Faith Ringgold

(b New York, 8 Oct 1930). American painter and sculptor. She studied with Robert Gwathmey (b 1903) and Yasuo Kuniyoshi at City College of New York, and was awarded her MA in 1959. Her first mature works were made between 1963 and 1967 and evolved into her American People series. These paintings were concerned with civil rights and other political issues that affected African Americans and women, as in Advent of Black Power (1967), which was the design for a US postage stamp. Ringgold was one of the first people to challenge discrimination against women in art exhibitions, and she helped to organize the Ad Hoc Committee, which put pressure on museums to include women. She was also in Women and Students for Black Liberation, an organization that agitated for black women to be included in exhibitions. Out of this organization grew another, called Where We At, made up of black women artists exhibiting in New York. After completing a large mural portraying successful women at the Women's House of Detention on Rikers Island, New York, Ringgold changed her way of working. She started to make paintings on cloth (e.g. Wedding Lover's Quilt No. 1 (acrylic on canvas, tie-dyed, painted, pieced fabric, 1986) and soft sculpture (e.g. Mrs Jones and Family, mixed media, 1973) that could be transported easily and used for lectures and performances. These works took the African American woman as their subject and investigated her historical position, using African art forms to express the ideas. From 1973 Ringgold's mother, Willi Posey, collaborated in the making of the objects, often designing and making the clothes for the cloth figures.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Faith Ringgold (born 1930) was known for paintings, sculpture, and performances which expressed her experience as an Afro-American woman.

Faith Ringgold was born Faith Jones on October 8, 1930, in Harlem Hospital, New York City, the daughter of city truck driver Louis Jones and Willi Posey Jones, a dress designer. She lived all her life in Harlem, where she studied education at the City College of New York in the 1950s. Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Robert Gwathmey, two exponents of figurative painting at that time, were her teachers. Ringgold taught art in the New York City public school system from her graduation until 1973. Married twice, she had two daughters and divided her time between New York and a teaching position at the University of California at San Diego after the mid-1970s.

In the early 1960s Ringgold began to make overtly political paintings, in part inspired by reading James Baldwin and Amiri Baraka (then Le Roi Jones), who wrote of their lives as black men within a white American culture. She made a series of paintings entitled The American People, followed by the mural The Flag Is Bleeding and a large painting, U.S. Postage Stamp Commemorating the Advent of Black Power, which consisted of 100 frames of human faces cropped to reveal only eyes and noses. Presented in a grid, like a sheet of postage stamps, ten percent of the faces were black, reflecting the percentage of black Americans in the population at large. In the early 1970s Ringgold completed a series of Slave Rape paintings in which female figures, the victims of rape, were presented in lush brocade frames, inspired by Tibetan wall hangings. All her work of this period was figurative, executed in a simplified, cubist-like style which Ringgold claimed to be a derivation of African art.

By the mid-1970s she was making masks, heads of women she had known, which then evolved into large full size portraits made of stuffed fabric entitled The Harlem Series. These were of prominent Harlem residents such as politician Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and basketball player Wilt Chamberlain, as well as southerner Martin Luther King, Jr., who was by then dead. Her mother helped her sew these portrait-sculptures made of foam rubber, coconut heads and yarn wigs, which later became props and characters in performances she created in collaboration with her two daughters, who wrote stories and scripts. In 1981 Ringgold made an assemblage sculpture about the chain of slayings of Black children in Atlanta, Georgia, in which she placed small stuffed figures bound in wire, each with the name and photo of a victim, against a white background, suggesting a chess board on which the children were pawns.

Later she made a series of narrative quilts, in appreciation of traditional women's handiwork, which contain pictures accompanied by texts telling their stories. One is titled "Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima?" and another "Street Story," which tells the story of a ghetto boy who goes through a series of family tragedies to finally become a wealthy writer in Hollywood, accompanied by pictures of the physical decline of the apartment building in which he grew up. She also worked on performances to accompany her story quilts.

Throughout her career as an artist Faith Ringgold was always politically involved in black and feminist issues. In 1966 she participated in the first black art exhibition in Harlem after its renaissance in the 1930s along with Romare Bearden, Ernie Crichlow, Norman Lewis, and Betty Blayton. In 1968 she joined the Art Workers' Coalition with critic Lucy Lippard and sculptor Carl Andre and demonstrated for the inclusion of Afro-American artists in exhibitions and purchases by major New York museums. In 1970 she participated in the Ad Hoc Woman's Art Group, which successfully pressured the Whitney Museum of American Art to include for the first time in its history the work of two black women artists - Barbara Chase-Riboud and Betye Saar - in its Sculpture Biennial. During that same year she was arrested for organizing "The People's Flag Show" at the Judson Church, which protested against laws governing the use of the image of the American flag. In 1985 she participated in the Guerrilla Girls all-woman exhibition at the Palladium in New York.

