Faith Ringgold: Artist for the People

Ranked with Jackson Pollock by the National Gallery of Art -- Faith Ringgold, 8 October 1930 - 12 April 2024

May 01, 2024

When, in 21 October 2021, the National Gallery of Art acquired Faith Ringgold’s The Flag is Burning (1967), a senior National Gallery curator, Harry Cooper, breathlessly claimed that,

“This may well be the most important purchase of a single work of contemporary art since the National Gallery acquired Jackson Pollock’s No. 1 1950 (Lavender Mist) in 1976.”

Between 1963-1967, Faith Ringgold had created a series of 20 oil paintings, American People, of which American People Series #18 (The Flag is Burning — 1967) whose canvas is an American Flag, with the red stripes dripping blood, and three persons are arm-in-arm: A blond woman in dress in the middle; a white man in suit at the right; and a black man, clasping his fatally bleeding heart with his right hand — a gesture that ironically mimics The Pledge of Allegiance, while his left arm is clasped by the woman and his hand holds a knife.

The final in the series is equally disturbing, namely American People Series #20 (Die — 1967), which has in tone been compared to Picasso’s Guernica. In “Die” (1967) depicts terror in the streets, with panicked fleeing from the scene of shooting, the persons (six black, seven white) — women, men, children — bleed and their faces express deep horror, evoking the vividness of Pablo Picasso’s war paintings.

The Camden Civil Rights Project lets Faith Ringgold describe for herself, what she intended:

Ringgold wanted us to look at the realities of race in this country — the pain and brutality of it — but she found no ready audience. “It was what was going on in America and I wanted them to look at these paintings and see themselves. … I wanted to create art that made people stop and look. You’ve got to get ’em and hold ’em: The more they look, the more they see.”

As vivid as Ms. Ringgold’s artistry was, she campaigned for civil rights in other ways, not least in protest over underrepresentation in leading American museums.

In her obituary of 13 April 2024, Margalit Fox (New York Times) reported on Ms. Ringgold’s stance before the museums:

In 1968, Ms. Ringgold helped organize a protest by Black artists, long marginalized by the art establishment, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Two years later, she took part in a protest at the Museum of Modern Art centering on women artists.
“Today, some 25 years later,” she wrote in 1995, “nothing much has changed at the Modern except which white man gets the next show.”
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She also embarked on her “Slave Rape” series, a set of paintings depicting the fate of Black women in the antebellum South, which she framed with borders of patterned cloth.

There is so much more to a great artist who just passed away at 93 years of age. Faith Ringgold shows us our own nation’s history of cruelty, especially to blacks, in flat, two-dimensional, dramatically accented warm colors that glare from the canvas.

The narratives are rich and the colors affix your mind.

I invite you especially to lovingly admire and meditate upon the images of American People Series #18 (The Flag is Burning, 1967) and #20 of the same series (Die, 1967), and to read in depth about this wondrous, deeply spiritual woman.

I want to acknowledge a friend, an instructor at the Goethe Institut (Atlanta), namely, Mr. Börge Deist, who just the other day made me aware of Faith Ringgold and her important art.

Here are links, especially from the National Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the Camden Civil Rights Project, Culture Type (which describes itself as, “An essential resource focused on visual art by and about Black people, Culture Type explores the intersection of art, history, and culture.”), as well as such newspapers as the New York Times (one link with Margolit Fox’s obituary) and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:

https://www.faithringgold.com/art/

https://www.moma.org/artists/7066

https://www.nga.gov/press/acquisitions/2021/ringgold.html

https://camdencivilrightsproject.com/ringgold1305229739258/

https://www.culturetype.com/2021/10/24/national-gallery-of-art-acquires-faith-ringgolds-flag-is-bleeding-painting-may-be-museums-most-important-purchase-of-a-single-work-of-contemporary-art-since-1976/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/13/arts/faith-ringgold-dead.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/arts/design/faith-ringgold-art-politics-legacy.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/t-magazine/faith-ringgold.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/arts/design/faith-ringgold-new-museum.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/arts/design/faith-ringgold-art.html

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/kunst-und-architektur/nachruf-auf-die-amerikanische-kuenstlerin-faith-ringgold-19653091.html

https://acagalleries.com/artists/faith-ringgold/