Image from 'The Black Panther", the newspaper published by the Black Panther Party from April 25, 1967 to September 16, 1980.
Embedded Files
STUDY QUESTIONS
Do we know how the work of these three artists, Emory Douglas, Faith Ringgold and Gordon Parks might have made a difference in the struggles of the 60s?
What would be the relevance of these responses some 50 plus years later now in the digital age ?
How did the responses of these three artists in the 60s influence their later work ?
Do you consider these three artists "revolutionary artists"?
COMMUNICATING THE STRUGGLES OF AFRICAN AMERICANS THROUGH PUBLISHING A NEWSPAPER; CREATING PAMPHLETS, POSTERS AND CARTOONS; PAINTING and PHOT0GRAPHY
ARTISTS OF NOTE : EMORY DOUGLAS, FAITH RINGGOLD, GORDON PARKS
# 1. ARTIST OF NOTE: EMORY DOUGLAS (b. 1943, born in Grand Rapids, MI)
Emory Douglas At Work on the Black Panther Newspaper
Every revolutionary movement has its graphic art—bold lines, eye-catching colors, slogans aplenty. It is a form so well-worn as to have become cliché, a mode of communication that evolved with advertising and newspapers and used the same technologies. So it was with the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, whose radical posters and revolutionary newspaper, The Black Panther, carried the party’s message around the world, thanks to artist Emory Douglas, inventor of the Black Panther aesthetic. (From ' The Radical Art of the Black Panther, the Revolution's Newspaper from 1967 - 1980', June 20, 2020.)
Click on the YouTube to learn about Emory Douglas's work as Minister of Culture in the Black Panther organization from 1967 to 1982. (2.44 min.)
Emory Douglas and the Art of the Revolution, Manchester , Britain, Oct. 29, 2008.
Position Paper #1 on Revolutionary Art By Emory Douglas, Minister of Culture 1968- (adapted from)
"Revolutionary Art does not demand any more sacrifice from the revolutionary artist than what is demanded from a traitor (Negro) who draws for the oppressor. Therefore, the creation of revolutionary art is not a tragedy, but an honor and duty that will never be refused."
Revolutionary art begins with the program that Huey P. Newton instituted with the BLACK PANTHER PARTY. REVOLUTIONARY ART, like the Party, is for the whole community and its total problems. It gives the people the correct picture of our struggle, whereas the Revolutionary Ideology gives the people the correct political understanding of our struggle. Before a correct visual interpretation of the struggle can be given, we must recognize that Revolutionary Art is an art that flows from the people. It must be a whole and living part of the people's lives, their daily struggle to survive. To draw about revolutionary things, we must shoot and/or be ready to shoot when the time comes. In order to draw about the people who are shooting, we must capture the true revolution in a pictorial fashion. We must feel what the people feel who throw rocks and bottles at the oppressor so that when we draw about it - we can raise their level of consciousness to handgrenades and dynamite to be launched at the oppressor. Revolutionary Art gives a physical confrontation with tyrants, and also enlightens the people to continue their vigorous attack by educating the masses through participation and observation.
Through the Revolutionary Artist's observations of the people, we can picture the territory on which we live (as slaves): project maximum damage to the oppressor with minimum damage to the people, and come out victorious.
The Revolutionary Artist's talents are just one of the weapons he uses in the struggle for Black People. His art becomes a tool for liberation. Revolutionary Art can thereby progress as the people progresses because the People are the backbone to the Artist and not the Artist to the People.
To conceive any type of visual interpretations of the struggle, the Revolutionary Artist must constantly be agitating the people, but before one agitates the people as the struggle progresses one must make strong roots among the masses of the people. Then and only then can a Revolutionary Artist renew the visual interpretation of Revolutionary Art indefinitely until liberation. By making these strong roots among the masses of the Black People, the Revolutionary Artist rises above the confusion that the oppressor has brought on the colonized people, because all of us (as slaves) from the Christian to the brother on the block, the college student and the high school drop out, the street walker and the secretary, the pimp and the preacher, the domestic and the gangster: all the elements of the ghetto can understand Revolutionary Art.