Although she always lived in New York and was knowledgable about contemporary art, Ringgold's work, like her life in Harlem, remained decidedly apart from what was generally considered mainstream American art. Because she was intent on using her life experience as a black woman living in a black subculture as the basis for her work, she was often overlooked or excluded by the art establishment, which was primarily white and male and whose aesthetics most often express these characteristics either directly or indirectly. This was especially true in the late 1960s when abstract art was the prominent manifestation of the notion of mainstream art.

The political ferment of the late 1960s caused considerable upheaval in the New York art world, and many artists collectively demanded that public institutions and museums expand their programs to include a broader range of art, to show and purchase artwork by artists outside the "mainstream." New galleries opened, often publically funded, whose intention was not to sell or buy art but to show significant art that existed outside of the established system of commercial galleries and museums, which were often closed to outsiders.

Faith Ringgold participated in many of these protest activities and usually showed her work in alternative places. In 1967 and 1970 she had one-person shows at Spectrum Gallery in New York, an artist-run gallery in which she was the first black to participate. She was the subject of a ten-year retrospective exhibition at Rutgers University in 1973 and of a 20-year retrospective at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1984 and at the College of Wooster Art Museum in 1985.

She received numerous awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Award in 1987, and the Moore College of Fine Art's Honorary Doctorate Award in 1986. In 1991 Crown Press published her book Tar Beach, which she wrote and illustrated, and the following year published her book Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in The Sky.

Further Reading

While there is no complete monograph on her work, a short catalog was published in conjunction with her show at the College of Wooster titled Faith Ringgold: Painting, Sculpture, Performance (1985). Chapters about her were included in Lucy Lippard's From the Center (1976) and in Eleanor Munro's Originals: American Women Artists (1979). Ringgold published an essay, "Being My Own Woman," in Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women (1983), edited by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Amina Baraka, and has been included in many documentary videotapes, including "Art Protest Movement," made by the Archives of American Art and the Smithsonian Institution, and "Black Artists in America," made by Oakley Holmes, Jr. Perhaps because of her position as an outsider in the art world and due to the fact that most of her exhibitions and performances have happened outside of established galleries and museums, critical response to her work is found in the general press rather than in art magazines. Articles on Faith Ringgold have appeared in The Washington Post (1979), Ms. Magazine (1979), the Village Voice (1981), the New York Times Magazine (1982), and the Christian Science Monitor (1984).

painter; quiltmaker; sculptor; educator; writer

Personal Information

Born October 8, 1930, in New York, NY; daughter of Andrew Louis, Sr., and Willi (a fashion designer; maiden name, Posey) Jones; married Robert Earl Wallace, 1950 (divorced, 1956); married Burdette Ringgold, May 19, 1962; children: (first marriage) Michele Faith, Barbara Faith.
Education: City College of New York, B.S., 1955, M.A., 1959.

Career

Multimedia artist; author. Taught art in New York City public schools, 1955-73; joined Spectrum Gallery, 1966; first one-person show, 1967; cofounder, "Where We At" black artists group, 1971; participant in first American Women Artists Show, Hamburg, Germany, 1972; ten-year retrospective, Voorhees Gallery, Rutgers University, 1973; 20-year retrospective, Studio Museum in Harlem, 1984; University of California at San Diego, visiting associate professor, 1984, professor, 1985--; joined Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, New York City, 1986; story quilts exhibited in one-person show, 1987; solo retrospective, Simms Fine Art Gallery of New Orleans and four university museums, 1989; 13-museum tour of Faith Ringgold: A 25 Year Survey, curated by Fine Art Museum of Long Island, 1990-93.

Life's Work

On her storytelling quilt Tar Beach and in her self-illustrated children's book of the same name, fiber artist Faith Ringgold depicts her eight-year-old heroine soaring above the clouds over Harlem, reveling in the joy and freedom of fantasy. Oblivious to her supernatural feat, the young girl's family and neighbors play cards below, grounded on their tenement rooftop. The little girl's domain dazzles the eye; seemingly without limit, it is truly a "world of living color." "Anyone can fly," she explains. "All you need is somewhere to go that you can't get to any other way. The next thing you know, you're flying among the stars."

