Faith Ringgold's

Abstract

For nearly four decades, Faith Ringgold's last oil canvas, For the Women's House (1971)(Image 1), hung not in a major museum or on a collector's wall but rather in the women's prison facility on New York's Rikers Island. Not until 2010 was it exhibited in an art museum for the first time, at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York. This work was last seen by the general public as part of the exhibition We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85, organized by the Brooklyn Museum of Art. After a four-city tour that lasted from April 2017 to September 2018, the painting was returned to the prison complex. Now, with the closure of Rikers Island Prison imminent, the painting's future is uncertain. This study of For the Women's House (1971), demonstrates the validity of a multipronged approach, as its context, locations, and subjectivity place it solidly within the realms of site specificity, art as political protest, and feminism. Yet the most telling form of analysis is the multidimensional iconography. The iconographic analysis encompasses the social history, the feminist activist agenda, site and even crosses over temporal divisions. To fully engage with the painting, the artist's own politics and the historical context must be considered. Faith Ringgold, a black American woman, artist, teacher, and mother was also a passionate activist during the 1960s, was born and raised in Harlem, New York City, where she would also raise her own daughters. She was an active participant in the nationwide civil unrest of the era. Such protests led to the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Further protests would follow, provoked in large part by Nixon's election to the presidency in 1968. The first section of this paper explores the significance of the social and political environment in the years before Nixon's election and after his ascension to the presidency. To many, his election was a vindication; to others, such as Ringgold, it was an omen, a warning that hard-won civil rights could be taken away. At the very least, progress could be halted: The Civil Rights Act was only one step and did not itself change the hegemonic systems and structures then in place - some of which still are. Ringgold's status as both a Black American and a woman put her in the midst of some of the fiercest racial and gender disputes of her day. As a mother of daughters and a teacher of children, she deeply desired to protect and expand the definitions of civil justice and equality. Both the conditions of the country and of the artist's experience of those times are thus essential for seeing For the Women's House in its full dimension. The second section investigates the pretext of the painting's conception, its chosen location and audience. This work of art, Ringgold's last oil on canvas, was the culmination of her Black Light series. As a resident of Harlem, she had witnessed racial police violence and the six days of riots that resulted in 1964.[1] Notably, on July 20, 1964, on the far right of the last column of its front page, the New York Times ran a small article headlined "Violence Flares Again in Harlem; Restraint Urged." The article positions the threat as coming from angry rioters, saying that "[g]roups of Negroes, roamed through the streets, attacking newsmen and others. Negroes standing on tenement roofs showered policemen in steel helmets with bottles and bricks." Later, the article's author pleads with state troops to protect the people of Harlem and denies allegations that police fired indiscriminately into crowds - in both cases implying that the victims were to blame. Faced with such slanted news, Ringgold sought to reframe the events of her day, documenting the barbarity through words and images in her American People, Black Light series, a heart-wrenching examination of barbarity toward Americans of color, those who did not partake in the racism seen in Ringgold's recent past and present. For the Women's House (1971), Ringgold's last oil on canvas after completing the series, stands apart from it, for in it she shifted from a corrective retrospective mode to a prospective one: instead of amending the mediated recent past, she advanced alternative models of the future for her initially selected viewers - all of whom were in transition themselves. As a result, the canvas, itself, was transmuted geographically, symbolically, and in relation to its audience over the decades after its creation. Those seeking to holistically embrace the breadth of For the Women's House (1971) will find ample verbal and visual clues. In chronological order, the third section explores the coded iconography within the canvas, peeling back the layers of paint and the creative process to reveal a personal journey that references a local and national historical past while projecting an imagined and improved future. From the onset, it becomes a site-specific work connected to the artist's chosen audience and tailor-made for Rikers Island. The fourth section addresses the transmogrification of the painting's value that occurred as designated viewership changed from women inmates to males. During that period, the physical vandalizing of For the Women's House was equally a violation of its message. Passage of time and the increasing renown of the artist played their own parts in the recovery and restoration of the image, giving Ringgold the opportunity, decades later, to see her painting again. In 1999, the painting left the prison for a costly rehabilitation, and by 2010, the eight- by eight-foot square had made its way to a museum for the first time. In this way, as the canvas moved through different spaces and eras, its function mutated, and its importance grew. Today, the voyage of For the Women's House is still not over - its next destination remains unknown at the time of this writing.

[1][1] Spencer Stultz, "The Harlem ‘Race Riot' of 1964," BlackPast, December 4, 2017, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/harlem-race-riot-1964/.