faith ringgold and betye saar

Printing New Possibilities in Textiles

BY CAROLINE KIPP

Textiles and prints exist in a place of multiplicity and ambivalence: they are simultaneously a form of traditional or technical material culture, and a resource for nonconventional artistic, social, and political enactments.1 These opposed readings subvert attempts at definitive interpretations, turning them into sites of contradiction that contain multiple histories and meanings. While Faith Ringgold (b. 1930) and Betye Saar (b. 1926) are well-known for their innovative and experimental uses of diverse media, their works straddling between contemporary printmaking and craft have received little critical attention given to. These hybrid objects integrate the technical, the material, and the conceptual from both fields, bridging two mediums that rarely engage in sustained dialogue. Exploring Ringgold’s Tar Beach #2 (1990) and Saar’s Takin’ a Chance on Luv’ (1984), created during their individual artist-in-residence experiences at The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) in Philadelphia, presents an opportunity to consider these intersections across two artistic practices, providing a rare insight into their individual creative processes. Through a repertoire of symbols and piecework construction, Takin’ A Chance on Luv’ functions as a conceptual and material meeting point between Saar’s prints and three-dimensional works. For Ringgold, Tar Beach #2 exists between her published texts and painted story quilts, illustrating the way images shift across media to accommodate creative agency and to facilitate communication.

The multiple layers of material and meaning present in Ringgold and Saar’s printed textiles also speak to the theory of “functional abstractions,” as argued by the visual historian Sampada Aranke. In Aranke’s view, these are works that are not only abstract for the sake of formal exercise. Instead, these “functional abstractions” figure the Black body “ as a series of substitutive, sensorial objects that give rise to a sense of how Black life is aesthetically imagined,” subverting the boundaries that white supremacy culture would seek to confine Black experience within. 2 In other words, these works simultaneously illustrate and subvert the constructs of Blackness. While Aranke’s ideas are developed in relation to formal appearance, we could perhaps extend their resonance to consider materiality as well. After all, materials carry embedded histories, and these associations can lend greater significance to the artist’s concepts. For example, given cotton’s historical ties to enslavement in the United States, Saar and Ringgold’s material choices reflect their deep and nuanced understanding of the multiplicity of meanings called upon when textiles are used in artmaking. Thus, harnessing this multivalent signaling turns their printed images on textiles into acts of reappropriation, subverting media hierarchies and the limitations placed on Black freedom and creativity. Through this lens, the domestic textiles and hand drawn images composing Saar and Ringgold’s artworks can be read as a shared repository where “the sensorial and the visual, the embodied and the illustrated, the deeply abstracted and representational qualities of Black life” can all be found conversing at once.3

For decades, Faith Ringgold (b. 1930) and Betye Saar (b. 1926) have incorporated printmaking as a vital component of their multidisciplinary practices, yet their mutual connection to printmaking remains underrecognized. RINGGOLD | SAAR: Meeting on the Matrix highlights the print work of these two landmark artists, providing a window into the material and conceptual explorations at play in their distinct practices. Both artists have uniquely utilized the matrix—the printmaking surface which transfers ink onto paper or fabric—as a site of possibilities for experimentation, storytelling, and activism.

RINGGOLD | SAAR: Meeting on the Matrix will be the first time the works of Ringgold and Saar are featured together in an exhibition devoted solely to prints. Drawn from the robust print collection of the David C. Driskell Center and supporters of the Center, Meeting on the Matrix juxtaposes over fifty prints, archival materials, and videos illuminating the printmaking practices of both Ringgold and Saar over six decades.

What is the Matrix?

The matrix is any printmaking surface which transfers ink onto another material, such as paper or fabric. It can be a template which allows imagery to be produced multiple times, or it can be a vehicle for a one-off design. All matrices require controlled physical contact to imprint their images onto another material, creating prints. In RINGGOLD | SAAR: Meeting on the Matrix, the gallery space functions as a matrix—a site of contact between visitors and the artists, their prints, imagery, and ideas.

FAITH RINGGOLD (b. 1930, Harlem, New York)

Faith Ringgold is a painter, sculptor, teacher, activist and author of numerous award winning children’s books. Ringgold received her B.S. and M.A. degrees in visual art from the City College of New York in 1955 and 1959. Professor Emeritus of Art at the University of California in San Diego, Faith Ringgold has received 23 Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees. Faith Ringgold is the recipient of more than 80 awards and honors including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; two National Endowment for the Arts Awards; The American Academy of Arts and Letters Award and the Medal of Honor for Fine Arts from the National Arts Club. In 2017 Faith Ringgold was elected as a member into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston, MA. Known for her oil paintings from the 1960s and Faith Ringgold’s narrative painted story quilts, she created a body of work in the 1970s that reflected Ringgold’s political activism and her personal story within the context of the women’s movement. Faith Ringgold was one of a very small group of Black women who helped galvanize the Black and Feminist Art Movements in New York in the 1970s. This body of work, including tankas and soft sculptures, led to Faith Ringgold’s painted story quilts. Faith Ringgold is as important to the overall culture of America as she is to the specifics of contemporary American art. From her earliest breakthroughs during the turbulent decade of the 1960s and continuing into the new millennium, Faith Ringgold maintains her stature as a creative and cultural force. She is a role model for artists and scholars and continues to influence and inspire others. Faith Ringgold has been represented worldwide exclusively by ACA Galleries since 1995.

BETYE SAAR (b. 1926, Los Angeles)

As one of the artists who ushered in the development of Assemblage art, Betye Saar’s practice reflects on African American identity, spirituality and the connectedness between different cultures. Her symbolically rich body of work has evolved over time to demonstrate the environmental, cultural, political, racial, technological, economic, and historical context in which it exists. For over six decades, Saar has created assemblage works that explore the social, political, and economic underpinnings of America’s collective memory. She began her career at the age of 35 producing work that dealt with mysticism, nature and family. Saar’s art became political in the 1970’s namely with the assemblage The Liberation of Aunt Jemima in 1972. As did many of the women who came to consciousness in the 1960’s, Saar takes on the feminist mantra “the personal is political” as a fundamental principle in her assemblage works. Her appropriation of Black collectibles, heirlooms, and utilitarian objects are transformed through subversion, and yet given her status as a pioneer of the Assemblage movement, the impact of Saar’s oeuvre on contemporary art has yet to be fully acknowledged or critically assessed. Among the older generation of Black American artists, Saar is without reproach and continues to both actively produce work and inspire countless others.