Warning shots not required, 2011

This epic history painting portrays Stanley “Tookie” Williams, the founder of LA’s Crips street gang, who was convicted of four counts of murder in 1981 and ultimately executed in 2005. A complicated figure in the culture of South LA and beyond—larger-than-life gangster, professional bodybuilder, and, in his later years, an advocate for anti-gang education—Williams served his death-row sentence at San Quentin. Basing his likeness on a famous photograph of Williams, Taylor paints him in front of a high prison wall, on which the work’s title phrase is clearly meant as a threat. Beneath the phrase, Taylor has spray-painted some other words. Perhaps they read “So they say,” a kind of meta-commentary on the prison’s warning, but they are partially obscured by overpainting, leaving only “So hey”— a phrase of tragicomic resignation.