{"id":1428,"date":"2022-02-21T14:56:48","date_gmt":"2022-02-21T06:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/?p=1428"},"modified":"2022-02-21T15:13:43","modified_gmt":"2022-02-21T07:13:43","slug":"6-works-to-know-by-faith-ringgold-how-the-artist-fights-racism-and-inspires-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/6-works-to-know-by-faith-ringgold-how-the-artist-fights-racism-and-inspires-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Works to Know by Faith Ringgold: How the Artist Fights Racism and Inspires Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Faith Ringgold has made flags bleed and girls fly. She has painted indelible images that speak to the racism endemic to American society and crafted quilts that inspire joy and hope. She has created spaces for Black women artists kept out of white-led mainstream institutions, and she has pushed behemoths like the Museum of Modern Art to be more inclusive. (In 1970, John Hightower, a former director of that institution, once wrote her and artist Tom Lloyd a letter saying that the two had \u201cmade an enormous difference in the outlook of the Museum of Modern Art.\u201d) She has written award-winning books, and she once curated an exhibition that went down in history and briefly landed her in jail. All of these activities made Ringgold one of today\u2019s most inventive artists. \u201cCreativity,\u201d she once\u00a0told\u00a0<em>ARTnews<\/em>, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/\">is empowering<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It can often seem as though there\u2019s nothing that Ringgold, now 91, hasn\u2019t been able to do successfully, a line of thinking that\u2019s only reinforced by her New Museum retrospective, which opened in New York on Thursday. Building on previous surveys mounted by the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Neuberger Museum of Art in Upstate New York, the Serpentine Galleries in London, and Glenstone in Potomac, Maryland, the New Museum show is Ringgold\u2019s biggest to date. It shows just how expansive her oeuvre is and demonstrates how innovative her works in multiple mediums have always been\u2014even when they weren\u2019t being shown by the biggest museums in the U.S.<\/p>\n<p>To reflect on Ringgold\u2019s varied output, below is a look at six essential works by the artist.<\/p>\n<div id=\"pmc-gallery-vertical\">\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical\">\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical__slides\">\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical__slide-wrapper\" data-slide-id=\"1234619470\" data-slide-index=\"0\" data-slide-position-display=\"1\">\n<article class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image\">\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__header\">\n<h2 class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__title\"><em>American People Series #20: Die<\/em>, 1967<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<figure class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__figure c-gallery-slide--loaded c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__figure--loaded\" role=\"presentation\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__image u-gallery-react-placeholder-shimmer aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/P6422-0114.jpg?w=800\" alt=\"Painting of an array of Black and white men and women who appear set against a grey background with sprays of blood. Beneath the violent clash, a white boy and a Black girl huddle, seeming afraid.\" width=\"1024\" height=\"518\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__share-icons\" style=\"text-align: center\">Faith Ringgold, <em>American People Series #20: Die<\/em>, 1967.<\/div>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__share-icons\" style=\"text-align: center\"><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__photo-credit-text\">Photo<\/span><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__colon\">\u00a0:\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__photo-credit\">\u00a9Faith Ringgold\/ARS, New York, and DACS, London\/Courtesy ACA Galleries, New York\/Digital Image \u00a9The Museum of Modern Art\/Licensed by SCALA\/Art Resource, New York\/Museum of Modern Art<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__description\">\n<p>In 1967, Faith Ringgold spent the summer at New York\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/\">Spectrum Gallery<\/a>, which she used as her studio. The dealer behind the gallery, Robert Newman, wanted her \u201cto depict everything that was happening in America\u2014the sixties and the decade\u2019s simultaneous thrusts for freedom,\u201d as Ringgold recalled in her 1995 memoir\u00a0<em>We Flew Over the Bridge<\/em>. What resulted was three large-scale figurative paintings\u2014murals, as Ringgold termed them\u2014that forcefully tackled the anti-Black racism that Ringgold witnessed daily.\u00a0<em>Die<\/em>\u00a0may now be the best-known work of those murals, though it wasn\u2019t always so: the 12-foot-long painting wasn\u2019t widely seen until the Museum of Modern Art acquired it in 2016. In MoMA\u2019s rehang of works in its collection in 2019, it was featured beside Pablo Picasso\u2019s\u00a0<em>Les Demoiselles d\u2019Avignon\u00a0<\/em>(1907).