The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 19, 2025

Black-inked print with frenzied, charcoal-like strokes creating and shading in a square head and neck with a rectangle mouth, two large oval eyes, and a small circle nose. The features have been drawn frenetically with zig-zag motions shading in the mouth and swirls the eyes. Scribbly loops overlay the entirety of the face and page.

Untitled Anxious Man

2018
(American, b. 1977)
printer
(American)
publisher
Matted: 86.5 x 61.1 x 0.3 cm (34 1/16 x 24 1/16 x 1/8 in.); Image: 60.5 x 50.5 cm (23 13/16 x 19 7/8 in.)
© Rashid Johnson
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Rashid Johnson created this print by making repetitive, jagged marks that echoed his subject’s mood into the waxy surface of a softground etching plate.

Description

Contemporary artist Rashid Johnson draws on the traditions of painting and conceptual art to explore the lived experiences of African American men. This print belongs to a series that began as an exploration of the artist’s own anxieties but grew to express the experiences of young black men during a time marked by police violence and mass incarceration. In the artist’s words, “I . . . realiz[ed] that my anxiety was not mine exclusively.”
  • 2018-2020
    (Hauser & Wirth, New York, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    2020-
    Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Peters, Emily J. and Salsbury, Britany. “Rashid Johnson: A set of deeply personal etchings explore the artist's own anxiety and in turn speak more broadly to the experiences of Black men in America.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 60, no. 4 (Fall 2020): 18-19. Reproduced: P. 18; Mentioned: P. 18-19.
  • New Narratives: Contemporary Works on Paper. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 19, 2023-April 14, 2024).
  • {{cite web|title=Untitled Anxious Man|url=false|author=Rashid Johnson, Jennifer Melby, Hauser & Wirth, Inc.|year=2018|access-date=19 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2020.77