All About Rashid Johnson
- Connor Remes
- Apr 25
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 25
Rashid Johnson just had a major blockbuster retrospective show open at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The art market has been buzzing about his work, though, for many years, and his career has been on a consistent build for the last decade. I particularly love how innovative he is with materials and how collectable the work is across various series.
Why buy Rashid Johnson?
🖼️ Major Guggenheim Retrospective
Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers just opened (April 18 2025–January 18 2026) at the Guggenheim in New York with robust attendance
🧑🏻🎨 Material Innovator
Produced a diverse array of series throughout his career with brilliant use of materials
🔵 Blue Chip Galleries
Representation with Hauser & Wirth, David Kordansky Gallery
🖼️ Important Museum Collections
Strong collection presence, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim, MoMA, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton
🧑🏻🎨 Cultural Relevance
Johnson's work resonates deeply with contemporary cultural issues, particularly those related to race and identity
📈 Strong Market Performance
Achieved significant auction results, with works like Surrender Painting "Sunshine" (2022) selling for $3 million, a record for Johnson at auction
🔑 Limited Availability
Johnson's works are often placed on waiting lists due to strong demand, with priority given to collectors who facilitate museum acquisitions
📈 Market Resilience
Even amid broader economic fluctuations, Johnson's artworks have maintained strong sales, reflecting the resilience and stability of his market presence
Rashid is an artist that has consistently innovated, played the long game, and intertwined personal narrative with broader cultural dialogues, which has created a lasting voice and portfolio. His work is highly desired around the world by numerous top museums, private foundations, and collectors alike.
Here are some of his most iconic series:
Anxious Man
Rashid Johnson's Anxious Men series stand as a hallmark of his career, and his most well-known motif. This series was made on paper, ceramic tile, and on canvas; the original Anxious Man works were made on ceramic tile. First introduced around 2015, the series features repeatedly rendered faces—wide-eyed, frantic, and often appearing to scream or tremble—drawn with aggressive, urgent lines. The Anxious Man motif appears in a white colored series as Surrender Paintings, and in a blue colored series as Bruise Paintings (more on those below).
These faces, which Johnson has referred to as self-portraits of sorts, represent both his own struggles with anxiety and a broader reflection on the collective psychological burden carried by Black men in contemporary society. Executed with oil stick on surfaces such as white ceramic tile or linen, and often incorporating culturally significant materials like black soap and wax, the works evoke the sterile environment of institutions like bathrooms or mental health clinics while simultaneously referencing African diasporic rituals of cleansing and healing.
The Anxious Man works on paper typically bring around $300k - $500k at auction; red performs quite well in particular. Works on ceramic tile generally fall in medium scale generally bring around $400k - $600; monumental scale works on tile range more around $1m - $1.2m.
Bruise Paintings
Evolving from the Anxious Men series, the Bruise Paintings introduce the Anxious Man motif in a palette dominated by deep blues and blacks. These works maintain the grid-like structure of their predecessors but delve deeper into themes of trauma and healing. The title "Bruise" alludes to both physical and emotional wounds, capturing the aftermath of pain and the process of recovery. Johnson employs a unique pigment called “Black and Blue,” further emphasizing the duality of suffering and resilience .
Large-scale bruise paintings typically fetch in the range of $1.5m - $2m at auction.
Surrender Paintings
The Surrender Paintings represent a further transformation, both in aesthetic and conceptual terms. Characterized by swirling white marks on raw linen, these works exude a sense of lightness and openness. While maintaining the grid motif, the series departs from the intense emotionality of earlier works, suggesting themes of acceptance and reconciliation. Johnson describes these paintings as "cathartic," embodying a release from the burdens depicted in previous series . The use of white paint and unprimed canvas evokes a sense of purity and possibility, inviting viewers into a space of contemplation and hope.
Surrender paintings have rarely come to auction; the record, however, for Rashid's work is in fact a Surrender painting, with a record of $3m.
Cosmic Slop
The Cosmic Slop series, initiated in 2008, marks a pivotal moment in his exploration of material and identity. Each work in the series features thick, textured black surfaces created from a signature blend of black soap and wax—a material combination Johnson has consistently used for its symbolic resonance within African diasporic communities. The title references a 1973 funk song by George Clinton and Funkadelic, embedding the series within a lineage of Afrofuturist thought. These viscous surfaces are carved, scraped, and incised with gestural marks, forming abstract compositions that recall cosmic topographies, ritualistic scarring, and improvised languages. The results are visually dense and tactile, creating the impression of something primordial, both ancient and futuristic.
These works range around $100k - $200k at auction.
Escape Collage
Emerging around 2016, the series extends Johnson’s ongoing interest in themes of anxiety, identity, and historical memory, but with a more optimistic and transportive tone. These works are constructed with layers of materials such as black soap, wax, mirrored tiles, ceramic pieces, and tropical imagery, all framed within geometric gridded structures. The central motif is the idea of “escape” — not as literal flight, but as a psychological and spiritual act of liberation. Lush photographic cutouts of palm trees and ocean vistas evoke utopian dreams or diasporic returns, while the fragmented surfaces signal that escape is never seamless or uncomplicated. In their structure, the Escape Collages draw from both modernist abstraction and Afrofuturist imagination, inviting viewers to consider the complexities of freedom, place, and the possibility of renewal through self-reinvention and cultural memory.
Broken Man
Rashid Johnson’s Broken Men series extends his investigation into Black identity, vulnerability, and psychological struggle. Debuting around 2018, the series features fractured, abstracted male figures rendered with expressive linework on tiled, often mirrored surfaces—materials emblematic of Johnson’s practice. The "broken" nature of these figures, etched into or layered atop a gridded background, alludes to both personal and collective trauma. By deconstructing the human form, Johnson challenges dominant narratives of masculinity, especially within the context of Black life in America. The works are raw yet reflective, their fragmented forms suggesting both pain and the possibility of reconstruction. With their reflective surfaces, the Broken Men pieces also implicate the viewer, creating a visual dialogue between observer and subject. In this way, the series transcends portraiture, becoming a psychological mirror that grapples with themes of identity, loss, and the ongoing pursuit of wholeness in a fractured world.
Seascapes
Rashid has recently transitioned to the Seascape paintings around 2020. In these works, Johnson employs oil on linen, often coating the canvas entirely with deep blue hues. He then engages in a process of removal, wiping away and scratching into the paint to reveal shapes reminiscent of rowboats. This technique creates a textured surface that evokes the vastness and depth of the sea, symbolizing both physical journeys and internal emotional landscapes. The recurring boat motif in these works serves multiple symbolic purposes. It represents vessels of escape, autonomy, and individualism, reflecting on historical narratives of migration and journey.
Only one Seascape work has come to auction; it was a smaller work, and brought $400k.
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