<\/p>\n<p>Using a style that Ringgold called Super Realism because its sharp contours render \u201cwhat was happening to Black people in America\u2026 super-real,\u201d\u00a0<em>Die<\/em>\u00a0features a chaotic profusion of bodies engaged in a violent standoff. Black and white women jut across the canvas in sharp diagonals while Black men appear to stab white counterparts. As blood sprays everywhere, a white boy holds huddles with a Black girl. They both appear shocked by the atrocities to which they are bearing witness.<\/p>\n<p><em>Die<\/em>\u00a0draws on Picasso\u2019s\u00a0<em>Guernica<\/em>\u00a0(1937), another large-scale painting meant to commemorate the horrors of the Spanish Civil War that Ringgold had seen at MoMA. But\u00a0<em>Guernica<\/em>\u00a0is in some ways abstract, and\u00a0<em>Die<\/em>\u00a0feels even more visceral because it so directly approximates the broadcasts of violence against Black Americans that could be seen with frequency at the time. And the painting retains its shock value today. Of the bloodshed within it, Ringgold\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">told the\u00a0<em>Guardian<\/em><\/a>\u00a0in 2021, \u201cI found it very easy and very interesting. Because I saw it all the time, you see. People were having these riots, but nobody was painting them.\u201d Ringgold\u2019s figurative style helps enhance the painting\u2019s directness, and also differentiated her from other Black artists in New York at the time, many of whom were working in an abstract mode that was more palatable to mainstream institutions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical__slide-wrapper\" data-slide-id=\"1234619472\" data-slide-index=\"1\" data-slide-position-display=\"2\">\n<article class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image\">\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__header\">\n<h2 class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__title\"><em>Black Light Series #10: Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger<\/em>, 1969<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<figure class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__figure c-gallery-slide--loaded c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__figure--loaded\" role=\"presentation\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__image u-gallery-react-placeholder-shimmer aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/P6422-0051.jpg?w=800\" alt=\"Painting of an American flag whose stripes are reformatted in such a way that they obliquely spell out the word 'NIGGER.' The word 'DIE' appears beneath the stars. In place of the white stripes, the painting has greyish ones.\" width=\"776\" height=\"575\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__share-icons\" style=\"text-align: center\">Faith Ringgold, <em>Black Light Series #10: Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger<\/em>, 1969.<\/div>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__share-icons\" style=\"text-align: center\"><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__photo-credit-text\">Photo<\/span><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__colon\">\u00a0:\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__photo-credit\">\u00a9Faith Ringgold\/ARS, New York, and DACS, London\/Courtesy ACA Galleries, New York\/Glenstone<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__description\">\n<p>When Ringgold painted\u00a0<em>Black Light Series #10: Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger<\/em>, the American flag would still have been closely aligned with Jasper Johns, whose masterpiece,\u00a0<em>Flag<\/em>\u00a0(1954\u201355), reshaped art history. But Ringgold detected something off about Johns\u2019s composition: it may have been influential for formal and conceptual reasons, but it in some way failed to encapsulate the rot beneath the stars and stripes. \u201cI felt Johns\u2019s flag presented a beautiful, but incomplete, idea,\u201d she wrote in her memoir. \u201cTo complete it I wanted to show some of the hell that had broken out in the States, and what better place to do that in the stars and stripes?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her response was to create\u00a0<em>Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger<\/em>, which rearranges the red-and-white stripes until they spell out the racist slur in the painting\u2019s title. Meanwhile, the word \u201cDIE\u201d is embedded beneath the stars. The threatening aura of the painting is enhanced by its hues, which are more muted than normal for renderings of the American flag. This is because the painting dates to an era when Ringgold was eschewing the use of white paint that would lighten her colors. The style, Ringgold\u2019s daughter Michele Wallace once wrote, is \u201cthe aesthetic accompaniment to the Black Power movement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The American flag has been a subject Ringgold has returned to repeatedly, most famously in \u201cThe People\u2019s Flag Show,\u201d a 1970 exhibition at New York\u2019s Judson Memorial Church that she curated with Jean Toche and Jon Hendricks. Intended as a protest against the Vietnam War, the show featured numerous works that used the flag to expose what was really going on in America at the time. When the show opened, Wallace, Toche, and Hendricks were arrested, but because Wallace was still a teenager at the time, Ringgold encouraged police officers to arrest herself instead. Recalling the moment when Ringgold was hauled off to jail, Wallace wrote, \u201cFaith, then known as one of the Judson Three, had always been more radical than I was.