The title quotes the Declaration of Independence’s most famous promise, slightly adjusted: “pursuit of happy” rather than “pursuit of happiness,” the grammatical slip doing quiet critical work. The composition delivers its own version of that pursuit: a dense field of yellow life rings across blue water, collaged eyes scattered through the surface, partial faces and hands emerging through the rings, the individual present within the crowd but visible only in fragments. The question the title asks is whether the happiness was ever there to find.
The title quotes the Declaration of Independence’s most famous promise, slightly adjusted: “pursuit of happy” rather than “pursuit of happiness,” the grammatical slip doing quiet critical work. The composition delivers its own version of that pursuit: a dense field of yellow life rings across blue water, collaged eyes scattered through the surface, partial faces and hands emerging through the rings, the individual present within the crowd but visible only in fragments. The question the title asks is whether the happiness was ever there to find.
The scattered eyes introduce a watching quality absent from the other Spring Break works: the field is observed as well as occupied. In the Declaration, the right to pursue happiness is guaranteed; in the painting, the eyes watching from within the crowd suggest the pursuit is not private. Someone is always watching to see whether the immigrant has earned the right to float. The hands emerging between the rings reach but do not hold.
Pursuit of Happy SB #1 operates in the same register as Glenn Ligon’s engagement with American founding documents: the gap between the promise and the experience made visible through material, the Declaration’s democratic claims tested against the reality of exclusion. Here the test is conducted through image: life rings and collaged eyes, the crowd in the water still waiting for the happiness the title names.