The ghetto itself is the gallery for the Revolutionary Artist's drawings. His work is pasted on the walls of the ghetto; in storefront windows, fences, doorways, telephone poles and booths, passing buses, alleyways, gas stations, barber shops, beauty parlors, laundromats, liquor stores, as well as the huts of the ghetto.
This way the Revolutionary Artist educates the people as they go through their daily routine, from day to day, week to week, and month to month. This way the Revolutionary Artist cuts through the smokescreens of the oppressor and creates brand new images of Revolutionary action - for the total community.
Revolutionary Art is an extension and interpretation to the masses in the most simple and obvious from. Without being a revolutionary and committed to the struggle for liberation, the artist could not express revolution at all. Revolutionary Art is learned in the ghetto from the pig cops on the beat, demagogue politicians and avaricious businessmen. Not in the schools of fine art. The Revolutionary Artist hears the people's screams when they are being attacked by the pigs. They share their curses when they feel like killing the pigs, but are unequipped. He watches and hears the sounds of foot steps of Black People trampling the ghetto streets and translates them into pictures of slow revolts against the slave masters, stomping them in their brains with bullets, that we can have power and freedom to determine the destiny of our community and help to build "our world."
"Revolutionary Art is a returning from the blind, whereas we no longer let the oppressor lead us around like watchdogs."
EMORY DOUGLAS - HIS WORK IN COMMUNICATING THE STRUGGLES OF AFRICAN AMERICANS THROUGH HIS PUBLISHING THE BLACK PANTHER NEWSPAPER, POSTERS AND CARTOONS.
"Emory Douglas" by Andrew Gardner, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, MoMA, 2021.
“Art is a powerful tool, a language that can be used to enlighten, inform and guide to action,” Emory Douglas has said.1 The former Minister of Culture and Revolutionary Artist for the Black Panther Party, Douglas helped define the aesthetics of protest at the height of the Civil Rights era, cementing his status among the 20th century’s most influential radical political artists. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he designed all but one of the Party’s newspapers, each issue marked by the artist’s bold, figurative illustrations outlined in thick black line and contrasted with bright colors, block text, and photomontage. The clearly rendered imagery, applied to a range of printed media from newspapers to posters, notecards, and pins, became a hallmark of liberation movements around the world, as supporters calling for an end to the oppression and subjugation of Black, Indigenous, and other communities sought to project a spirit of shared struggle through a common artistic vocabulary.
Douglas was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 1951, his family relocated to San Francisco, where he continues to live today. Widely known as an epicenter of radical countercultural politics in the post–World War II era, the city was also deeply divided and segregated, and it was the injustices that Douglas observed as a child that informed his political ideology as an adult. Beginning in the early 1960s, as a student of commercial art at City College of San Francisco, Douglas made frequent trips to nearby San Francisco State University to see civil rights leaders like Amiri Baraka, Stokely Carmichael, and H. Rap Brown speak. He soon lent his talents to the nascent Black Arts Movement, creating fliers and other promotional artworks to advertise events held across the city. These formative experiences solidified his intentions to dedicate his work to the broader struggle for Black liberation that was taking shape around him.
In January 1967, Douglas met Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, two young activists from nearby Oakland, who, months earlier, had founded the Black Panther Party (BPP). Black self-determination was the Party’s primary motivation, seeking to improve the position of underprivileged people of color in America through “whatever means necessary.” The organization initially focused on an individual’s right to bear arms for defense against police violence, but its attention eventually turned to social justice issues like free breakfast for school children and fair housing. Seeking to promote their civil rights agenda to a primarily Black American audience, the Panthers developed a newspaper, the first of which Seale created and published in April 1967.