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical__slide-wrapper\" data-slide-id=\"1234619475\" data-slide-index=\"2\" data-slide-position-display=\"3\">\n<article class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image\">\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__header\">\n<h2 class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__title\"><em>United States of Attica<\/em>, 1972<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<figure class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__figure c-gallery-slide--loaded c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__figure--loaded\" role=\"presentation\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__image u-gallery-react-placeholder-shimmer aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/P6422-0087.jpg?w=757\" alt=\"A map of the United States divided into red and green quadrants with markers denoting the sites of violence.\" width=\"725\" height=\"575\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__share-icons\" style=\"text-align: center\">Faith Ringgold, <em>United States of Attica<\/em>, 1972.<\/div>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__share-icons\" style=\"text-align: center\"><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__photo-credit-text\">Photo<\/span><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__colon\">\u00a0:\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__photo-credit\">\u00a9Faith Ringgold\/ARS, New York, and DACS, London\/Courtesy ACA Galleries, New York<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__description\">\n<p>From almost the very start of her career, Ringgold saw no separation between her art and her politics. Starting in the late 1960s, she joined and formed various activist groups in an attempt to raise the visibility of Black artists\u2014and often in particular Black women artists\u2014within an art world dominated by white men. Ringgold, whom feminist art historian Lucy R. Lippard calls \u201cdeterminedly marginal and proud of it\u201d in the New Museum catalogue, started the group Women Students and Artists for Black Art Liberation in 1970 with Wallace; among its early activities was a protest against the 1970 Venice Biennale, which the group demanded should be \u201cnot only white male \u2018superstars\u2019 but \u201850% women\u2019 and \u201850% people of color,\u2019\u201d as Wallace once recalled. Ringgold also attended demonstrations at the Whitney Museum by the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition and joined Where We At, a famed collective of Black women artists that staged what Ringgold considers to be the first New York show composed entirely of Black women.<\/p>\n<p>Ringgold\u2019s activist sensibility also infiltrated her art in the form of posters such as this one, a lithograph paying homage to the inmates who died during a prison uprising at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York the year before the print\u2019s making. The prisoners revolted in protest of their poor living conditions, and armed officers killed more than 40 inmates during the effort to quell them. Ringgold inscribes this event within a larger history of violence in the U.S. that includes conflicts (the Revolutionary War, World War I), racist killings (the assassination of Martin Luther King, anti-Japanese actions during World War II), and colonialist carnage (the Long Walk of the Navajo, the Trail of Tears). In denoting this bloodshed all over the map, Ringgold asserts that violence is just as integral to American identity as the landscape itself. She hints that this history is hardly complete by way of a note at the bottom that encourages viewers to add mention of events not already marked.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical__slide-wrapper\" data-slide-id=\"1234619477\" data-slide-index=\"3\" data-slide-position-display=\"4\">\n<article class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image\">\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__header\">\n<h2 class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__title\"><em>Slave Rape #3: Fight to Save Your Life<\/em>, 1972<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<figure class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__figure c-gallery-slide--loaded c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__figure--loaded\" role=\"presentation\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__image u-gallery-react-placeholder-shimmer aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/P6422-0124.jpg?w=350\" alt=\"Painted quilt featuring a stoic pregnant Black woman who appears in the nude, staring back at the viewer and holding an axe in one hand. Behind her is flora rendered in rich shades of orange and green.\" width=\"336\" height=\"575\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__share-icons\" style=\"text-align: center\">Faith Ringgold, <em>Slave Rape #3: Fight to Save Your Life<\/em>, 1972.