Although not strictly autobiographical, Ringgold's "story quilts," as she calls them, are pieced together from fragments of the artist's past. Assemblages of fantasy and fact, they embody a belief system basic to her personal philosophy. Anything is possible, Tar Beach tells us, with determination, discipline, and a little bit of magic.

If the artist's professional life is any indication, Tar Beach 's message is not merely a flight of fancy. Epitomizing the self-made woman, Ringgold is widely respected not only as an accomplished artist, but also as a spirited activist, who has effectively championed black and feminist causes. In her 25 years of professional activity, Ringgold has proven herself adept at navigating the stars.

Born in 1930, Faith Ringgold grew up in Harlem, not far from her current residence. She recalled her childhood as "positive and uplifting" in an interview with Eleanor Flomenhaft for Faith Ringgold: A 25 Year Survey, speaking fondly of her "fun-loving" father and fashion designer mother, whom she views as a role model. "My mother was a woman who knew how to take care of everything; her house, the kids. And she also had the time to develop her own skills," Ringgold told Flomenhaft. "She was fabulous. In some ways, I try to be something like her."

Ringgold discovered art as a child--a ready diversion from frequent attacks of asthma. She developed her skills as a young adult through formal training at the City College of New York, where she enrolled in 1950. City College gave Ringgold a solid technical foundation for her work but failed to provide stylistic inspiration. "They taught us art in a traditional way," she told Flomenhaft. "We copied Greek busts; we copied Degas; we copied everything. It was generally thought that we weren't experienced enough to be original, and if we were original we were sometimes up for ridicule." Unable to identify with "dead art from dead times," she began a search for an aesthetic that more closely reflected her sense of self--a black aesthetic.

After her graduation in 1955, Ringgold assumed a teaching post in the New York City public school system, a position she would retain until 1973. Through the teaching of children, she gained a freedom of expression that would become characteristic of her style. "I attribute a lot of my learning to paint to teaching children," she admitted in David Irving's video Faith Ringgold: The Last Story Quilt.

By 1959 Ringgold had completed a masters degree in art at City College, and she continued her search for a personal aesthetic. Though she traveled throughout Europe during the 1960s, Ringgold found her inspiration in African art, particularly in its "symmetry, repetition, pattern-making and polyrhythms," she noted in the video. Ringgold copied works of African art to learn about design, and she eventually created her own distinctive style. "I would mix European training with my African origins--and that would be my American art," she explained. "My art became not African art, but African-American art ... an expression of African-American, female experience." Ringgold dubbed this phase of her work "superrealistic."

The civil rights era gave rise to a distinctly black art movement that focused on the human condition--contrary to the abstract postmodern trend that had previously dominated the art scene in the United States. "Black artists synthesized a new stylistic language from the African-American experience, creating a new dimension in American art," said Barry E. Gaither, museum director for the National Center of Afro-American Artists, in an interview with Ebony magazine. "Black art ... has kept American art conscious of the ways in which art is inspired by the human struggle."

Ringgold readily found her niche in the budding movement, developing a political voice that would be evident in her work for years to come. Exploring the timely issues of race, class, and gender in her superrealist style, she created a series of paintings incorporating politically potent images that Lowery Sims, associate curator of twentieth-century art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, called "American icons." The power of her images was to be found in their stylization. "I wanted people to feel that they were looking at themselves," Ringgold told Flomenhaft. "I wanted it to be realistic, but I also knew that in order for me to paint black people in the way that I needed to, they had to have a certain abstract quality. That was when I decided I would not paint chiaroscuro, painting light and shade ... and that's also when I began painting flat."

The expression of Ringgold's concern with issues of race and gender was not limited to the canvas. During the late 1960s, she became known as a black feminist activist, lobbying for fair representation in New York City's major museums of modern art. In 1968 Ringgold initiated the first demonstration of black artists at the Whitney Museum, and in 1970 she participated in demonstrations of the Ad Hoc Women's Art Group there. The next year, she cofounded the black artists group "Where We At."

By 1972 Ringgold had established a name for herself in international art circles, participating in the first American Women Artists Show in Hamburg, Germany. And back home at New York's Museum of Modern Art, Ringgold was at the forefront of a movement to create a wing for the work of African-American artists. That effort resulted in the addition of two black members to the museum's board of trustees and two major exhibitions of work by African-Americans.