That first issue was simple in layout and design, leading Douglas to offer his expertise in print production, understanding the power that strong visuals could lend to political action. Beginning with the second, he designed every issue thereafter—some 537 newspapers, from 1967 until it ceased publication in the early 1980s. Douglas quickly rose through the ranks of the organization: he was officially named its Revolutionary Artist and, eventually, Minister of Culture, overseeing all aspects of the BPP visual identity.
Douglas’s familiarity with the print production process was a fruitful asset, as he employed simple tools like markers, rub-off type, and prefabricated texture materials to create his visually impactful designs. To keep costs low, each paper was printed in one or two colors—black ink, often with a contrasting bright color. His illustrations shone a spotlight on state-sanctioned brutality, depicting law enforcement officers and politicians as pigs, while also portraying Black people bearing arms and defeating their oppressors. Some issues featured images of Black suffering, lambasting the political establishment for failing to meet the basic needs of people of color across the United States. Douglas strategically employed photomontage as well, integrating photographs alongside text and illustrations to emphasize urgent issues facing the Party. The impact and influence of Douglas’s designs underscored the importance of a consistent graphic strategy in conveying complex political messages in very simple terms. This success was underscored by the massive global distribution of the newspaper and the frequent use of Douglas’s illustrations in the political campaigns for organizations like the Organización de Solidaridad con los Pueblos de Asia, África y América Latina, Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, known as OSPAAAL. Despite the popularity of the Panthers’ programs and their frequent struggle against the established white political order, the Party was disbanded in the early 1980s.
Douglas continues to work as a political artist and activist, producing work that seamlessly translates complex political issues into easily understood illustration, a hallmark of the pieces he produced as a member of the Panthers. His striking figural illustrations connect him to generations of American artists like Elizabeth Catlett, Aaron Douglas, and Charles White, while his combining of type and image draw on generations of political art emanating from across the world, including contemporaries working in Cuba during the Communist Revolution. Deeply bound to American history and politics, his imagery evokes a powerful, globally resonant narrative.
EMORY DOUGLAS, HIS WORK IN COMMUNICATING THE STRUGGLES OF AFRICAN AMERICANS THROUGH HIS PUBLISHING THE BLACK PANTHER NEWSPAPER, POSTERS AND CARTOONS, cont.
"Printmaking" from 'We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965 - 85', Brooklyn Museum, April 21, 2017 - September 17, 2017"
"As an efficient and inexpensive method for widely disseminating information, printmaking has long been associated with protest and freedom of expression. Many artists in the 1960s explored printmaking as a primary means for making art, prioritizing utility and accessibility over preciousness or market value. Their posters, prints, announcements, and other forms of printed ephemera were relatively easy to produce in bulk and distribute, allowing artists to circumvent and undermine an increasingly commercialized art world.
For artists of the Black Arts Movement, screenprints and posters became a primary medium for creative experimentation and sharing political ideas. Displaying a diverse aesthetic vocabulary, this wall of prints and posters samples the activist history of printmaking in this period—a rich and complex collection of creative voices."
EMORY DOUGLAS, HIS WORK IN COMMUNICATING THE STRUGGLES OF AFRICAN AMERICANS THROUGH HIS PUBLISHING THE BLACK PANTHER NEWSPAPER, POSTERS AND CARTOONS, cont.
Issues of The Black Panther: Black Community News Service (San Francisco, 1969 -76), Designer and Illustrator: Emory Douglass
From the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Research and Archives:
"Emory Douglas has been harnessing graphic art as a form of social justice for more than fifty years. Douglas learned graphic design at the City College of San Francisco and later worked as a commercial artist. In 1967, he became the Revolutionary Artist and then Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party and developed the design of the Black Panther newspaper. There, Douglas began featuring more graphic elements, including his illustrations and collages alongside the paper’s reporting on current events and party ideology. Douglas depicted issues faced by Black Americans that were central to the party’s Ten Point Platform and Program, spotlighting abuse and killing by police, incarceration, the right to self-defense, inequalities of the justice system, and solidarity with social justice organizations and international human rights movements. Using the simple tools of paste-up production, Douglas developed an accessible and provocative visual language that has inspired generations of politically engaged artists throughout the world."
