Rashid Johnson – Untitled Anxious Print

Rashid Johnson's Untitled Anxious Print (2023) is a signed limited edition etching from his celebrated Anxious Men series — one of the most significant and recognisable bodies of work in contemporary American art. The composition presents a grid of four faces rendered in urgent, looping black lines, each figure compressed within a rectangular frame, features repeatedly overwritten and destabilised. The agitated mark-making conveys psychological intensity, while the repetition of the grid suggests something beyond the individual: a shared, collective state of unrest.

The series began around 2015 as an intensely personal exploration — the faces are self-portraits of sorts, born from Johnson's own experience of anxiety. But the artist has described coming to the realisation that his anxiety "was not mine exclusively," and the work evolved into a broader meditation on the collective psychological burden carried by Black men in America during a period defined by police violence and mass incarceration. Stripped of colour and reduced to black ink on white paper, Untitled Anxious Print distils that tension between the private and the political into its most immediate form.

Issued in 2023 in a limited edition of 100, the etching is hand-signed and numbered in pencil by the artist. It is presented in its original portfolio case and accompanied by a hardcover book, underscoring its place within a broader conceptual framework in Johnson's print practice.

Rashid Johnson's Untitled Anxious Print is a powerful limited edition print from his celebrated Anxious Men series, featuring a grid of four distorted faces rendered in thick, urgent black lines. The repeated visages, drawn with frenetic energy, convey psychological intensity and emotional unrest. Through this stark black-on-white composition, Johnson amplifies themes of anxiety, vulnerability, and collective tension, transforming a simple graphic structure into a charged meditation on identity and mental states. The raw immediacy of the mark-making underscores the work's emotional force, making the print both intimate and confrontational.

Rashid Johnson (born 1977, Chicago) is a leading contemporary American artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans painting, sculpture, film, installation, and printmaking. Internationally recognized for his exploration of race, identity, and the African American experience, Johnson frequently incorporates culturally resonant materials such as shea butter, black soap, wax, wood, and plants. Recurring motifs including faces, books, and vegetation function as symbols of knowledge, resilience, and psychological depth. His artworks are held in major museum collections worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, affirming his central role in contemporary art.