Around the same time, Ringgold made her first foray into the medium of fiber--inspired by tankas, Tibetan paintings framed in cloth. Throughout the 1970s she explored this medium further in a series of politically motivated soft sculptures. The artist later used these works in her masked interpretive performances, which were staged throughout the United States and abroad. And by the early 1980s, Ringgold was making her first story quilts.

Literally speaking for themselves, the story quilts incorporate written narratives into vibrant collages of fabric. Ringgold paints images and accompanying text directly onto the fabric, making the quilt her canvas. "The story quilts grew out of my need to tell stories not with pictures or symbols alone, but with words," noted the artist in Faith Ringgold: A 25 Year Survey. That need was rooted in a strong oral tradition that was both cultural and personal. Ringgold grew up surrounded by storytellers. Her father "did his public speaking in the bar," she said in Irving's video. "He told stories, my mother told stories, everybody told stories."

Ringgold's attraction to quiltmaking was inspired in part by her mother, Willi Posey, a fashion designer with whom she would collaborate on many fiber projects. It also grew out of a tradition of quiltmaking in the African-American community. "The African-American woman is credited with the beginning of quiltmaking in America," Ringgold explained in Faith Ringgold: A 25 Year Survey. Drawing on her African heritage, she has always fashioned her quilts with care, making their exquisite design and craftsmanship worthy of emulation.

In keeping with that tradition, Ringgold labored over her quilts, creating decorative works that radiated a surreal whimsy. Although seemingly fanciful, Ringgold's quilts tell tales of a serious nature--exploring the political issues that have always been at the heart of her work. She began tackling those issues with a lighter touch in her later works. In the Women on a Bridge series, for example, Ringgold depicts her women in flight, drawing on a traditional African-American metaphor for freedom. Conquering bridges from New York to San Francisco, they exude an air of joyous celebration, undaunted by the enormity of their targets. "The bridge idea was significant to me," Ringgold told Flomenhaft. The Women on a Bridge series centers on "women's courage, women doing great creative, exciting things, which I paralleled with the painting of a bridge."

In 1988 Tar Beach-- the first of the Women on a Bridge series--made its debut at New York City's Bernice Steinbaum Gallery. Andrea Cascardi, an editor at Crown Books for Young Readers, saw a poster of the piece and was attracted to its potential as a picture book for children of all ages. Ringgold was more than amenable to the idea. Her story quilts, in fact, were born of the desire to publish. "Telling my stories on quilts seemed an excellent opportunity to get my work published without dealing with publishers, editors or anyone else," she explained to Publishers Weekly. "Anyone who saw my art would automatically get the story as well."

The publication of the book Tar Beach in 1991 represents only the most recent addition to an impressive resume. Since the mid-1980s Ringgold has distinguished herself as a professor of art at the University of California at San Diego. She has also been in demand for commissioned work and currently has pieces in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the High Museum of Atlanta, as well as in corporate and private collections.

Awards

American Association of University Women Award for travel to Africa, 1976; National Endowment for the Arts awards, 1978, for sculpture, and 1989, for painting; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 1987; New York Foundation for the Arts Award, 1988; Henry Clews Foundation Award for painting in the South of France, 1990; Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award and Caldecott Honor Book Award, both 1992, for Tar Beach.

Works

Writings

• "Being My Own Woman" (part one of autobiography), published in Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women, edited by Amiri Baraka and Amina Baraka, Morrow, 1983.
• Tar Beach (self-illustrated children's book), Crown, 1991.
• Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky (self-illustrated children's book), Crown, 1993.

Further Reading

Books

• Faith Ringgold: A 25 Year Survey, edited by Eleanor Flomenhaft, Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, 1990.
• Miller, Lynn, and Sally S. Swenson, Lives and Works: Talks with Women Artists, Simon & Schuster, 1981.
• Ringgold, Faith, Tar Beach, Crown, 1991.

• American Craft, February/March 1989.
• Ann Arbor News, March 29, 1992.
• Art in America, January 1991.
• ARTnews, February 1989.
• Ebony, August 1991.
• Entertainment Weekly, February 8, 1991.
• Instructor, May/June 1991.
• Life, June 1989.
• New York, February 18, 1991.
• New York Times Book Review, February 24, 1991.
• Publishers Weekly, February 15, 1991.
• Additional information for this profile was obtained from the video Faith Ringgold: The Last Story Quilt, written and edited by David Irving, 1990.

— Nina Goldstein

For more information on Faith Ringgold, visit Britannica.com.

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