EMORY DOUGLAS, HIS WORK IN COMMUNICATING THE STRUGGLES OF AFRICAN AMERICANS THROUGH HIS PUBLISHING THE BLACK PANTHER NEWSPAPER, POSTERS AND CARTOONS, cont.
"Fifty Years Later, Black Panthers' Art Still Resonates", NY Times, Oct. 16, 2016.
Click on the right to read more about the work of Emory Douglas.
The Introduction:
The Black Panther Party is often associated with armed resistance, but one of the most potent weapons in its outreach to African-Americans in cities across the country was its artwork. In posters, pamphlets and its popular newspaper, The Black Panther, the party’s imagery was guided by the vision of Emory Douglas, its minister of culture.
See comments below from Mr.Douglas on the posters he created. He is now retired but still creating art, traveling and living in San Francisco.
4. Fifty Years Later, Black Panthers’ Art Still Resonates - The New York Times.pdf# 1. Vietnam War (comments from Mr. Douglas
"The reaction to my Vietnam War art then was positive. It was a message to the G.I.s and to the broader community that the abuses, murders and lynchings of people in our community was not caused by Vietnam or the Vietnamese. Our struggle was not in Vietnam, our fight was here in the United States. The tears in the image reflect the pain and suffering that I heard when I talked to people in the struggle, or in the military"
(Emory Douglas)
# 2. Powerful Women (comments from Mr. Douglas)
"The women depicted in my artwork are a reflection of the party. Women went to jail and were in leadership roles. Women started chapters and branches of the Black Panther Party as well. When we used to read some of the stories, you would see women in the Vietnam and Palestine struggle and in the African liberation movement. Women were an integral part of those movements so all that played into how I expressed them in my own artwork",
(Emory Douglas)
# 3. Panther Kids (comments from Mr. Douglas)
"Racial profiling was taking place back then and is taking place now, too. So, I wanted to express the police abuse in the community. The photograph on the right was actually taken when we would take our Panther kids to the courthouse where they would get patted down by the security there. I think this image also connects today in the context of Black Lives Matter and being more aware of the profiling that exists in this country. People can see how frustrating it is for those dealing with profiling and how that creates the conditions for resistance".
(Emory Douglas)
# 4. 'All Power to the People' (comments from Mr. Douglas)
"When Huey Newton and Bobby Seale would come to San Francisco for community organizing, they were often confronted by the police and so they began to call them swine and pigs. Out of their conversations about the police came the definition of a pig: a no-nation beast that has no regard for rights, the law or justice and bites the hand that feeds it. So one day, Huey and Bobby gave me this clip art of a pig on four legs that they wanted me to draw. In American culture, pigs are animals wallowing in filth and dirty. So I took that thought and applied it to the pig drawing itself. Then once I put the pig on two legs, gave it a badge and had the flies flying around, it transcended the boundaries of the African-American community and became an international icon that everybody identified with as a symbol of oppression by government and the police. In the context of today, if a pig image was used in a contemporary way, I’m pretty sure it would have the same kind of impact" .
(Emory Douglas)
# 5. Seeking Justice (comments from Mr. Douglas)
" Even though we may plot for progress, in many ways there is still structural racism and institutional racism that exists today and has to be dealt with. So that’s what I try to continue to do with the art itself is try to make a contribution to those issues. Fifty years later though, it makes me think that the struggle continues".
(Emory Douglas)
# 6. New Era, Same Voice (comments from Mr. Douglas)
"Sometimes there are those in the community who feel strongly but may not be able to act in that way so you capture that in the artwork. The art is a language, communicating with the community. The sense of urgency shown comes from what we had seen and we’re doing. The fact was that we could be wiped off the map at any given time. The urgency in the artwork was a reflection of the urgency in the race and the fear that people had. You had to be accessible to the community and interpret them into the art like making the people heroes on the stage. There’s also a sense of urgency today, of course, it just comes out in a different way."
