Rashid Johnson
Artist
June 1, 2026
One of the most influential American artists of this century, Rashid Johnson works across painting, sculpture, mosaic, photography, video, film, and installation. His preoccupations and influences are multiform: existential angst, Black intellectual history, Abstract Expressionism, Afrofuturism, Paul Beatty, and punk rock. The restless and wide-ranging interrogations within his art are reflected by the numerous disciplines he works in.
A major survey of Johnson’s work, spanning 30 years and nearly 90 works of art, is currently on view at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, following its presentation at the Guggenheim in 2025. Among other recent endeavors—directing a play staged in a Manhattan bathhouse, for example—he photographed Jay-Z for the April cover of GQ, taking visual inspiration from the painter Francis Bacon and the Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van Der Zee.
Decades into a supremely established career, Johnson has not lost creative stamina. His advice on this point is simple: “You just keep fucking doing it,” he said. These are the tools that are essential to his art.