<\/div>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__share-icons\" style=\"text-align: center\"><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__photo-credit-text\">Photo<\/span><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__colon\">\u00a0:\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__photo-credit\">\u00a9Faith Ringgold\/ARS, New York, and DACS, London\/Courtesy ACA Galleries, New York, and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London\/Photo Tom Powel Imaging<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__description\">\n<p>This self-portrait is part of a three-part series called \u201cSlave Rape,\u201d with the other two related works envisioning Ringgold\u2019s daughters Michele and Barbara in a similar setting. The first part of the work\u2019s title suggests a form of racist sexual exploitation that is not depicted\u2014the rape in question appears to take place either before or after the moment pictured, or not at all. Whatever the case may be, Ringgold renders herself as a figure who refuses to be submissive. She brandishes a hatchet, as though ready to perform violence upon any viewers who may pose a threat. Additionally, her eyes meet ours\u2014she stares her viewers down.<\/p>\n<p>As she told the\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0in 2019, the \u201cSlave Rape\u201d series was \u201cheavily inflected with my feminist perspective in both content and aesthetics,\u201d so it can be connected to some of her political activities. But it also can be tied to an ongoing interest in art history and its limits that has persisted in Ringgold\u2019s work. She displays an interest in forms of art-making that exist beyond the Western canon, here relying on a format intended to recall Tibetan\u00a0<em>thangka<\/em>\u00a0textiles, which are often painted with Buddhist images and used as teaching tools. She also offers a counterimage to the supine female nudes seen throughout Western art history by standing up and proudly caressing her pregnant belly. Indeed, the emphasis of motherhood is literally threaded into this painting\u2014Ringgold\u2019s own mother, Willi Posey Jones, who had educated the artist early on about quilt-making, helped her sew the work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical__slide-wrapper\" data-slide-id=\"1234619479\" data-slide-index=\"4\" data-slide-position-display=\"5\">\n<article class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image\">\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__header\">\n<h2 class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__title\"><em>Woman on a Bridge #1 of 5: Tar Beach<\/em>, 1988<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<figure class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__figure c-gallery-slide--loaded c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__figure--loaded\" role=\"presentation\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__image u-gallery-react-placeholder-shimmer aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/P6422_0008_crop.jpg?w=555\" alt=\"Painted quilt featuring a Black family having dinner in New York on a rooftop. To the side, two Black children lie on a sheet. In the starry sky, there is a Black girl flying over the George Washington Bridge.\" width=\"531\" height=\"575\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__share-icons\" style=\"text-align: center\">Faith Ringgold, <em>Woman on a Bridge #1 of 5: Tar Beach<\/em>, 1988.<\/div>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__share-icons\" style=\"text-align: center\"><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__photo-credit-text\">Photo<\/span><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__colon\">\u00a0:\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__photo-credit\">\u00a9Faith Ringgold\/ARS, New York, and DACS, London\/Courtesy ACA Galleries, New York\/Guggenheim Museum<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__description\">\n<p>Perhaps no work by Ringgold is better known than her picture book\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AtelierAuctionsg\"><em>Tar Beach<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(1991), a masterpiece that is beloved by both children and adults. Before\u00a0<em>Tar Beach<\/em>\u00a0existed as a book, however, it appeared in the form of textile pieces that have been labeled narrative quilts because they unspool fantastical stories that bend time and space. (Ringgold hadn\u2019t thought to develop the quilts into a book until she was invited to do so by Crown Publishers;\u00a0<em>Tar Beach<\/em>\u00a0later won the Caldecott Medal, the highest award for picture books in the U.S.)<\/p>\n<p>In this quilt,\u00a0<em>Tar Beach<\/em>\u2019s protagonist, a young girl named Cassie Louise Lightfoot, appears on the roof of a Harlem apartment where her family has dinner. The work\u2019s title alludes to a colloquial phrase referring to when New Yorkers journey up to their roofs as their apartments get too hot during the summer. We learn from text scrawled above this nighttime scene that Cassie was born in 1931 on the same day that George Washington Bridge was opened to traffic. She has an unusual ability: \u201cI can fly, yes fly,\u201d she says. And indeed, off in the distance, she soars over the bridge, her arms raised in front of her \u00e0 la Superman. The mood may be lighthearted, but Ringgold does not ignore the realities of the world. This image is intended to offer an inspirational message to young Black girls: if you will it, it can happen. As Zo\u00e9 Whitley writes in the New Museum catalogue, \u201cHer young protagonists all possess the belief that they can one day be presidents, property owners, opera singers, time travelers, and, above all, that they can take flight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ringgold\u2019s narrative quilts are also special because they are so formally audacious. But when she began incorporating textile elements, the mode was regarded as craft, which was seen by mainstream art critics as being \u201cfeminine.