(Emory Douglas)
# 7. 'Clues of Hope' (comments from Mr. Douglas)
"Sometimes there are those in the community who feel strongly but may not be able to act in that way so you capture that in the artwork. The art is a language, communicating with the community. The sense of urgency shown comes from what we had seen and we’re doing. The fact was that we could be wiped off the map at any given time. The urgency in the artwork was a reflection of the urgency in the race and the fear that people had. You had to be accessible to the community and interpret them into the art like making the people heroes on the stage. There’s also a sense of urgency today, of course, it just comes out in a different way."
(Emory Douglas)
# 2. ARTIST OF NOTE : FAITH RINGGOLD (b.1930, born in Harlem)
"Creativity is empowering. "
'Faith Ringgold was born Faith Will Jones in 1930 in Harlem, the youngest of three children, who were raised during the Harlem Renaissance and exposed to all of its cultural offerings.'
"Faith was frequently sick with asthma as a small child; art becomes a major pastime. She was taught to sew fabrics creatively by her mother, a professional fashion designer; and to make quilts by her grandmother. Ringgold attended City College, where she was first refused admission as an art major in the School of Liberal Arts because they did not admit woman, so she instead enrolled in the School of Education where she was able to major in art. She became an art teacher in the NYC Public Schools from 1955 to 1973. The Civil Rights movement became both a major force in American society during the 1960s and had a lasting impact on Ringgold and her work.
It was during her time as a teacher that she began a series of paintings called American People, which portrayed the civil rights movement from a female perspective. In the 1970s painted political posters and actively fought against racial and gender discrimination in the New York art world, particularly with regard to the American art museum system, which often omitted African-Americans and women from its exhibitions. (See below two pieces of her including one from her series, "American People", Series #7, 'Cocktail Party'.
Work by Faith Ringgold
'Freedom Woman Now' (1971), poster/lithograph.Cut paper.
The American People Series #7. 'Cocktail Party ' (1964), oil on canvas.
FAITH RINGGOLD, HER WORK IN COMMUNICATING THE STRUGGLES OF AFRICAN AMERICANS THROUGH HER PAINTINGS
6 Works to Know by Faith Ringgold: How the Artist Fights Racism and Inspires Hope by Alex Greenberger, ARTnews, February 17, 2022.
Excerpt:
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 “made an enormous difference in the outlook of the Museum of Modern Art.”) 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’s most inventive artists. “Creativity,” she once told ARTnews, “is empowering.”
FAITH RINGGOLD, HER WORK IN COMMUNICATING THE STRUGGLES OF AFRICAN AMERICANS THROUGH HER PAINTINGS, cont.
Faith Ringgold's Path of Maximum Resistance, by Holland Cotter, NY Times, (Arts and Design), Feb. 17, 2022.
Faith Ringgold’s “American People Series #18: The Flag Is Bleeding,” 1967, from her retrospective at the New Museum in Manhattan. According to the artist, she “wanted to show some of the hell that had broken out in the States, and what better place to do that than in the stars and stripes?” Credit...Faith Ringgold/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY and ACA Gallerie.
Click on the image on the right to read about this current exhibition of Faith Ringgold's work.
An excerpt:"If you want to catch the heat of the lava flow that was United States racial politics in the 1960s, the second floor of the New Museum in Manhattan is a good place to go. There you’ll find the earliest work in “Faith Ringgold: American People,” the first local retrospective of the Harlem-born artist in almost 40 years.
Now 91, Ringgold was already a committed painter when the Black Power movement erupted. And she had a personal investment in the questions it raised: not just how to survive as a Black person in a racist white world, but how, as a woman, to thrive in any world at all."
4 -Faith Ringgold’s Path of Maximum Resistance - The New York Times.pdfFAITH RINGGOLD, HER WORK IN COMMUNICATING THE STRUGGLES OF AFRICAN AMERICANS THROUGH HER PAINTINGS, cont.
