Imaginary Llama Art: Art I love. Faith Ringgold.

Suflower Quilting Bee at Arles, Faith Ringgold, 1991

Hey guys!

Today I launch a new posts serie called Art I Love, dedicated to artists I like and that I want to share with you!

I love history of art and during my schooling I studied movements and artists that are considered more relevant in Italy and Europe, the ones you can read on history of art books, and not always as deeply as I wanted.

Now curiosity is pushing me to get know better artists I studied yet and to discover new ones, sewing and completing, at least in part, the big patchwork of history of art.

And, on the subject of sewing...the artists I want to start the serie with is famous for having put together fine art to the craft technique of quilt, facing important social troubles.

I'm talking about the African-American artist Faith Ringgold.

Because of the recent facts happened in the USA I think it's fair starting the serie with an artist who experienced two kinds of discrimitations in a racist and male-dominated society and who made of art both a form of complain and a vehicle of model to follow.

I'll dedicate also some of the next posts to African-American artists.

About Faith Ringgold

Faith Ringgold. Photo source: exploringyourmind.com

Faith Ringgold born 1930 as Faith Willi Jones,in Harlem, neighborhood of Manhattan. She's a painter, sculptor, performer, writer, teacher and lecturer.

As a youg girl she couldn't frequent the schools because of asthma and she spent a great deal of time at home together with her mother, a fashion designer and seamstress who taught her to sew and to use fabric in imaginative way, and with her father who was a storyteller.

It was period of the Great Depression and of the Harlem Reinaissance, the artistic and cultural movement centered in Harlem on the '20s, formed by African-American artists who wanted their own cultural expression through the celebration of the black people culture.

The atmosphere of artistic fervor allowed the young Faith to develop her own artistic sensibility and to decide her future as an artist.

On 1950 she enrolled at the City College of New York to major in art, but some courses weren't allowed to women so she was forced to major in art education.

Faith Ringgold received her degrees at City College of New York, in 1955 and 1959. She's Professor Emeritus of Art at University of California in San Diego and she received 23 Honorary Doctorate.

Faith Ringgold's Art

The politic and feminist activism is part of art and life of Ringgold, due to common cases of racism and social emargination. In the 60's she worked on her first politically themed artworks, the American Peoples serie. They were 20 canvas representing racial division and social tearing between black and white people.

About the painting Die, of 1960, she said: "One of the most difficult things that I ever painted in my life was this picture, because of the blood,”... “If [the media] did show a photograph or a picture of any kind of riot, they never showed the blood…So I wanted to make sure that I put the blood in there, because I knew that blood meant death, and that’s what happened at those riots.”

The painting, inspired by Picasso's Guernica , represents black and white people during a riot. They are dressed as professionists, have weapons in their hands and they are bloody.

In the centre a black little girl and a white little boy are hugging. The children are there to remind that that racism and prejudice are not innate but they're something learned from the barbarian society of adults.

The America People Serie #20, Die, 1967,
Oil on canvas, 72x144in.

In 1970 she helped organizing '"The People's Flag Show" at the Judson Memorial Church of West Village in Manhattan, founded to protest agains the laws that limited use and exposure of the American flag. Ringgold and other two artsists were arrested for outrages to the symbol, they were helped by the American Civil Liberties Union and freed.

The artist worked with the American flag yet with the series American People and Black Light. About the artwork The Flag Is Bleeding (1967) she said that the '60 were hard years and she wanted to record them.

The People's Flag Show, 1970
Cut paper and marker writing

Faith Ringgold, American People Serie #18
The Flag is Bleeding, 1967. Oil on canvas, 24 1/16 x 29 5/8 in

With the Black Light Serie the artists abandoned the use of white paint, sperimentig with various shades of black and saturated colors.

She studied with the physionogmy of African masks, playing with geometries, rithm and repetition.

Black Light Serie #1, Big Black, 1967.
Oil on canvas, 30 1/4 x 42 1/4 in

Black Ligh Serie #4, Mommy and Daddy, 1969
Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 1/8 in.

