Women In Visual Arts | Daily Art Fixx - Art Blog: Modern Art, Art History, Painting, Illustration, Photography, Sculpture

Faith Ringgold: Painting, Fiber Art, Sculpture

Born on October 8, 1930, in Harlem, New York, Faith Ringgold is considered to be one of the most important living African American artists. Working in a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, and performance, Ringgold is best known for her “story quilts” that combine narrative paintings with quilted borders and text.

Ringgold’s mother, a fashion designer and seamstress, nurtured her creative abilities from a young age. Ringgold attended City College of New York where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art and Education in 1955. She taught art in New York’s public schools from 1955–1973 and earned her Master’s degree in art in 1959. During this time, Ringgold also married and divorced jazz pianist Robert Earl Wallace with whom she had two daughters. In 1962, she was remarried to Burdette Ringgold.

Ringgold’s oil paintings and posters of the mid-to-late 1960s carried strong political messages and were supportive of the civil-rights movement. In 1970 she participated in a demonstration against the exclusion of black and women artists by New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art. This resulted in the inclusion of Betye Saar and Barbara Chase-Riboud in the Whitney Sculpture Biennial, making them the first black women ever to exhibit at the Museum.

In the early 1970s Ringgold abandoned traditional painting and began making unstretched acrylic paintings on canvas with soft cloth frames after viewing an exhibition of Tibetan art at the Rijk Museum in Amsterdam. During this time, Ringgold also began lecture tours and traveling exhibitions to colleges and universities around the United States. In 1973, she retired from teaching altogether to continue touring and create art full time.

In 1983 Ringgold began to combine images and handwritten text in her painted “story quilts,” which conveyed imaginative narratives. In 1984, a 20-year retrospective of her work was held at The Studio Museum in Harlem. That same year, Ringgold also became a professor at the University of California, San Diego, a position that she still holds today.

Over the course of her career, Ringgold has published 12 children’s books including the award winning “Tar Beach” which is based on her story quilt. As well, a book of her memoirs was published in 1995. She has exhibited in major museums in the USA, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Ringgold is in the permanent collections of numerous museums including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art.

Retrospectives of Ringgold’s work have been held by Rutgers University, New Brunswick (1973), the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (1984), and the Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, Hempstead (1990). Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions devoted to political art, women’s art, contemporary quilts, and African-American art, as well as in the Whitney Biennial (1985). Ringgold has received many honours, including the National Endowment for the Arts awards in sculpture (1978) and painting (1989), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1987), and fifteen honorary doctorates.

Ringgold currently lives and works in La Jolla, California, and Englewood, New Jersey. For more information, visit Faith Ringgold.com.

Sources: Guggenheim, Faith Ringgold.com

Annie Leibovitz: Photography

Born on October 2, 1949, in Waterbury, Connecticut, Annie Leibovitz has been documenting American popular culture since the 1970′s and is one of the most sought after portrait photographers today.

The Leibovitz family moved frequently with her father’s duty assignments in the US Air Force and Annie took her first photos when they were stationed in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. Leibovitz studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute and after a summer trip to Japan with her mother, she began taking night classes in photography and continued developing her skills as a photographer. Early influences include Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

In 1970, Leibovitz approached the editor of the recently launched Rolling Stone Magazine for employment. Her first assignment was a photo shoot with John Lennon and her photo appeared on the January 1971 issue. Leibovitz was named chief photographer two years later.

In 1980, Leibovitz was sent to photograph John Lennon and Yoko Ono and created the now famous Lennon nude curled around a fully clothed Ono. Several hours after the photo shoot, Lennon was shot and killed. The photograph ran on the cover of Rolling Stone Lennon commemorative issue and in 2005 was named best magazine cover from the past 40 years by the American Society of Magazine Editors.

In 1983, Leibovitz became a contributing photographer for Vanity Fair Magazine and became known for her provocative celebrity portraits including Whoopie Goldberg, Demi Moore, Brad Pitt, Ellen DeGeneres, Queen Elizabeth II, and countless others. Her portraits have also been featured in national media including Vogue, The New York Times, The New Yorker, as well as media ads for American Express, the Gap, and the Milk Board.

Leibovitz began a long-term romantic relationship with writer Susan Sontag in 1989. Sontag had a strong influence on her work including her photos documenting the Balkan war in Sarajevo and “Women”, a book they published together in 2000. The couple lived apart but maintained a close relationship until Sontag’s death in 2004.

Leibovitz has received numerous awards including a Commandeur des Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government as well as designation as a living legend by the Library of Congress. In 1991, she had her first museum show at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. – a show that toured internationally for six years.

With several book publications under her belt, Leibovitz’s most recent book “A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005″ features her trademark celebrity portraits as well as personal photographs from her own life.

Leibovitz has three children, Sarah Cameron who was born when Leibovitz was 51 years old, and twins Susan and Samuelle who were born to a surrogate mother in May 2005.

To see more of Annie Leibovitz’s photographs visit Contact Press. If you get the chance, there is a fantastic PBS documentary called “Annie Leibovitz, Life Through a Lens” that features interviews from celebrities and with the photographer about the her work over the last few decades.