In one of its famous works from 1988, the Guerrilla Girls collective sarcastically explained the advantages of being a female artist. Among the “privileges” granted, they named the fact of “knowing that your career could take off when you are over eighty”. These days in New York, one can see that the thought of these women still resonates in an equally relevant way by visiting this retrospective of the African-American artist Faith Ringgold, now 91 years old. This is a major museum event in the Big Apple at the start of 2022.
Long despised by the art world, unable to find a gallery to represent her or even exhibit her temporarily, Ringgold fought. She denounced the absence of women — and black women in particular — in art galleries and museums. In the 1960s and 1970s, she also took the opportunity to criticize the silence of the official art milieu regarding the civil rights movement, but also regarding the Vietnam War.
The arts community, which thinks itself so progressive, is perhaps much more conservative and even retrograde at times than one might think. In an interview for the Tate Modern in London, Ringgold even explained that society “discouraged artists from telling about what African Americans were facing at that time. It was not a pretty picture of the United States. And those who wanted to show it were not exposed […] “.
Another American Story
Ringgold’s work took its real aesthetic flight in 1963, when she produced paintings on social inequities as well as segregation in the United States. Ringgold recounts how, in the early 1960s, she did not understand what the activist Stokely Carmichael was talking about when on television, we heard him discuss Black Power: “How could black people have power? ! ? She then produced oil paintings showing the intimidation of which she was the object, but also the racial violence of an America oppressing its black minority.
This challenge is even reflected in the colors she used. Ringgold used a color palette consisting of green, black, red, brown, purple, gray and blue, where we can see a connection to an aesthetic valued by the Black Power movement. In the same spirit, we will also note how the artist David Hammons created, in 1990, a green, black and red American flag, drawing inspiration from the colors of several flags of African countries.
In oils on canvas with powerful titles, such as Black Light Series #8: Red White Black Nigger (1969), Black Light Series #10 : Flag for the Moon : die nigger (1969), or American People Series #18: The Flag Is Bleeding (1967), the red, white and blue of the American flag no longer embody the notion of freedom. The red there becomes a pool of flowing blood. Blue and brown spots evoke bruises on bodies.
And we will also admire all her work with quilts and installations made of fabric dolls that she made from the 1970s. And we should also talk about the children’s books that she wrote, including Tar Beach which tells the story of a little girl living in Harlem.
An extraordinary work that deserves this imposing retrospective.