This minimal painting by James Little is part of a limited series of works the artist made especially for the exhibition Malcolm X: Man, Ideal, Icon, which invited a select group of artists, including Little, Glenn Ligon, and others, to examine Malcolm X as a historical figure through their work. Little’s response was to create a series of paintings consisting of four triangular shaped canvases conjoined into a single frame, creating a disjoined composition unified by the form of a black X.

Malcolm X: Man, Ideal, Icon was initiated by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, and then traveled to Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; The Valentine Richmond History Center, Richmond, VA; Anacostia Museum, Washington, DC; Nexus Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA.

Though unique among the rest of his oeuvre, this small series is a definitive representation of the Little’s distinctive abstract aesthetic language, which is rooted in geometric shapes and patterns, flat surfaces, and emotive color relationships. It also elucidates the visually stunning material properties of Little’s career-long exploration of handmade painting mediums. Working in his New York studio, Little utilizes a method similar to the encaustic painting technique used by ancient Egyptian and Greek artists, blending handmade pigments and binders with hot beeswax. A time-consuming and elaborate process, it allows Little the agency to create completely distinctive hues from hand-ground pigments and custom binding ingredients.