In Memoriam: Faith Ringgold
Make your art what you want it to be. And I did that. So all my work is there – I don’t have anything waiting in the corner that I’d like to show. No, I think I’ve got it all out there. – Faith Ringgold
American painter, author, sculptor, and activist Faith Ringgold passed away at the age of 93 on April 13, 2024. Her long life included a 70 year career as an artist, 80 awards and honors, and the publication of many books, including 7 for children. To honor this amazing and accomplished woman, I have chosen a small selection from her prolific output.
Ringgold is probably best known for her innovative story quilts, a medium she developed as a way of publishing her autobiographical and fictional writing. The use of quilting was also in line with a broader movement among women artists at this time to bring traditionally feminine crafts into the fine art world. In 1988, she began the quilt series Woman on a Bridge with Tar Beach. This quilt tells the story of the child Cassie Louise Lightfoot, who is seen lying on a blanket beside her brother on their apartment building’s roof. Cassie Louise is also seen flying above the George Washington Bridge. In 1991, Ringgold published Tar Beach as a picture book, using images from her quilts to illustrate it. The book received multiple awards and was the runner-up for the Caldecott Medal, the premier award for picture books in the United States. For Ringgold, flying symbolized absolute freedom and she often said the everyone could fly if they had something to reach for.
Born in Harlem in 1930, Ringgold grew up surrounded by the cultural richness of the Harlem Renaissance. Neighbors included musician Duke Ellington, writer Langston Hughes, and artist Aaron Douglas. Ringgold expressed herself through art from early childhood, encouraged by both her parents. Her father kept her supplied with artist’s tools and her mother, a fashion designer, inspired her to express herself as well as teaching her to sew, a skill that would eventually dominate Ringgold’s artistic career. When it came time to attend college, the aspiring artist went to City College of New York. Unfortunately in 1948, women’s choices of major were very limited and Ringgold was diverted from fine art into the art education program. Afterwards, she was grateful for that major as it allowed her to work as a public school teacher, enabling her to support her two daughters and continue working as a painter on the side.
… it was the 1960s and I could not act like everything was okay. I couldn't paint landscapes in the 1960s – there was too much going on. This is what inspired the American People Series. – Faith Ringgold
Begun in 1963, the American People Series was an opportunity for Ringgold to respond to the Civil Rights, anti-war, and Women’s Rights movements from her own perspective as a black woman. #18: The Flag Is Crying is an early example of the artist’s use of the American Flag to express her concerns and opinions, a theme she returned to many times. In this painting, three people appear trapped behind the red stripes and white stars of the flag. Two men, one black and one white, flank and join arms with a white woman. The contrast of violence and patriotism is painfully expressed by the dripping blood of the red stripes and black man’s shoulder. In 1970, Ringgold and two others organized an exhibition called “The People’s Flag Show.” The works in the show opposed the Vietnam War, many using the American flag. The three organizers were arrested for desecration of the flag, in spite of the fact that Jasper Johns and other artists had been using the flag as a subject for at least 15 years. Though they were quickly released, the three had to pay a fine.
Ringgold received her first public commission, for a painting to be hung at the Women’s Facility at Rikers Island Correctional Center. For the Women’s House depicts positive role models which the artist chose after interviewing some of the female inmates. The painting is considered Ringgold’s first feminist painting. The success of Ringgold’s painting led to the establishment of Art Without Walls, an organization to bring art to prisoners. In 2019, upon discovering the painting was deteriorating and exhibited in a little-visited hallway at Rikers Island, the artist requested the painting be transferred to the Brooklyn Museum where it can now be seen by a wider audience due to a long-term loan. In 1973, following the success of this commission and of her other works, Ringgold left her public school teaching job to focus on art-making full time.
Echoes of Harlem was the first quilt Ringgold created; made with the assistance of her mother, Willi Posey Jones, it was their last project together. One inspiration for the artist’s turn to quilting was her mother’s stories of enslaved ancestors being trained to quilt. The artist also claimed to prefer making quilts to traditional easel paintings because they were portable without assistance and also because she felt her practice was a rejection of white male-dominated art history. The thirty faces represent the diversity of appearance and expression to be encountered in Ringgold’s home community.
I am not a man or European and wanted to learn and express the lives of my sex and people — not others. So it is important to me to include my people in the conversation. These political and feminist works are more relevant today than ever — it’s important to keep the women’s movement and the social justice issues alive — keep it going. – Faith Ringgold
Between 1991 and 1997, Ringgold created The French Collection, a series of twelve story quilts recounting the fictional tale of a young Black woman named Willia Marie Simone who moves to Paris to work as an artist and model. One inspiration for the series lay in a 1959 trip to Europe the artist took with her mother and two daughters. Another inspiration was Ringgold’s knowledge of famous artists of the past whose works are referenced in many of the quilts in this series. This example depicts a group of women participating in a quilting bee in a sunflower field. To the right of the group stands a figure identifiable as Vincent Van Gogh from his straw hat, red beard, and the vase of flowers, all of which appear in famous paintings by Van Gogh. The quilters are all famous Black women admired by the artist: Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Madam C. J. Walker, Ida B. Wells, Mary McLeod Bethune, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Ella Baker.
Faith Ringgold is among the many excellent artists commissioned to design decorations for the subway stations of the New York City Transit system. The ten glass mosaic panels show landmark buildings with famous Harlem figures flying above them. As we know, flight symbolized freedom for Ringgold. In the detail shown, the building is the famed Apollo Theater; above it fly three women in evening gowns (Dinah Washington, Florence Mills, and Billie Holiday), a man in a blue suit (Ralph Cooper, founder of the Apollo’s amateur hour), and a grouping for four men in white suits (pop vocal group The Ink Spots).
Ringgold’s next quilt series was a kind of sequel to The French Collection. The American Collection includes twelve quilts which tell the story of Marlena Simone, the daughter of Willia Marie Simone, protagonist of the earlier series. Marlena, like her mother, has become an artist and the quilts in the series show Marlena’s paintings in a variety of contexts. In #4: Jo Baker’s Bananas, we see the artist at a museum opening reception, talking to a white man and woman while two black musicians entertain. Marlena’s painting depicts Josephine Baker, repeated five times, performing in her famous banana skirt at the Folies Bergère in Paris.
In 1992, Ringgold and her family purchased a home in Englewood, New Jersey where she hoped to build a new studio on the beautiful property. Her new neighbors were far from welcoming, leading to a prolonged legal fight over the planned construction, an experience which reminded the artist of the many racist barriers she had experienced in her career. Instead of responding with anger, the artist chose to create Coming to Jones Road, a story quilt series which looked back to all the ancestors whose struggles and victories had led to her own life. This panel shows the black silhouettes of escaping slaves moving through the woods “lit only by a chalk-white moon in a blood-red sky.”
I have tried to couple the beauty of this place with the harsh realities of its racist history to create a freedom series that turns all of the ugliness of spirit, past and present into something livable. – Faith Ringgold
In this interview from the Institute for Women’s Leadership and Rutgers University, created about seven years ago, Faith Ringgold discusses her life and art.
After I decided to be an artist, the first thing that I had to believe was that I, a Black woman, could penetrate the art scene, and that, further, I could do so without sacrificing one iota of my Blackness or my femaleness or my humanity. – Faith Ringgold
In her long, productive career, Faith Ringgold proved that it was indeed possible to rise to the heights of the art world without sacrificing any aspect of herself, all while working to improve the world for her fellow human beings.
Some very interesting and beautiful work.
Thank you so much for this wonderful tribute to Faith Ringgold. You offer a marvelous selection of her work, and the video is treasurable.