Must Have Book | FAITH RINGGOLD: AMERICAN PEOPLE (Phaidon Hardcover; February 23)

I admit that the artist Faith Ringgold is TOTALLY new to me but when I received the pitch which educated me on the contributions of this woman not just to the art world but to the movements of civil rights, social justice, and inclusion, it became a mandatory share:

Phaidon, in partnership with the New Museum, is pleased to present the companion volume to New York’s most complete retrospective of the art of Faith Ringgold (b. 1930, New York, NY). Faith Ringgold: American People will be the most significant collection of scholarship on Ringgold’s work to date, bringing together over sixty years of work. Spanning painting, sculpture, posters, and her signature painted story quilts, the 150 full-color plates come from all periods of her career, allowing the reader to track the development of her style as it evolved and expanded to meet the urgency of the political and social changes taking place in America during her lifetime. The book includes contributions by curators, writers, and artists across generations, including essays by Amiri Baraka, LeRonn P. Brooks, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Bridget R. Cooks, Mark Godfrey, Lucy R. Lippard, Michele Wallace, and Zoé Whitley, along with an interview with the Ringgold and reflections on her life and legacy by American artists Diedrick Brackens, Jordan Casteel, and Tschabalala Self. This fully illustrated publication will focus on all aspects of Ringgold’s career, and the range of contributors speaks to the variety of audiences her work has reached over the past sixty years. Long overdue, this survey will provide a timely opportunity to appreciate a critical voice in the history of American art.

Artist, author, educator, and organizer Faith Ringgold links the multidisciplinary achievements of the Harlem Renaissance to the political art of young Black artists working today. During the 1960s, Ringgold created some of the most indelible art of the civil rights era, melding her own unique style of figurative painting with a bold, transformative approach to the language of protest. In subsequent decades, she challenged accepted Ringgold captured the racial and gender divisions in 1960s American society with searing insight. Her large-scale “murals”—including the celebrated American People Series #20: Die (1967), recently juxtaposed with Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon at the Museum of Modern Art—will be shown alongside her iconic political posters advocating support for the Black Panther Party and freeing activist Angela Davis, among other collective causes.

“I’m not a member of those groups that would profit from being on the cutting edge. I’m not a man and I’m not white. So I can do what I want to do and that has been my greatest gift.” — Faith Ringgold

The book and retrospective also examine Ringgold’s embrace of non-Western and craft traditions—including her performance objects and “soft sculptures”—which demonstrate her attempts to transcend the predominately white art historical tradition to find more suitable forms for her radical exploration of gender and racial identity. Although lesser known within Ringgold’s oeuvre, these works led directly to the creation of her best-known, story quilt paintings of the 1980s and 1990s.

Among the most influential artworks of the past fifty years, Ringgold’s story quilts draw on both personal autobiography and collective histories. The story quilts point to larger social conditions and cultural transformations, from the Harlem Renaissance to the realities of Ringgold’s life as a work-ing mother, artist, and activist. This book and retrospective include a wide range of Ringgold’s quilts, including formative pieces created with her mother; important early series like The Bitter Nest and Change; and the largest selection to date of her historic series, The French Collection and The American Collection. Together, these story quilts position the artist’s own personal and professional biography in dialogue with key moments in art history and the larger narrative of the African American experience across the twentieth century.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS  

Massimiliano Gioni is Edlis Neeson Artistic Director at the New Museum.

Gary Carrion-Murayari is Kraus Family Curator at the New Museum.

Essays by Amiri Baraka, Diedrick Brackens, LeRonn P. Brooks, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Jordan Casteel, Bridget R. Cooks, Mark Godfrey, Lucy R. Lippard, Tschabalala Self, Michele Wallace, and Zoé Whitley.

PRAISE FOR FAITH RINGGOLD 

“Every one of her images tells a story, as often to uplift as critique and almost always in bright, bold, and inviting ways.” – New York Times

“Ringgold emerges not just as a powerful advocate for racial justice and the equality of women, but as a prophet.” – Washington Post

“Ringgold’s art is vivid and far-ranging. . . it captures the soul of the US – its pop culture and politics – and lays it bare. It is fantastically vivacious, but also frequently speaks deeply uneasy truth to power.” – BBC

“For almost 60 years, Faith Ringgold has delicately interwoven the autobiographical and archetypal, the tragic and celebratory, and told stories which have too often gone untold.” – Hyperallergic

“For over five decades, despite the significant racial and gendered barriers she has faced, Faith has created pioneering works of art.” – British Vogue