On January 2 a cartoon strip running atop the entire New York Times Arts & Leisure section caught my eye. Part of it alludes to a visitor conversation overheard at the Museum of Modern Art about painters Faith Ringgold and Pablo Picasso, two of whose works now hang side by side in the museum. In mildly drole fashion the strip made at least two important points: the fact that MoMA has abandoned its ism-based method of displaying art, which inherently excluded artists of color and of various ethnicity; and, in doing so, it has expanded its notions of what constitutes exceptional art and who exceptional artists are.
Faith Ringgold, American People Series #20: Die, oil on canvas, 6’ x 12’, 1967
Faith Ringgold is an 89-year-old, black American painter, fiber artist and book illustrator who in her student days studied European art history, including Cubism. In 1967 she painted American People Series #20: Die, which combines the Cubist grid of Picasso’s Guernica with her own black consciousness to present the brutality of American racism. Considered an achievement in synthesis by its contemporary reviewers, the work (like most of Ringgold’s output) was infrequently displayed because of its political content. Two generations later, MoMA, which owns this painting, has finally reconfigured itself so the destruction of Francisco Franco’s bombing raid and the destructive force of racism can both be brought to people’s attention - on an equal footing.
Pablo Picasso, Guernica, oil on canvas, 11’ 6” x 25’ 6”, 1937
In the cartoon strip, visitors make the connection between Ringgold and Picasso, even though it is the latter’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and not Guernica that hangs at MoMA. It indicates, perhaps, that the museum’s modernization can in fact broaden not only our collective memory of images, but also our ability to make connections between the consequences of human behavior.
Here’s a link to an interview of Faith Ringgold conducted by the Tate Modern in 2018. If you do not know of her or her work, it will serve as a first-rate introduction to both. Interview of Faith Ringgold
Left to right at MoMA: Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, oil on canvas, 8’ x 7’ 8”, 1907; Faith Ringgold, American People Series #20: Die
Jim Kiely