series, described by Johnson as a cathartic exercise rooted in personal transformation while absorbing the socio-political upheavals of contemporary America in an African American context. Over time, these scrawled, expressive, and abstracted faces have evolved into a powerful motif within Johnson’s oeuvre, distilling a profound emotional impact. As such, Untitled (Color Men), stands as a pivotal moment within Johnson’s body of work, its visceral intensity highlighting his unyielding commitment to exploring the complex intersections of art, identity, and collective history.

 

 

 

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Other Paintings

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Glenn, 2013

Christie’s New-York: 22 November 2024
Estimated: USD 80,000 – 120,000
USD 144,900

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Glenn | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Glenn, 2013
Burned red oak flooring, black soap and wax
84 3/4 x 60 1/2 inches (215.3 x 153.7 cm)
Signed ‘R. Johnson’ (on the reverse)

Part of a series of abstract portraits first unveiled in 2013, Rashid Johnson’s Glenn (2013) is a larger-than-life, equally figurative and ambiguous “character” imagined by the artist and executed using his signature choice of medium. Beginning with a panel made from wood flooring, Johnson organizes the material into a geometric composition and then sprays with gold enamel paint. After the ground plane has been created, the artist uses a blow torch to burn off the paint layer, leaving behind a gold aura on the kindled surface. Using his signature black soap and wax mixture, the artist spreads the material in gestural forms to create an abstracted figure, or “character.” In 2001, Johnson made his debut as the youngest artist in Thelma Golden’s seminal group exhibition Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Beginning with photographic work, the artist has since developed an eloquent conceptual practice established by distinctive material intelligence. Thinking about materials and their connections to issues of identity, race, and class, the artist utilizes disparate media to communicate his ideas.

“’The materials I’ve used over the last five to 10 years were things that were close to me, that reminded me of certain aspects of my experience growing up – for example, the relationship I had to Afrocentrism through my parents in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. my mother would always have shea butter around, and she wore dashikis. I was celebrating Kwanzaa, hearing the unfamiliar language, Swahili, and seeing black soap and chew sticks around the house, things that were about applying an Africanness to one’s self.  Then my parents evolved into middle-class black professionals, and I was kind of abandoned in this Afrocentric space they had created. I was forced to negotiate what that period and those objects meant for me. I saw these things, as I got older, in Harlem, in Brooklyn, being sold on the street. I always thought to myself: What is the goal now with these materials? What are people trying to get from them?’”

Johnson plays with these ideas and objects through his artistic practice, combining his interest in abstraction and mark-making with his interest in the physical, constructed object, and bringing to question what it means when these things – symbols of his childhood and cultural upbringing – are presented in a way that no longer functions in the way they were originally meant to.

Triptych “Box of Rain”, 2020-2022

Christie’s New-York: 21 November 2024
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 2,712,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Triptych “Box of Rain” | Christie’s

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Triptych “Box of Rain”, 2020-2022
Oil on linen, in three parts
Each: 108×60 inches (274.3 x 152.4 cm)
Signed ‘Rashid Johnson’ (on the reverse of the blue canvas)

Soon to be honored with his first major solo museum retrospective, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York beginning in April 2025, Rashid Johnson’s Triptych “Box of Rain” serves as the artist’s magnum opus, bringing together three of his greatest series in a single work. Combining the themes of his celebrated Anxious Men, Bruise Paintings, and Surrender Paintings, Triptych “Box of Rain” confronts the collective psyche felt by many as they struggle with feelings of anxiety and isolation in contemporary society. This is the first painting by the artist to come to auction that combines all three of the central themes of his oeuvre.

Composed of three vertical paintings, the format of which is directly lent from Cy Twombly’s towering 2008 blue notes, the present work balances compositional order with gestural activity. From left to right, Johnson abbreviates his palette to patriotic shades of red, white, and blue. Each of the monumental canvases is composed of an orderly grid of rectangular shapes set in a five-by-six formation. This structure offers a visual anchor to Johnson’s brushwork which at times threatens to expand beyond the confines of each element. From each canvas, thirty rudimentary faces stare out at the viewer, amplifying the artist’s painterly energy. Definitive strokes envelop some of the faces, while others seem to push outward from their constraints. These raucous denizens cajole and squirm within the frame like a captive audience watching our every move.