\u201d Women artists of the \u201970s, Ringgold included, embraced craft for that reason and used it toward feminist means.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical__slide-wrapper\" data-slide-id=\"1234619481\" data-slide-index=\"5\" data-slide-position-display=\"6\">\n<article class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image\">\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__header\">\n<h2 class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__title\"><em>Dancing at the Louvre: The French Collection Part I, #1<\/em>, 1991<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<figure class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__figure c-gallery-slide--loaded c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__figure--loaded\" role=\"presentation\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__image u-gallery-react-placeholder-shimmer aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/2017_05_06-Ringgold_2021Update.jpg?w=649\" alt=\"Two Black women and three children dance beneath three paintings of white women.\" width=\"622\" height=\"575\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__share-icons\" style=\"text-align: center\">Faith Ringgold, <em>Dancing at the Louvre: The French Collection Part I, #1<\/em>, 1991.<span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__photo-credit-text\">Photo<\/span><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__colon\">\u00a0:\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"c-gallery-vertical-slide__photo-credit\">\u00a9Faith Ringgold\/ARS, New York, and DACS, London\/Courtesy ACA Galleries, New York\/Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<div class=\"c-gallery-vertical-featured-image__description\">\n<p>In her 1991 series \u201cThe French Collection,\u201d which at the time represented Ringgold\u2019s most ambitious project to date, Ringgold synthesized art history and her own autobiography to communicate, as her daughter Michele Wallace writes in the New Museum catalogue, \u201cthe process of becoming a successful Black woman artist.\u201d Like\u00a0<em>Tar Beach<\/em>, this series contains a somewhat fantastical air\u2014made-up people intermingle with real ones, as in one image where the protagonist of \u201cThe French Collection,\u201d the fictional Wilia Marie Simone, models for Henri Matisse during a trip to Paris in the 1920s. (She has been sent there by her aunt, who believes she will find greater success as an artist in France than she will in the U.S.) Also like\u00a0<em>Tar Beach<\/em>, \u201cThe French Collection\u201d is not blind to the realities of life\u2014it deals head-on with the tricky balancing act of being a mother and a painter simultaneously, and with forms of implicit racism that manifested in beloved modernist artworks such as ones by Picasso.<\/p>\n<p>In this image, the first in the cycle, Wilia Marie, her kids, and her friend Marcia go to the Louvre, where they twist and turn beneath paintings of white women by Leonardo da Vinci. An autobiographical element is present: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AtelierAuctionsg\">Wilia Marie<\/a> shares a semblance with Ringgold, and Marcia is modeled on Ringgold\u2019s daughter Barbara, who has three kids. The moment is a bit transgressive, given museum guards\u2019 tendency to discourage such displays of joy. But in any case, Ringgold\u2019s characters have found fulfillment in the presence of artworks appreciated throughout the ages. This sense that art can offer liberty for a Black woman like Wilia Marie is reflected in something voiced by her in a letter to her aunt in a later quilt from the series: \u201cYou asked me why I wanted to become an artist and I said I didn\u2019t know. Well I know now. It is because it\u2019s the only way I know of feeling free.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Source\uff1ahttps:\/\/www.artnews.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Faith Ringgold has made flags bleed and girls fly. She has painted indelible images that speak to the racism endemic to American society and crafted quilts that inspire joy and hope. She has created spaces for Black women artists kept out of white-led mainstream institutions, and she has pushed behemoths like the Museum of Modern [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,7,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1428","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artist","8":"category-auction","9":"category-events","10":"category-gallery","11":"category-latest-news"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>6 Works to Know by Faith Ringgold: How the Artist Fights Racism and Inspires Hope - Investable Art Auctioneer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/6-works-to-know-by-faith-ringgold-how-the-artist-fights-racism-and-inspires-hope\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"6 Works to Know by Faith Ringgold: How the Artist Fights Racism and Inspires Hope - Investable Art Auctioneer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Faith Ringgold has made flags bleed and girls fly. She has painted indelible images that speak to the racism endemic to American society and crafted quilts that inspire joy and hope. 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