The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of November 8, 2025

Frenzied mosaic made up of multi-color fractured tiles with predominantly square, black tiles outlining the square head and shoulders of a central figure. Solid oval eyes and a rectangular mouth occupy most of the face with colorful tiles cutting in, particularly green squares in the mouth. Below the shoulders dissolve into reds, blues, and yellows with predominantly white tiles making up the figure's background. Red, yellow, teal, and black wax scrawls over the tiles.

Standing Broken Men

2021

Rashid Johnson

(American, b. 1977)
America
Ceramic tile, mirror tile, branded red oak, bronze, spray enamel, oil stick, black soap, wax
240.7 x 186.7 x 7.6 cm (94 3/4 x 73 1/2 x 3 in.)
Gift of Agnes Gund in honor of Helena Huang 2021.161
© Rashid Johnson
Location: 229A Contemporary

Did You Know?

Standing Broken Men is composed of fine art and organic materials, all of which are common throughout Rashid Johnson’s work.

Description

At the center of a frenzied mosaic, an abstract, fractured figure stares, wide-eyed, out at the viewer. Standing Broken Men and a related series of mixed-media mosaic works grew out of Johnson’s Anxious Men and Anxious Audiences series (2015–18) in which the artist used frantic marks to render abstracted faces in gridded formations. As Standing Broken Men exemplifies, Johnson continues to make vivid the experience of anxiety, now composing figures through fragmented shards. Through this technique, brokenness is inherent in the figures and the pictorial worlds they inhabit. However, their pieces are reassembled into dynamic colorful wholes, suggesting the possibility for healing and renewal.
  • 2021
    Agnes Gund, New York, NY, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art
    2021–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • “Now on View.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 62, no. 1: Back cover. Reproduced and Mentioned: Back cover.
  • Contemporary Art Rotation - Spring 2022. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 1-September 25, 2022).
  • {{cite web|title=Standing Broken Men|url=false|author=Rashid Johnson|year=2021|access-date=08 November 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2021.161