The present work combines three of the artist’s most celebrated series. Although he first debuted his Anxious Man motif in 2015, it was in 2020—in response to the COVID-19 pandemic—that Johnson converted his previously monochromatic heads into ones rendered in blood red to heighten the fear and emotion of the global pandemic. The following year he unveiled his Bruise Paintings, a blue version of his now iconic motif. For the artist, these canvases represent the collective struggle and triumph over adversity. Rendered in thick streams of rich, blue oil paint they conjure up a reckoning, and mimic the body, and thus society’s, ability to heal itself. Finally, Johnson’s Surrender Paintings—executed in white—offer up the opportunity of redemption and the collective ability to surrender ourselves to forces beyond our control, which can be both uplifting and liberating. By offering up all three motifs, Triptych “Box of Rain” completes his trio of human emotions.

With works such as this, Johnson follows in a noble tradition of socially conscious artists who confront the challenges modern society often faces head-on. Although Jasper Johns famously declined the notion that his Flags were political, at the same time they did illustrate how inextricable the American flag is from formative ideas about the country. Glenn Ligon’s America takes a similar tact in letting the name of the country and all its associations fill out his seemingly simple work in neon. In Triptych “Box of Rain”, Johnson chooses to render his anxious subjects in red, white, and blue. The associative use of these colors brings about connections to American politics and culture while driving home how ingrained ideas about government, belonging, and national identity can be in our collective subconscious.

Eugene Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 28 July 1830, circa 1830-1831. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: Bridgeman Images.

“I think that, in a way, they’re doing what I intended them to do, which was to be nimble and to be present and flexible and organizing themselves to address or to take into consideration whatever was in front of them.
In that respect, I think that they’re really continuing to successfully arrange themselves around the current topics.” 

Ahead of his retrospective at the Guggenheim in 2025, Triptych “Box of Rain” offers the first opportunity to experience the full power and relevance of Rashid Johnson’s paintings in one comprehensive work. These three large canvases can be hung in any order, or indeed separately, allowing the owner themselves to play a role in its interpretation. By utilizing and simplifying the human face down to its essential elements, the artist creates an intense personification of subconscious anguish that lay just below the surface for many people during the past few years. However, by employing this stylization, he was also able to make a mutable sign that continues to effectively mirror the state of the world in the present day.

The Barefoot Prophet, 2013

Phillips New-York: 15 November 2023
Estimated: USD 120,000 – 180,000
USD 152,400

Rashid Johnson – 20th Century & Co… Lot 332 November 2023 | Phillips

Rashid Johnson’s The Barefoot Prophet emerges from a transformative staging of repurposed red oak flooring. The oak, marked by searing iron brandings, invokes a visceral connection to racial histories in America, as indelible scars that transcend the realm of aesthetics are etched. Johnson uses custom-made branding irons, adapted from the iconic symbol of the renowned rap group Public Enemy. For the group, the gun sight crosshair motif, which was prominently featured on their albums and merchandise, carries profound significance as a stark reminder of the racial targeting faced by Black Americans. The charred wood is thickly layered with black soap and wax. Black soap, produced in West Africa and made from locally harvested plants and dried peels, is prized for its restorative and moisturizing properties. It is a substance intended for healing. Johnson’s swathing application of soap and wax down the center of the burnt canvas invokes an image of vain attempts to cover underlying scarring left from the brands. Yet, Johnson does not wish to push a specific meaning onto his viewer, instead inviting them to use their own experiences to create their own.

“My materials come from personal experience, and all have meanings and history for me, but they don’t mean the same thing to everyone. It’s interesting to see how different people see the same objects and create their own narratives and assign their own meanings.”

