Du Bois, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Sonny Rollins, Aaron Douglass, to name a few. Ringgold grew up surrounded by the great artists, musicians, and intellectuals of the period: W.E.B. So luckily I had the benefit of a great oral tradition told in many ways by a diverse group of people where I had the chance to learn about my past and my family’s history.įaith Ringgold was born on October 8, 1930, amid a cultural renaissance in Harlem, New York. I had to stay quiet and just listen or they would make me go to bed. Every evening I heard stories from all the different people who came to visit and stayed at my home. I wanted to know the source of her fecund storytelling.Įxplaining her penchant for storytelling, she stated,Īs a child, my parents opened their home to friends and relatives, many visiting or migrating from the South. The key, in other words, was to make her life stories accessible through caricatured figures, while unequivocally presenting the realities of racial inequalities and societal anxieties.
For example, Picasso’s “Guernica” - all the bad and evil was depicted in such a way that you can deal with it. It’s important to me to express the ills of society that are widely accepted while also delivering the message without only seeing the ill.
I want the story to be told so that people understand what’s going on. “Die” is an explosive scene that unapologetically portrays the brutality of the 1960s racial violence - bloody bodies are strewn across the monumental canvas in a triangular composition, reminiscent of African Kuba patterns and Picasso’s 1937 painting “Guernica.” Ringgold explained to me,
#Faith ringgold series
As late as I was to her work, I was consoled by the fact that MoMA had only recently acquired (in 2016) what is considered her first major painting, “American People Series #20: Die” (1967). In late 2018, I interviewed Ringgold to learn more about her life and career, which encompasses over 60 astounding years of art making. Faith Ringgold, “Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima” (1983), detail (© 2018 Faith Ringgold, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Courtesy ACA Galleries, NY, photo by Ken Tan)
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