Faith Ringgold »

Faith Ringgold has produced an amazingly diverse body of work, from oils to collages, thangkas to masks, posters to children's books. She is most famous for her quilts, which combine painting, fabric, and narrative text. She has been awarded sixteen honorary doctorates, and she founded the Anyone Can Fly Foundation. The art produced by this Renaissance woman has been exhibited in major venues worldwide and collected by such prestigious institutions as The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ringgold tenaciously overcame race and gender discrimination in school and in the art world. Her first works were traditional, but by 1963 she had developed her first mature painting style: "super realism," influenced by the writings of James Baldwin and Amiri Baraka. Her famous The American People Series of oil paintings appeared, along with her first murals, including The Flag Is Bleeding and Die. While pursuing her career and raising a family, Ringgold also spearheaded the black and feminist art movements.

Ringgold subsequently developed her "black light" style, in which she used a palette of darkened colors, in search of a more affirmative black aesthetic. The tireless artist then pursued new artistic venues, developing thangkas and hanging soft sculptures, completing abstract paintings, creating her first dolls, and working on The Family of Woman Masks Series.

In the 1980s Ringgold began making her story quilts, which redefined and expanded the possibilities for expression in the textile arts. By the 1990s she was one of the foremost progressive American artists of the twentieth century and a successful author. Today she pursues painting a series of jazz quilts and working on four books. Following Charles White and Betye Saar in Pomegranate's David C. Driskell Series of African American Art, Faith Ringgold details the personal and professional paths of a steadfast woman who forged to have her art seen. Her story is a testimonial to the inherent strength and determination of an expert artist whose work always penetrates the intellect as forcefully as it grabs the heart.

Library Journal

A prominent contemporary artist who addresses gender and race from a very personal perspective, Faith Ringgold works in a wide variety of media (e.g., paintings, soft sculptures, quilts, children's books) to tell stories about African American history and black subjectivity. Farrington (art and race & gender issues, Parsons Sch. of Design) links the recent political changes in American culture to Ringgold's artistic vision. For example, Ringgold's witty quilt series, "The French Collection," simultaneously mocks and pays homage to Modernism while also addressing postcolonialism and representations of black female sexuality. Targeted for a general audience, this beautifully illustrated text retains the insightful, sophisticated scholarship found in the author's Art on Fire: The Politics of Race and Sex in the Paintings of Faith Ringgold. Farrington convincingly argues for Ringgold's importance in the history of contemporary art, yet her prose sometimes approaches hagiography; in fact, poststructural art criticism questions many of Ringgold's assumptions regarding black identity. A more balanced appraisal of Ringgold's artistic achievement would have been useful. An optional purchase for public and undergraduate libraries. Katherine C. Adams, Bowdoin Coll. Lib., Brunswick, ME Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.