Just as Johnson inspires the viewer to look within themself, so, too, did the subject for which this work, The Barefoot Prophet. Elder Clayborn Martin was born into slavery in the Blue Ridge Mountains in 1851 but lived most of his life as a traveling preacher. Martin Eventually made his way to Harlem, New York, where he earned the moniker The Barefoot Prophet — he had not worn shoes since a day in his youth when God told him to shed his shoes and walk on holy ground. Martin would spend his days preaching to his Harlem sidewalk audiences the truth of their inherent divinity: “Every man is the dwelling place of the Almighty! He is not in the buildings we call the churches today!” The Barefoot Prophet caught the attention of photographer James Van Der Zee, who photographed a formal portrait of Martin inside of his Harlem studio. Van Der Zee, renowned not only for his photography of Black Americans during the Harlem Renaissance but also his comprehensive documentation of the period, had become a friend of Martin. He, along with other artists of the area, would eventually organize Martin’s funeral after his passing. Over 500 people from the neighborhood were in attendance. In naming this work for Martin, and, by extension, Van Der Zee, we see a window into Johnson’s artistic reverence for the legacies of those who have profoundly shaped our cultural and spiritual landscapes. Johnson’s choice to honor Martin and the photographer who captured his essence underscores his commitment to contextualizing his art within the rich tapestry of history and heritage.

Genealogy, 2014

Christie’s London: 14 October 2023
Estimated: GBP 150,000 – 200,000
GBP 138,600 / USD 168,061

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977), Genealogy | Christie’s (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Genealogy, 2014
Branded red oak flooring, black soap and wax
96 3/4 x 72 5/8 x 3 inches (245.7 x 184.4 x 7.6 cm)

Standing almost two and a half meters tall, Rashid Johnson’s Genealogy forms part of a series of abstracted portraits first unveiled in 2013. Depicted within each work are loosely figurative ‘characters’, enigmatically obscured behind dark smoky traces, and the artist’s signature tar-black wax and soap mix. Material is fundamental to the Chicago-born artist’s practice, and the work is the product of a complex and unique process. First constructing panels of wood flooring in a geometric arrangement, Johnson goes on to spray his support with gold enamel paint. The artist then uses a blowtorch to singe and efface the surface, leaving behind an ethereal burnished trace—a branding that carries sinister associations with the transatlantic slave trade. Combining wax and black soap—a restorative plant-based soap made with ash that is produced in West African countries such as Ghana—into a thick impasto, Johnson splatters and smears his character’s silhouette onto the work, which he further incises with energetic sgraffito marks. A testament to the artist’s rich interrogation of medium as a signifier of black identity, Genealogy also speaks to the legacy of his Abstract Expressionist antecedents. Across his instantly recognisable and widely-celebrated works, Johnson exhibits a mesmeric exploration of material, alchemy and gesture.

Surrender Painting “Sunshine”, 2022

Christie’s New-York: 16 November 2022
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 3,000,000

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977) (christies.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (B. 1977)
Surrender Painting “Sunshine”, 2022
Oil on linen
72×96 inches (182.9 x 243.8 cm)
Signed with the artist’s initials ‘R A J’ (on the right-side edge)

Rashid Johnson’s swirling, layered Surrender Painting “Sunshine” represents the work of the most inventive conceptual artists working today. At a sweeping six feet by eight feet, the canvas is as vast as the sun it references, asking us to be immersed in a painterly horizon. Johnson poses essential questions about how painting can be responsive to our contemporary world by thinking through structures of history and power. The Surrender Paintings are Johnson’s most recent iteration of the iconography of his Anxious Men works. Always thinking through the past and the present simultaneously, Johnson’s new canvases summon up feelings of redemption, leaving an atmosphere of simplicity and recognition. Johnson’s subject has always been the collective, and here we experience gridded bundles of marks that engender feelings of estrangement and optimism.

Surrender Painting “Sunshine” takes on the traditions of the monochrome and the grid, evoking Eva Hesse, Jasper Johns, and Agnes Martin. These abstract, cursive white marks become an ornate tapestry upon the unprimed canvas. In a Warholian fashion, Johnson knows that repetition always begets difference, and therein lies the beauty of human experience. Each grid is different, forgoing regimented or industrialized repetition in favor of painterly variation, recalling how even within communities of people is unpredictable individuality. Johnson vertically connects the vibrating squares with blocks of white paint, as if to turn them into handheld signs that we can grasp and raise above our heads in an act of protest. Extending to the edge of the large canvas, Johnson’s marks could be said to inhabit the space of the viewer, and our eyes dodge and weave within this abstract landscape.