OPTIONAL READ Faith Ringgold Mural at Rikers Island to Move to Brooklyn, by Zachary Small, NY Times, Jan. 18, 2022
Faith Ringgold’s vibrant mural “For the Women’s House,” based on interviews with female inmates, will be moved from Rikers Island to the Brooklyn Museum in a long-term loan.
Click on the image on the right to read about this recent move of Faith Ringgold's mural.
An excerpt:
"One of the most influential living American artists, known for her “story quilts” and her ardent activism, Ringgold had received a $3,000 grant from the city in 1971 for her mural, which she based on conversations with inmates at the Correctional Institution for Women on Rikers Island. It depicts women in careers that inmates thought were outside their reach: president, construction worker, minister, professional basketball player and others. (A year earlier, Ringgold herself had been jailed for a short time, arrested and charged with desecrating the American flag at an art show she helped curate at the Judson Church in Greenwich Village.)"
4 Faith Ringgold Mural at Rikers Island to Move to Brooklyn Museum - The New York Times.pdfFAITH RINGGOLD, HER WORK IN COMMUNICATING THE STRUGGLES OF AFRICAN AMERICANS THROUGH HER PAINTINGS, cont.
National Museum of Women in the Arts: American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold Paintings of the 1960s
“Art was the one thing that I always loved to do. Yet, because I had never heard of a black artist, male or female, when I was a child, I did not think of art as a possible profession. In retrospect, I think I must have taken art for granted at this time — as something to do rather than be.”—Faith Ringgold, We Flew Over the Bridge, 20"
"Scale, both of the canvas and of the subject, is noteworthy. At the time of its creation, this work was the largest Ringgold had created given that she was working out of a small studio in her Harlem apartment. Her steadfast figure dominates and extends beyond the edge of the canvas, suggesting strength and resilience. When Ringgold painted this work, she was a mother of two daughters struggling to garner a reputation and representation in the art world. '
Faith Ringgold, "Early Works #25: Self -Portrait, 1965, Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 in.
FAITH RINGGOLD, HER WORK IN COMMUNICATING THE STRUGGLES OF AFRICAN AMERICANS THROUGH HER PAINTINGS, cont.
'Faith Ringgold Will Keep Fighting Back' After the loss of her husband and a pandemic lockdown, this ardent activist was creatively blocked, Now, after watching the protests, she is inspired again. By Bob Morris, NY Times, Published June 11, 2020, Updated June 12, 2020.
Click on the right to read more about Faith Ringgold.
An excerpt:
"I’m just keeping my eyes wide open so I can find a point of view on all this,” she said with a sigh. “I’ve been waiting for the inspiration that can help me inspire others.”
Then, with the death of George Floyd on May 25, she found herself starting to emerge from her haze and to think more clearly, beginning to visualize how to get her thoughts down. She is, after all, the visionary behind the painting of a race riot in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art that, in the last week, has been called a “gateway” to challenging entrenched ways of thinking about social injustice. Her large-scale work “American People Series #20: Die,” from 1967, was inspired by “Guernica,” and hangs now alongside several of Picasso’s iconic paintings."
4 Faith Ringgold Will Keep Fighting Back - The New York Times.pdfA second excerpt:
In 'America People #20 Die,' Ringgold depicts a bloody race riot in 1967, which, with its murdered bodies and expressions of despair, references Picasso’s painting Guernica. It’s a fine example of Ringgold's distinct painting style, which she applied to murals as well as canvases. Despite her love of painting, Ringgold was best known for her children’s books and quilts, such as Tar Beach (1986), in which an African American family are pictured having dinner on their roof. (pictured below in the next article)"
“I was just trying to read the times, and to me everyone was falling down,” Ms. Ringgold said of the well-dressed black and white people she painted tumbling to the sidewalk. “And if it upsets people that’s because I want them to be upset.”
Faith Ringgold, American People Series # 20: "Die" (1967) is a significant early work by the Harlem-born artist.
Faith Ringgold,“American People Series #4, The Civil Rights Triangle,” (1963).
