Quick-to-See and Ringgold

 

Image above from 4-23-23 Sunday New York Times Juane Quick-to-See Smith work at the Whitney Museum

Challenge: Compare and contrast Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Faith Ringgold

The Sunday New York Times has always been a source of inspiration and a vehicle of focus on art and artists. This week a feature of the work of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith to be exhibited at the Whitney reminded me of another artist of whom I had grown to admire, Faith Ringgold. Ringgold has also been featured in the New York Times in recent years.

The New York Times described part the process of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith current exhibitions as follows: “She started placing newspaper clippings on her canvases and painting around and over them. As the idea took hold, she made the layouts more purposeful: juxtaposing excerpts from The New York Times and the Flathead Reservation’s Char-Koosta News, as well as other printed snippets, that, when read together, became suggestive and rhythmic, creating what Smith calls her “rap.” She added found images, bits of fabric, and more expressive passages of paint, all of it simmering behind large, simply rendered icons, like a canoe. In 1992, she hung above one such canvas a series of objects featuring racist Native stereotypes, including a baseball cap from the Cleveland Indians. With a twist of dry humor, she titled her piece, which stretched 14 feet long, “Trade (Gifts for Trading Land With White People).”

Above: Tar Beach II by Faith Ringgold - image also from the New York Times a few years ago. (A quick review shows Ringgold was featured in New York Times several times since 2019).

I can not help but draw a comparison with Faith Ringgold. The New York Times describes Faith Ringgold: Born in Harlem in 1930, Ringgold was the youngest of three children of Willi Posey Jones, a fashion designer and a seamstress who stimulated her daughter’s creative streak; the little girl grew up in a household surrounded by fabrics and textiles. After graduating from college, she produced paintings and posters in the 1960s that focused on the civil rights movement and on race relations in the United States. She also mounted protests against the underrepresentation of women and African-Americans in museum collections. In 1980, she started making quilts — the first one being a collaboration with her mother — and has to date produced more than 130. They are among her best-known works.

So Ringgold (born 1930) represents the Harlem Renaissance while Quick-to-See (born in 1940) is an artist who recalls the legacy of indigineous people in this country. Both uniquely american stories.

Exploring the context of artists and their work will inevitably encompass historic realities. Those realities will always transend mere facts and dates. I cannot help thinking about the role the artist plays in communicating the impact as well as the reflection of society. Furthermore, I often think about the role museums, critical review and attention generated by artists generate thoughtful public discourse.