Sunset Walk, 2013

Sotheby’s London: 3 March 2022
Estimated: GBP 120,000 – 180,000
GBP 258,300 / USD 344,078

Sunset Walk | Modern & Contemporary Day Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
Sunset Walk, 2013
Spray enamel, wax and black soap on burnt red oak flooring, in artist’s frame
96 3/4 x 72 5/8 inches (245.7 x 184.5 cm)

Johnson integrates materials familiar from his childhood within his artworks, embracing their metaphorical potential and cultural meanings. In Sunset Walk and the other abstract works from the 2013 series, the artist uses panels of wood flooring as a base, onto which he spreads a layer of African black soap, to then cover its surface with gold enamel paint. The abstract composition is then obtained through a blowtorch – Johnson burns off parts of the outer paint layer, which results in a burnished, textured surface out of which an abstract form emerges. The use of gold enamel paint, tarnished and cracked over the soap-covered surface, links to Johnson’s exploration of alchemy, the transformation of base substances into a valuable object, which remained a constant throughout his works. Johnson references the ritualistic practices of German conceptual artist Joseph Beuys, who similarly ‘alchemised’ so-called ‘poor’ materials into art. Beuys’ use of fat, felt and bandages, embodied his experience of the war, fascism, nationhood, trauma and repair.

Like Beuys, Johnson aims to trigger raw emotional responses from viewers, especially in relation to issues of race and cultural identity. By including household items like the black soap in Sunset Walk, Johnson questions the implications of the transformation of these functional items – symbols of childhood and cultural upbringing – into something that no longer resembles their original purpose. The very appearance of the work acts as a metaphor for the ‘conceptual and psychological transformations’ of Johnson’s chosen media, from functional objects. Johnson aims to reclaim a sense of identity through his use of fluid cultural markers from his childhood. Johnson’s parents abandoned Afrocentrism as their son got older, leaving him with an unresolved schism within his personal cultural identity, especially in relation to certain cultural items that maintained distinct cultural associations to his past.

The Moment of Creation

Sotheby’s New-York: 30 September 2021
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 540,300

The Moment of Creation | Contemporary Curated | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
The Moment of Creation
Mirrored tile, black soap, wax, vinyl, cb radio, plant, books, oyster shells, shea butter, books, space rocks, ink jet photograph on glass
71 x 129 1/4 x 8 inches (180.3 x 328.3 x 20.3 cm)

The Moment of Creation references the 1983 published exploration of the Big Bang by James S. Trefil, which Johnson recontextualizes while approaching the history, science and Western theories regarding the origins of the universe in an abstracted form. Using botanical elements as a symbol for life and growth set at the heart of the ecosystem of the world, the work becomes an autobiographical journey through Johnson’s life, and in so doing presents a manifestation of a macrocosmic idea by way of the microcosm of the individual’s life. Mirrored-tile works from the 2010s, such as The Moment of Creation, exemplify the multiple facets of his own personal identity through assemblages of domestic items on mirrored shelves. Instances of shattered glass explore the power of rupture and order within an idealized form of the grid and are symbolic of the living intervention of the pre-established structures in our society. Although these compositions could appear suggestive of black culture, in general, certain elements point directly towards Johnson’s more personal experiences, such as the CB radio, a reference to Johnson’s father’s electronics business. Moreover, various allusions to self-discovery and the meaning of existence for the individual are dominant throughout the inclusion of books.

RASHID JOHNSON, ANTOINE’S ORGAN (DETAIL), 2016. INSTALLATION VIEW, UNLIMITED, ART BASEL, BASEL, 2018

The interest in Johnson’s Afrocentrism and the materials, musical and literary keystones of his own Afrocentric upbringing in the 1970s and 1980s are a constant source for much of his work. Black soap and shea butter are among the objects carefully arranged on the work’s shelves – personal objects referencing a period of time the artist spent in West Africa, where black soap is used for the cleansing of sensitive skin. Shea butter is similarly used and became a popular moisturizer within the African-American community in the 1970s, a token of the first era to celebrate African heritage and culture in America. This relationship to sensitivity is present in the work and incorporated as a signifier and healing substance, referencing the Black is Beautiful movement of that decade through items typically used in African beauty regimens, and suggesting the celebration of black culture as a curative measure for the ongoing struggles experienced by black Americans.

