Picasso's Studio
Artist
Faith Ringgold
(American, 1930 – 2024)
Date1991
Mediumacrylic on canvas; printed and tie-dyed fabric
Dimensionsoverall: 185.4 x 172.7 cm (73 x 68 in.)
ClassificationsPaintings
MarkingsNarrative text panels record a fictitious letter addressed by Willa Marie Simone to Aunt Melissa, the full text of which appears in "Dancing at the Louvre", 136-137.
Credit LineCharlotte E.W. Buffington Fund
Object number1998.148
Label TextIn her story quilts, Faith Ringgold reconstructs the narrative of art history from the perspective of someone who is clearly dissatisfied with the officially sanctioned versions. Constantly blurring the line between fiction and history, she tells the tale of Atlanta-born Willia Marie Simone who goes to Paris at the age of 16 in the 1920s and leads a life that no African-American woman artist could have dreamed of having at the time, meeting all the artistic and literary luminaries of the day. Here, Willia models for Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and in Ringgold’s version the sources behind Picasso’s “originality”—Simone’s black female body and the African masks—take center stage.
In the text around the quilt’s border, Willia writes to her Aunt, “The European artists took a look at us and changed the way they saw themselves. Aunt Melissa, you made me aware of that. ‘Go to Paris, Willia Marie,’ you told me, ‘and soak up some of that Africana they using in those cube paintings.” It’s the African mask straight from African faces that I look at in Picasso’s studio and in his art. He has the power to deny what he doesn’t want to acknowledge. But art is the truth, not the artist. Doesn’t matter what he says about where it comes from. We see where, every time we look in the mirror.”
Provenance1998, purchased from the artist by the Worcester Art Museum.On View
Not on view