On 1972 Ringgold traveled to Europe and visited the Rijksumuseum in Amsterdam where she discovered the thangkas, delicate paintings on cotton or silk used by Tibetan monks in their meditations. She started working on this kind of paintings because she could roll them up and carry around the world without the help of her husband, despiting the big size of the artworks.

In that years she worked also on the fabric dolls, the soft sculptures and the fabric African masks, together with the collaboration of her mom. Some of those artworks was used by her students in a performance of 1976 called Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro.

Feminist Series #18. Mr. Black Man
Attento a dove vai, acrilico su tela con bordi i tessuto
142x53cm

Booker, scultura morbida, 1979
100x63x25 cm

Family of Women Serie: Bernice, 1974

In the following years she worked on the quilt artworks, her mother pieced and quilted the first quilt (title is Echoes of Harlem), in 1980, one year before to die.

In 1983 Ringgold added hand-written texts to the quilts, with open-ended tales. The first "story quilt" was Who's afraid of aunt Jemima?, in 1983 . It was the radical version of the character Jemima, an house slave illustrated on some pancake flour and maple syrup packages, that the artist figured out as a savvy entrepreneur,

Echoes of Harlem, 1980. Acrylic on canvas, dyed, painted and pieced fabric
96 x 84 in.

Who's afraid of aunt Jemima? 1983, Acrylic on canvas, dyed, painted and pieced fabric 90 x 80 in.

In the 90's she worked on the Woman on a Bridge Serie, representing women who claimed their ownership and freedom by flying over the bridges of New York City and San Francisco. In her artworks the geometric regurality of the bridges represent the rigidity of the patrialcal society.

The most famous story quilts of this serie are Tar Beach I and II, later turned by the artist into successful book for children.

These artworks illustrates a tipical summer evening in Harlem in her childhood memories, when the heat pushed people to go to the roofs enjoying a bid of freshness. In the images the adults are playing cards, two children are resting on the floor and the protagonist, Cassie Louise Lightfoot, a brave 8 years old girl, is flying happy over the bridge, suggesting to the brother to do the same.

Tar Beach II, 1990, serigrafia su seta.
167x167cm

Woman on a bridge serie, Double Dutch on The Goldenn Gate Bridge, Acrylic on canvas with pieced fabric border, 67x65in.

After her travel through Europe Ringgold had assurance that black people have been totally excluded by the Europen art tradition and she thought of the French Collection Serie. The protagonist of the serie is her elter-ego Willia Marie Simone, a 16 years old girl that escapes from cotton field of Georgia e moves to Harlem, in the roaring 20's. Willia miraculously ends up to Paris where meet important characters as Gertrude Stein, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Nora Zeale Hurston, Matisse ed Hemingway.

The artwork Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles (first picture of the post) is a tribute to 8 African-American women who bravely show their bright flowered quilt to commemorate their successes. The characters in the picture include: Madam C.J. Walker, Sojourner Truth, Ida Wells, Fannie Lou Hammer, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Mary McLoad Bethune and Ella Baker.

Van-Gogh is standing on a side and he's offering a vase with flowers to the women.

In Picasso's Studio, Willia is posing for the famous painting Les Demoiselle D'Avignon, surrounded by the African masks that inspired the painter.

In early 2000 Faith Ringgold worked on Jazz Serie, dedicated to the Jazz shows she watched as a child.

Picasso's Studio, The French Collection Serie, 1991, acrilico su tela e ritagli di tessuto
185x172 cm

JazzStories: Mama Can Sing Papa can blow #1:
Someone Stoled My Broken Heart, 2004, acrilico su tela

I hope you enjoyed this article!

I think it's very interesting seeing how a craft technique having roots in the African-American culture hes been turned into a medium of artstic, cultural and protesting expression and also a way to tell her own life and family roots. I really love Faith Ringgold's art!

I wish I could add all informations, artworks explanations and pictures I found but this post would get as long as ancyclopedia because Faith Ringgold had and she is still having a very intense life and art production!

I'll add few more pictures and, at the bottom, all the sources I used to write this post.