THE ARTIST INFRONT OF ONE OF HIS MIRROR WORKS

In a visually engaging way, Johnson also incorporates the viewer’s personal identity through the mirrored elements – in them, the viewer’s identity is always being captured and cannot be ignored while in the presence of the work. Furthermore, these mirrors allow self-reflection and self-identification to the objects, thus opening up a conversation about the history of black culture in relation to the greater society. Each chosen object, therefore, brings its own references and associations to the work, while at the same time coming together as a whole as a form of realism: one person’s story never exists in isolation; rather, it is part of narratives told by various people at many different points in history.

The Wave, 2014

Sotheby’s London: 13 April 2021
Estimated: GBP 120,000 – 180,000
GBP 680,500 / USD 935,009

The Wave | Contemporary Curated | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

RASHID JOHNSON (b. 1977)
The Wave, 2014
Black soap and wax on burnt red oak flooring, in 6 parts
Each: 120 1/2 x 34 1/4 inches (306×87 cm)
Overall: 306 by 522 cm. 120 1/2 x 205 1/2 inches (306×522 cm)

Rashid Johnson’s The Wave belongs to a series of paintings that center around themes of escapism and anxiety, subjects of poignant relevance in today’s quasi tumultuous pandemic climate. Indeed, there is an air of apprehension discernible in Johnson’s scratchy, agitated aesthetic; a style that is simultaneously provocative of Jean Dubuffet and Jean-Michel Basquiat, in which maniacal mark making is at the heart of the picture plane. In the present work, large expanses of silky black pigment are adorned with scores of Abstract Expressionist slashes, in turn demonstrating an affinity to the post-war Art Brut movement; primitive and child-like in execution, yet extremely profound in its insight into the human psyche. Split into six panels, Johnson offers the viewer half a dozen anthropomorphic forms, regimented and called to attention. The dizzying and chaotic nests located in their ‘heads’ and ‘torsos’, suggest a palpable and visceral crisis of sorts.

In reflecting on his fruitless searches for other Black faces in the museum quality paintings that he visited during his youth, Johnson clarifies, ‘I gravitated towards the work that allowed me to see my own relationship to it and a lot of times that was through abstraction.’

“There’s a generation of black artists before me who made work specifically about the black experience. But I think for my generation, having grown up in the age of hip-hop and Black Entertainment Television, there’s less of a need to define the black experience so aggressively to a white audience. I think it gives us a different type of opportunity to have a more complex conversation around race and identity. It’s not a weapon for me, it’s more of an interest.”

Born in Chicago in 1977, Johnson is among an influential cadre of contemporary American artists whose work employs a wide range of media to explore themes of art history, individual and shared cultural identities, personal narratives, literature, and critical history. After studying in the photography department of the Art Institute of Chicago, Johnson’s practice quickly expanded to embrace a wide range of media – including sculpture, painting, drawing, filmmaking, and installation – yielding a complex multidisciplinary practice that incorporates diverse materials rich with symbolism and personal history. Johnson achieved critical acclaim following the pivotal Black Art exhibition curated by the celebrated Thelma Golden at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2001. Since then, Johnson has moved to New York, where he resides, and his work has been exhibited around the world. In the Autumn of 2021, Johnson will have a major show opening at Hauser & Wirth’s London galleries (6 October–23 December).

 

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Prints

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WORK IN PROGRESS

Untitled (Anxious Man), 2018

Phillips London: 24 January 2026
Estimated: GBP 7,000 – 9,000
GBP 16,770 / USD 22,625

Rashid Johnson Evening & Day Editions

RASHID JOHNSON
Untitled (Anxious Man), 2018
Etching on Somerset Velvet paper
Sheet: 23-7/8 x 19-7/8 inches (60.5 x 50.4 cm)
Signed, dated and numbered 18/35 in pencil on the reverse
(there were also 9 artist’s proofs)
Published by Hauser & Wirth, New York