Ms. Ringgold's 'All Power to the People' (1970) from cut paper.
“Freedom of Speech” by Faith Ringgold, from 1990. In the 1960s, Ms. Ringgold began to incorporate text into her work, often used as posters.
FAITH RINGGOLD, HER WORK IN COMMUNICATING THE STRUGGLES OF AFRICAN AMERICANS THROUGH HER PAINTINGS, cont.
'Faith Ringgold is an artist, an activist and a prophet, But that's only scratching the surface' by Phillip Kennicott, Washington Post, March 31, 2021.
Click on the image on the right to read about several works by Faith Ringgold in a recent exhibition. excerpt:
'Excerpt
"Ringgold emerges not just as a powerful advocate for racial justice and the equality of women, but as a prophet. And seeing a cross-section of the 90-year-old artist’s career leaves one thrilled by something else as well: the cohesiveness and persistence of her ideas, impulses and gestures, which suggests a heroic sense of purpose, a mind dedicated to gathering things up, binding them together and making them legible to as wide an audience as possible.'
4.Faith Ringgold's exhibition at Glenstone shows the utopian vision of an activist artist - The Washington Post.pdf
Faith Ringgold, “American People Series, #19: US Postage Stamp Commemorating the Advent of Black Power, 1967.
"One of her best-known works, the 1967 “American People #19: US Postage Stamp Commemorating the Advent of Black Power,” (above) uses the Pop Art trope of a familiar, everyday object, the postage stamp, to create a grid of faces, some Black, the others mostly White. The words “Black Power” are inscribed diagonally across the grid, clearly legible. But the grid itself is structured by the words “White Power,” with the letters distended and connected, and rendered in white, and thus almost impossible to read unless you are looking for them.
The ghostly, grid-like font makes a basic statement about the hidden nature of power structures, a ubiquity and omnipresence that makes them disappear within the implied natural order of things. But it also recalls a children’s game, in which words were written with characters stretched out vertically, such that the only way you could read them was to turn the paper so that it was almost horizontal to the floor, which made the vertically distended font appear like normal print."
FAITH RINGGOLD, HER WORK IN COMMUNICATING THE STRUGGLES OF AFRICAN AMERICANS THROUGH HER PAINTINGS, cont.
Faith Ringgold’s “Jazz Stories: Somebody Stole My Broken Heart”, The New Yorker, March 21, 2022
Faith Ringgold’s “Jazz Stories: Somebody Stole My Broken Heart”, The New Yorker, March 21, 2022
The artist talks about teaching and her advice for young artists.By Françoise Mouly, Art by Faith Ringgold
An Excerpt:
In the artist Faith Ringgold’s children’s book “Harlem Renaissance Party,” Lonnie, a young boy, and his Uncle Bates spend a whirlwind day in nineteen-twenties Harlem meeting Black artistic greats, including Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, and Coleman Hawkins. At the end of the tour, Lonnie says to his uncle, “Black people didn’t come to America to be free. We fought for our freedom by creating art, music, literature, and dance.” His uncle responds, “Now everywhere you look you find a piece of our freedom.” This understanding of the inescapable entanglement of joy and sorrow—and of hardship and creation—is one that echoes through much of Ringgold’s work, which can be seen, in a major retrospective, “Faith Ringgold: American People,” at the New Museum, in New York City, through June.
This week’s cover, for the Spring Style & Design Issue, features a piece from Ringgold’s “Jazz Stories” series, which she began in 2004. In it, Ringgold, who was born in Harlem in 1930, celebrates the music that has provided her with a lifetime of inspiration.
# 3. ARTIST OF NOTE - GORDON PARKS (1912 - 2006), born in Fort Scott, Kansas.
" I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera". Gordon Parks
Gordon Parks, 'A Man Becomes Invisible", 1952
"After becoming Life magazine’s first black staff photographer in 1947, Parks produced a series of groundbreaking photo-essays, including “A Man Becomes Invisible,” which promoted Ralph Ellison’s recent novel, "Invisible Man:. This is one of several scenes Parks staged of the unnamed narrator emerging through a manhole on a street in Harlem—a place that for Ellison represented “the scene and symbol of the 'Negro’s perpetual alienation in the land of his birth.” The imagined episode is only hinted at in the book’s epilogue as the conflicted narrator prepares to leave his underground sanctuary. Although not included in the three-page Life story, "Emerging Man" captures the surreal and nightmarish character of Ellison’s novel, which addresses the psychological damage inflicted by racism on African Americans."
The above is probably Parks’ most recognizable image and depicts African-American woman Ella Watson, who was a cleaner at the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Parks was also working there having won a photography fellowship it ran as a way to "introduce America to Americans". Parks found himself documenting older generations of African-Americans to find out how they dealt with the daily torrent of racism that he himself was encountering having moved to segregated Washington.'
GORDON PARKS, cont.
'Gordon Parks' cinematic photos captured the injustices of the civil rights era' by Allysia Alleyne, CNN style, updated 14th March 2018
Click on the right to read about the life of Gordon Parks and view some of his iconic images.
An excerpt:
"He photographed fashion for Vogue, directed the 1971 blaxploitation film "Shaft," composed orchestral scores, and wrote memoirs, novels and poems. But it was with his sensitive, insightful documentary photos of black America that Gordon Parks made himself one of the 20th century's most important cultural figures."
Gordon Parks, Department Store, Mobile, Alabama, 1956
GORDON PARKS, cont.
Erwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History: Gordon Parks: 'A Harlem Family'. Life Magazine, 1968.
Click on the right to learn more about this photo essay by Gordon Parks which has been described as "one of the most powerful, and most troubling, photo essays that Gordon Parks ever produced".
Excerpt:
'It began as a challenge. Righteous anger propelled it forward. It moved many of Life magazine's readers to acts of generosity. Yet it ended in tragedy. What should have been a triumph became instead a reminder that the law of unintended consequences can exert its force in unimaginably heart-breaking ways. '
Life/Alfred Eisenstaedt: Gordon Parks, c. 1970
"A Harlem Family" appeared in Life in March 1968, the first article in "A Special Section on Race and Poverty." The editors' introduction set the tone:
'The Negro and the cities constitute the nation's most alarming domestic problem. Yet, except when violence flares up, people ignore its appalling realities.
...For a generation, the interlocking problems of race and poverty in America have grown steadily worse, despite a score of laws and a hundred government programs and a thousand good intentions. ...Still, incredibly, complacent whites and an obdurate Congress find ways to avoid and evade the problem.'
From 'A Harlem Family', Life Magazine, March 1968.
'Throughout "A Harlem Family" there was a fascinating tension between the documentary realism of Parks' photos and the overt subjectivity of his words. The photos were in gritty black and white. They were unflinching in their depiction of the squalor and chaos of the Fontenelles' lives. In the photos, the family never revealed its awareness of the camera's presence. All of this told readers that what they were seeing was the unvarnished, objective truth about the family, rather than a photographer's interpretation. This insistence on objectivity was something "A Harlem Family" shared with all of Life's photo-essays. The magazine's authority rested on its claim that its photos showed readers the truth about the world, and readers usually accepted that claim.'
Ella Watson: The Empowered Woman of Gordon Parks's 'American Gothic' Gordon Parks's photograph “American Gothic” afforded rare attention to a black female subject who was not a celebrity or entertainer, but a mother and a worker. By Deborah Willis, NY Times, May 14, 2018
Ella Watson: The Empowered Woman of Gordon Parks's 'American Gothic' Gordon Parks's photograph “American Gothic” afforded rare attention to a black female subject who was not a celebrity or entertainer, but a mother and a worker. By Deborah Willis, NY Times, May 14, 2018
Ella Watson_ The Empowered Woman of Gordon Parks's 'American Gothic' - The New York Times.pdfPage updated
Google Sites
Report abuse